HP Envy 17 SSD Compatibility?

[PhysicistSarah]

According to the manual for my HP Envy 17, I can only upgrade to a certain 160GB Solid State Drive. Is this the only option for this laptop, or can I get another SSD that would fit in the drive bay with the proper hardware kit?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

The Manual doesn't actually say anything about upgrade possibilities. It's not about that; its a field manual for HP technicians and only addresses hardware as originally installed by HP. You can use the Manual to make a judgment about what will work for upgrades but you have to use the information in the Manual together with some wider knowledge that is not expressly found in the Manual. I suspect this is a slightly older model from the days when SSDs were crazy expensive. They are cheaper now and the SSD uses a SATA interface which has no practical limit on disk capacity. So a 2.5 inch SATA SSD as large as you can find in the market can be used. I have seen them up to 4 TB and those are still really expensive but 1 TBs cost about what 500 gig SSDs did a year ago. The 2.5 inch SATA SSD (such as a Samsung 860 Evo) uses the same mounting hardware as a hard drive so all you really need to get is the SSD if you have a hard drive now. This appears to be one of the Envy 17 models like the 17t-jxxx series with two hard drive slots and if you need a caddy and cable for a second drive go to www.newmodeus.com to order the extra adapter which can be used for an SSD or a hard drive.

Post back with any more questions and please accept as solution if its the info you needed. 

[PhysicistSarah]

I was thinking about this SSD(https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S?tag=pcworld02-20&psc=1&asc...).

It fits the 2.5" form factor and is a SATA III.

Would I need anything else to install it (Like a caddy or an additional install kit)? As you said, I have 2 HDD bays (Which I verified last time I installed more RAM).

The caddies that you linked to seem to indicate that they would replace the disk drive with a hard drive.

[Huffer]

That is the kind of SSD I was suggesting so yes it will work fine. You want to place the SSD in the caddy where the hard drive is currently located and if you want to continue to use the hard drive for extra storage you need a caddy and connection cable for it. Newmodeus sells all kinds of caddies, including ones that adapt a hard drive or SSD to a DVD drive bay but that is not what you want. If you give the exact model or product number we can steer you to the exact product to order and you also want to see if by come chance the 2d hard drive bay already has a caddy and cable in there. If so no need to order anything.