HP Pavilion HP 17-ca1000 Laptop SSD upgrade help

[darkon1970]

I have an HP 17-ca1000 Laptop with a 1TB HDD and a 128GB SSD.  I would like to upgrade the SSD to largest size that is possible. My laptop has the 128GB  SATA-3 M.2 w/ B & M key.  The manual only has options for 128 & 256 GB and 256GB  PCIe, NVMe. Just not sure if I can put in a NVMe type of SSD. or have to stay with the M.2 SATA 3 type.  Also can I upgrade to a higher gig (either 500GB or 1TB ) SSD?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

If your notebook has a Ryzen processor, it will support a NVMe SSD.

If not, then only a SATA SSD would be supported.

The drive capacities listed in the manual are just what HP offered in the model series, so you should be able to install a 500 GB or 1 TB M.2 SSD.

[darkon1970]

My laptop has this processor - AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx . 

So I should be able to upgrade to a higher gigabyte NVMe SSD ?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is correct.

If you haven't got one in mind, I recommend either the Samsung 980 (not 980 Pro), or the Western Digital Blue SN 570.

[darkon1970]

Awesome.  Thank you for the help.  Very much appreciated

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Glad to have been of assistance.

[darkon1970]

Getting the WD SN570.    What cloning software should I use? Does it clone just Windows or does it clone everything on hte drive including my programs and settings?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You are going to need a USB 3.0 to NVMe adapter to connect the NVMe SSD to so you can clone to it.

Then you can use a free program such as Macrium Reflect to clone the existing 128 GB drive's contents to the NVMe SSD.

The cloning process will clone everything, Windows, programs, files settings.

The thing is, I don't know what is going to happen when you clone a 128 GB drive to a larger one.

Normally you are going to get a huge amount of unallocated space, and no way to easily merge the partition with Windows on it to the unallocated space because it will not be adjacent to it.

You may need to pay for software that can do that for you.

That is why I never clone drives unless it is same size to same size and prefer to just reinstall the operating system and my files and programs.

I don't have much to reinstall so that has never been a problem for me.

You can use the HP cloud recovery tool and a 32 GB USB flash drive to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with your notebook on the new SSD.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10, 7) | HP® Customer Support