HP ENVY TouchSmart 15 - mSata SSD updgrade

[jbaxter87]

Hi All,

I am looking at upgrading a friends HP ENVY TouchSmart 15 laptop by adding in a mSata SSD.

The SSD i am looking at is the Samsung 850 EVO Series mSATA 500GB SSD which will be holding the OS and most files but hopefully i can keep the HDD for storage.

Can someone confirm that the open slot below fine for the Samsung mSata? And it should just be a simple plug in SSD, install OS and change boot order from bios?

Thank you,

James.

[Huffer]

If only. On that model you have correctly identified the mSSD slot. However, it is designed to use a 24 or 32 gig mSSD which works as an acceleration cache disk for Intel Rapid Storage working together with a main SATA mechanical SSD. If a regular 2.5 inch SATA hard drive is present in the main slot, the mSSD cannot be the boot drive. If only an mSSD is present in the computer then the mSSD can be bootable. Using a 500 gig mSSD you could obviously get by without a SATA hard drive. I will say that using a 24 or 32 gig mSSD as an accelerator with say a 1 TB 7200 rpm hard drive results in pretty snappy performance as well. 

Post back with any more questions. There is an elaborate workaround involving a bootloader on the hard drive but it is very hard to do and not really appropriate to give to anybody but a computer scientist to try to use as a daily computer. 

If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as Solution" to help others find it. 

[emmerx]

I have tried to get the mSATA 128GB SSD working as a bootdrive in my Envy 6 1012sd together with a 500GB data HDD.

I got it to work untill I had to restore after datacorruption (caused by???) and it took me so much time I decided to just buy a 256 GB SATA SSD as boot drive.

Now the 128GB mSATA works excellent as extra storage .

I suggest you'll do the same not to get frustrated ...

[jbaxter87]

Wow, so not as easy as I thought. 

So just to confirm, if I remove the 2.5inch HDD and install a mSata SSD 500Gb then the SSD should automatically be changed to the primary storage allowing it to be the bootable device? Is there anything I need to change in the BIOS?

Thank you for this.

[Huffer]

I don't know about "automatic" but the mSATA will then show up in the boot order and will accept having Windows loaded on it. 

[Baaghi]

Ihave a system with following configuration:

HP ENVY TS 15 Notebook PC

    Basic I/O System (BIOS): F.69

    Central Processing Unit (CPU): Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz

    Physical Memory: 8GB

    Hard Disk X 2

        ADATA AXM21S3-24GM-B (22.4GB)

        KINGSTON SV300S37A480G (447.1GB)

    Video Card X 2

        Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600

        NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

My Question:

Can I use 500 GB or more, at mSATA slot?

Currently I am using the hardware: 

  ADATA AXM21S3-24GM-B (SCSI)

        Manufacturer: (Standard disk drives).

Thanks for all and Regards

[Huffer]

Simple answer is no. This class of system that used the legacy mSATA mSSD disks is designed such that they will be small (24 or 32 gigs) and will "accelerate" the main menchanical hard drive using Intel Rapid Response technology. The mSATA mSSD cannot be the boot drive if there is also a drive in the 2.5 inch slot; the BIOS will not allow it. Further, the mSATA mSSD disks are not as fast as current M.2 technology. They are in fact, no faster than a 2.5inch SATA SSD. Lastly, I have never seen one of 500 gigs, the biggest I have seen is a 256. They are hard to find while 2.5 inch SATA SSDs are available at any store like Best Buy or Frys or online. 

Post back with any more questions and please click "Accept as Solution" to help others if this has answered your question. 

[PrfyVdlxSg]

I have just received my Kingston 32GB mSATA SSD. I intended to use it for disk caching. I have read many, many threads, and while I am keen to try out using the mSATA SSD as a boot device in the future, I am content to use it for disk caching now.

HP Envy TS 15 j127tx

16GB RAM

750GB HDD

I am still not very sure of a few things, but yesterday I started experimenting with what I know so far. I have IRST v12.x in my machine, so I powered off, removed battery and inserted the mSATA in the slot. on boot up, I entered BIOS, and sure enough, there was the entry to activate IRST.

On boot, I was presented with the 2 drives (mSATA SSD and HDD), where pressing CTRL-I will bring me to 6 options, with only option 1 (Create RAID...) and 6 (Exit) available. The rest are changing RAID configurations, so I guess that made sense.

I have all my data in my HDD so I chose option 6. On boot up, or apparent boot up, I only saw a blank screen, which prompted me to do a force power down (press and hold power button for about 5 secs). I tried this cycle for about 5x, then I decided to remove the mSATA to see if my HDD is still intact.

I was able to boot to Windows, and silly me, suspecting that IRST v12.x is the culprit, decided to uninstall it, with the hope of installing the latest version (16.x?). That was a wrong move, as I found out, others have had a similar problem, installing lower versions, due to compatibility issues.

So my questions now are these:

1. RAID, is it mandatory, and should I do it via the boot-up CTRL-I method? I have read that IRST will handle it. My concern is that it should not result to my HDD being wiped out. (No, I don't have the means to do a back-up).

2. Which IRST should I (or can I) use (reinstall)?

3. BIOS - mine is the latest as per HP drivers page. Is that any problem at all?

Tonight I will reinstall IRST. Then I can do a cold boot, press F11, enter Windows safe mode, configure acceleration, and I hope that will be it!

In the meantime, I am all ears to all suggestions. Thank you!