Can I use SATA SSD and NVMe SSD at the same time?

[RastislavMarjov]

Hello! 🙂 

I replaced HDD in my Probook 430 G4 with a SATA SSD. SInce HDD was 1TB and SSD is only 256GB, I miss the additional storage because of work demands. During the change I wanted to see if there's a spare slot for additional RAM and I also saw a free PCIe slot (if I'm not mistaken). My question is - could I use the PCIe slot to expand laptop's storage with an NVMe SSD? If yes, is there a capacity limit?  

Thank you! 🙂 

[EddyK]

Hello RastislavMarjov,

Yes, you could use the additional PCIe slot as a secondary drive. It will even be preferred as the boot drive because of its superiority. 

However, it doesn't seem like it'll support an NVMe SSD but rather an M.2 2280 SSD. 

Highly recommended M.2 SSD: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-EVO-Internal-MZ-N5E250BW/dp/B00TGIVZTW

Steps to replacement are located on page 43 of your computer's Maintenance and Service Guide. You will need to put the battery in safe mode and remove the service door.

You can try seeing if there is a replacement video for your computer using HP's Service Media Library because, for some reason, it won't load for me. *sigh*

HP has tested it with 256GB but it may support all the way up to 1TB.

Hope this helps,

Eddy

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[RastislavMarjov]

Thank you 🙂 As far as connecting the SSD goes, I got it covered. There's only one question left: considering this slot should exceed writing/reading speed of SATA port (if I remember clearly), it would obviously be better to have windows boot from M.2, but do I need to flash Windows as a clean install on new SSD or is there a way to clone from the current one?  Or is it better to use the M.2 just as an extension (if there's no speed difference) and change the booting preference in bios?

[EddyK · Accepted solution]

Hello RastiaslavMarjov,

You can conduct a clean install of Windows 10 if you wish but you can use Samsung's own Data Migration Tool (that is free with your product) to help you clone the old SSD to your new M.2 SSD. The M.2 SSD will provide slight boosts in performance - especially if you're doing video editing and such. 

The Samsung Data Migration Tool will probably allow migration of just certain partitions but it's usually recommended that the drive you clone onto is bigger than the initial drive. Therefore, an M.2 SSD that is 256GB or larger is preferred.

Hope this answers your question,

Eddy

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[RastislavMarjov]

Thank you so much! 🙂