Considering adding an M.2 SSD to Elitebook 745 G3 - Questions

[RDAB_GT]

Good day to you all.

I recently purchased an Elitebook 745 G3 notebook (T3L32UT#ABA) from an online retailer here in Canada. It has been a good machine so far and I am happy with it. I have upgraded its RAM from the existing 8 GB to 16 GB.

Having opened up the computer a few times already, I had failed to notice that I actually have an empty M.2 slot available. Now I am contemplating dropping in an NVME SSD into it.

Here are some questions I have before I set off on this endeavour:

1) Would a 512 GB M.2 NVME PCIe 3X4 SSD work on it? Browsing through the service manual (https://content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1032247814.pdf - page 12 of PDF), I can see that yes, a 512 GB M.2 SATA would work but the biggest NVME drive stated is 256 GB. Is there any reason why a 512 GB NVME drive would not work in this machine?

2) Perusing the forums here it would seem that Samsung EVO SSDs with their VNAND technology do not necessarily play nice with HP hardware. Is that still the case?

3) I have also seen cases where machines that originally shipped with HDDs with empty M.2 slots have that slot disabled in the factory. This is unfortunate if true - Is this still going on? As a side note - I opened my machine again recently and I can confirm that the slot is a TRUE open slot and not just empty space without connectors (!).

4) Would there be an issue if I installed the SSD without the retention screw?

I understand that to get the most out of the SSD it would be best to make it the boot drive, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I'm still in the planning stage of my upgrade and I haven't bought any hardware yet. I appreciate any insight that any of you could bring to this matter.

Thanks in advance!

[RDAB_GT]

An update to those who were interested, like me, in adding an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD to their Elitebook 745 G3.

Some weeks back I went ahead and purchased a Samsung EVO 512 GB, PCIe NVMe SSD, despite not knowing for certain if it would work on my system. To recap, the spec sheet for my notebook did mention configurations with both M.2 SATA (max 512 GB) and PCIe (max 256 GB) but I wasn't sure if a 512 GB PCIe SSD would work in that slot. I was worried that there might have been a BIOS constraint of some sort.

I needn't have worried. It works! Installation went off without a hitch - I had actually opened my notebook multiple times before (RAM upgrade issues- that's a story for another day) but I couldn't believe I missed the empty M.2 slot before.

The system recognised the new SSD and so I set off to make it my main, boot partition. My notebook was new enough that I didn't mind wiping everything and doing a fresh installation of Windows 10 - and so I did. 

To sum up, yes, an M.2 PCIe SSD does indeed work with the Elitebook 745 G3. I now run a dual storage configuration. 

Thanks to anyone reading this.