HP Pavilion 15-ak085na SSD upgrade

[alan24]

Hi, the above model contains a 2TB hard drive which is reeeeeeally slow.  My old i3 notebook is way faster for most tasks.

Does anyone know if the motherboard can take an SSD alongside the 2TB drive?

I understand this will invalidate the warranty, but it is (hard) driving me nuts.

Thanks.

[Huffer]

That is the gaming notebook, right? It will not take a second full sized 2.5 inch drive,  but it will take an M.2 mSSD and theoretically the latter can be bootable but right now we are struggling through an issue where this and some other models are not recognizing M.2 mSSDs added after delivery by end users. So I cannot recommend it. If you want speed and storage, then all I can suggest is to replace the 2 TB HDD with a 2.5 inch SATA SSD in the main slot and then put the 2 TB in an optical caddy/bay. You will lose the DVD drive, but who uses them these days, anyway?

Gaming Notebook Manual

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[alan24]

Thanks for your quick reply.

It did say gaming notebook on the box but it isn't the green one (an already grubby-looking white) and doesn't have a dedicated graphics card so isn't really for games.

I hadn't thought about removing the DVD drive - good idea.

Do you know if the m.2 issue is still being worked on or is that something that can't be fixed?

Cheers.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

It is being worked on and I believe it will be solved. Yours may work but there is a danger it will not. 

[DuncanJInnes]

Hi,

Is there any update on this M.2 mSSD issue?  I bought and fitted a Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSD, but am not seeing anything turn up in the BIOS or when I list devices.

Cheers

[Huffer]

It is just kind of languishing out there. The latest apparent suggestion is that the M.2 port is disabled if the laptop ships with that port empty. HP has not confirmed this. 

[DuncanJInnes]

Hmmm. Does anyone know if it's a hardware or software disable?

[DuncanJInnes]

For what is worth, I already replaced the HDD in the laptop with an SSD and the speed jump is remarkable. Was hoping to use the M.2 SSD for boot & OS, then stick a bunch of VM's on the SATA drive. RAM is upgraded to 16Gb. Replaced the rather ropey Realtek wifi card with an Intel 8260. Running Fedora 23 rather than Win 10.
So all seems good apart from this M.2 SSD issue and my Ethernet port not working above 100Mbit/sec.

[Huffer]

It would have to be the BIOS doing it which is somewhere between software and hardware. It is not like they glued a plug in the port. The hardware is still there. Now, in your case I will say that the Evo 950 you tried is a pci-e mSSD right? It may only accept SATA M.2 mSSD cards. 

[DuncanJInnes]

The drive I'm plugging in is the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVM Express. Perhaps I over extended by getting the NVMe model?