Envy 17-S041NR SSD Replacement

[GPag]

The 2TB SATA SSD in my Envy laptop is starting to sound suspicious when spinning up and, sometimes, when just sitting.   Things also seem to be slower loading.   The laptop works fine and with a previous memory upgrade does everything I need.  I don't need a new laptop. The usual disk tests don't show any problems but I'm looking at replacement drives, preparing for the inevitable.   I haven't had to research drives in a long time so I would appreciate some guidance on what to look for and what to avoid.

I am staying with a 2TB SATA drive.  I am assuming that there have been improvements in SATA SSDs since I bought the laptop six years ago.  What specs should I be looking for?  Do internal laptop SATA SSDs all have the same form factor or do I need to be concerned with dimensions?  Anything else I should know?  Recommendations?

Thanks,

George

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, George:

From what you are describing, your notebook comes with a hybrid drive (a 2 TB mechanical hard drive accelerated by an 8 GB SSD within the drive).

I recommend you replace the existing drive with this model, which is a pure SSD and should provide better performance than what you are getting now.

Amazon.com: Western Digital 2TB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 5...

Below is the link to the service manual, where you can find the hard drive removal and replacement procedure.

HP Envy Notebook 17 (model numbers 17-s100 through 17-s199 and 17-s000 through 17-s099) Maintenance ...

[GPag]

"From what you are describing, your notebook comes with a hybrid drive (a 2 TB mechanical hard drive accelerated by an 8 GB SSD within the drive)."

The system specs simply say "2 TB 5400 rpm SATA".   I wasn't sure if you were saying that there are two discrete components, a mechanical drive and an SSD, or a mechanical drive with an SSD inside the mechanical drive case.  I looked at the system repair manual and it looks like the latter.  This looks like a mechanical drive to me.

 if I replace the Mechanical drive with an SSD do I need to worry about form factor?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You are correct.

The 8 GB SSD accelerator is inside the 2.5" drive case.

SSD's come in 2.5" x 7.0 mm sizes like the one I recommended.

There are no 9.5 mm thick 2.5" SSD's.

It will fit fine using the existing mounting hardware the 9.5 mm thick 2.5" drive is using now.

[GPag]

One more question.  If I decide to wait until my current disk dies, would I be able to restore my system to the SSD from a full system back-up?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You should be able to if you use a backup imaging program like Macrium Reflect.

[GPag]

So restoring directly from a full system backup on a 2TB USB drive would not work?  

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Unfortunately, my only experience with restoring from a disk image is with Macrium reflect.

I prefer to clean install operating systems on new drives because for me it is easy for me to do it that way and then reinstall my programs and files.

You don't even need to enter a product key when reinstalling the original Windows operating system on PC's that come with Windows 8 and newer.

Microsoft provides the downloads to create either USB installation flash drives or ISO files.

For W10, I use the Media creation tool.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

I once used the built in Microsoft backup program to try and restore a drive and it didn't work for me.

So, all I can say is try it and see what happens.

[GPag]

Hanks fo all the help Paul.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.