Can the HP Pavilion 15-cs2073cl Laptop Really use an M.2 NVMe storage device?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Replacing the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SATA SSD will definitely be an improvement, and there would be no difference in performance between a M.2 SATA SSD and a M.2 NVMe SSD if they were the same brand and model such as a WD Blue SA510 2.5" and a SA510 M.2 SATA.

[BeemerBiker]

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[ 1:14:14.36][startnet] Error, Get failure from Dynamic Recovery Tool

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As Paul wrote later on, this indicates the M.2 is incompatible and needs to be of type SATA.

I ran into this same problem several years ago with an H110btc mining motherboard I bought.  It would not boot with NVME M.2. I looked in the manual (I had failed to read it of course) and the manual specified "SATA3 6.0 Gb/s" and showed a picture of the "B+M" key PCB type. The system booted up with an SATA3 M.2 and basically was the equivalent of a WD blue 2.5inch SSD.

I did look at your manual much earlier and did not see any indication the M.2 had to be of type "B+M" but HP is in the business of selling system, not motherboard, and the author did not go into detail of what could or could not be used.  

[krlkrvr]

Thanks BeemerBiker, very good to know. That would've been especially useful to know before I purchased my NVMe, but live and learn I guess. I suppose that means this laptop in theory can have an M.2 and keep the 2.5" inch storage as well, but I'm not planning on running out to get an M.2 SATA to be the guinea pig any time soon. The strange thing is, I'm pretty sure the M.2 slot is made for the NVMe key type, not just the SATA type (of course it'll accept both, but if it doesn't support NVMe, blocking the NVMe key type would also have been helpful).

Thanks again for the info and reply! 

[krlkrvr]

One more thought: the strange thing is, in BrianPer's posts, he specifically names the M.2 NVMe drive he claims he got to work, so go figure. 

[BeemerBiker]

This is what a B+M SATA3 type m.2 has for sector size

this is the sector size for NVME M.2

I had always wondered if the NVME could be low level formatted to match the SATA m.2 but I do not know of any tool that can do that and have no idea if that will fix the problem or not.

FWIW, I also tried this adapter on another system and it did not work either.  The one I bought did not have the warning about it working only on SATA m.2 or I would not have bought it.  

A BIOS update was released jan 5, 2024 but  I did not see anything in the BIOS history that indicated an improvement for NVME.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/swdetails/hp-pavilion-15-cs2000-laptop-pc/model/28278448/swItem...

[krlkrvr]

That's interesting info. I also looked into M.2 to 2.5" SATA adapters, but I never found one that claimed the M.2 could be of NVMe type, only SATA.  In fact, often in their fine print they warned against trying NVMe in the adapters specifically. Reading customer reviews often showed confirmation that NVMe did not work in the adapters. Even if you could get such an adapter to work with NVMe, I'd still be concerned about cooling, as most of these adapters were plastic enclosures with no allowance for heat sinks or air flow. Perhaps a working adapter would "clock down" an NVMe to SATA speeds such that heat wouldn't be a concern, but that's just speculation on my part.

The first thing I did before starting my upgrade attempt was to upgrade the BIOS to the absolute latest. I no longer have the laptop on hand to verify if this was the Jan. 5, 2024 version you reference, but I think it's likely. In retrospect, I wish I tried the original BIOS first, as that was likely closer to the version that BrianPer claims to have gotten working, but even if that were the case, that would mean this laptop would have been forced to stick with an old version of BIOS lacking possibly critical updates.

The person I did the upgrade for is apparently OK with using USB external storage, so I think it's unlikely we will be trying the M.2 SATA experiment in the future, but perhaps someone reading this thread will have one on hand to try in their upgrade attempt.

Thanks again for all of your input!