HP Spectre X360 1° Gen - SSD upgrade

[Mat101]

Hi, my father owns an HP Spectre x360, 1° GEN  (13-4006nl), with a 256 GB SSD (sata, if i'm not wrong). He absoloutely need to upgrade it because he ran out of memory. I would like to know which SSD standard does it support, to buy a new SSD. Many years ago, i read that this notebook could support faster standard SSD than the one that is factory supplied. The topic where i read this is that: 

Solved: SSD upgrade for spectre x360 - HP Support Community - 4949235

But it is not clear to me which is the best  standard  supported by Spectre x360 1° GEN (even because in the topic they discuss about different gen of Spectre x360), and  if today are still on market SSD compatible with my father's notebook. Today which is the fastest compatible SSD i can buy for that notebook?

Thank you in advance!

[erico]

The only format of SSD that the laptop supports is M.2 SATA with TLC memory.

The NVMe SSD type, which has much faster access times, is not supported.

I will edit this shortly and post which brand and model of M.2 SATA is reputed, under test, to be the fastest.

Samsung 860 EVO m.2 SSD and the Samsung 850 EVO  SATA M.2  The latter one is quite pricey!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @Mat101 

According to chapter 1 of the service manual, the model series only supports M.2 SATA SSD's not NVMe.

HP Spectre x360 Convertible PC (model numbers 13-4000 through 4099 and 13-4100 through 4199) and HP ...

But I see from the discussion you posted that the person installed a Samsung NVMe SSD and it worked.

You would probably have to find one of the older model drives that they installed.

You can also play it safe and install a larger capacity SATA SSD such as the Western Digitial Blue SA510;

WD Blue SA510 500 GB M.2 SATA SSD con velocità di lettura fino a 560 MB/s : Amazon.it: Informatica

[erico]

If you are going to go the route that @Paul_Tikkanen  suggested, consider that once an SSD is used and not DOA, returns are next to impossible.

For that reason,  I suggest that you get a cheap NVMe M.2 SSD to prove that it will work in your laptop. 

[Mat101]

Thank you all for super fast reply!

According to the first post of 2nd page of the linked topic (written by LeeBos) , it seems that GEN 1 (at the time of the topic, if i'm not wrong, only GEN 1 was on the market, so i guess it refers to GEN 1) should support both M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe   SSD. The problem is that M.2 PCIe should not be available on the market, and i think that Spectre x360 is not also compatible with M.2 Nvme SSD. 

Is it wrong what i wrote? The problem is that i didn't update the SSD when i read that topic years ago, and some of the non SATA SSD that seems (to me) to be compatible with Spectre x360 1° GEN, now are out of stock. So now maybe i'm forced to buy M.2  SATA SSD because faster M.2 SSD are NVME and no more PCIe?

LeeBos    wrote:

I could never find specs on the M.2 socket, so I just gave it a try. It works at above SATA 3 specs as you can see so I was very happy. I see that the now available Maintanence and Service guide says: PCIe/SATA M2, see below.

×

Primary storage

Support for single PCIe / SATA M2 solid-state drive configuration as storage (scope M2 2260/2280 DS solid-state drive) in the following configurations:

This was not available at the time I did the drive replacement. So, it looks like it supports either. I don't think Samsung is still producing the XP941 since they came out with the SM951. And the XP941 I bought is now $210 more than I paid. I'm waiting for a 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD to become available.

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[Mat101]

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@Paul_Tikkanen wrote:

Hi, @Mat101 

But I see from the discussion you posted that the person installed a Samsung NVMe SSD and it worked.

You would probably have to find one of the older model drives that they installed.

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NVMe? Not PCIe ?  i'm a bit confused with all this standards and protocols.

But in effect i have to find at least an XP941 AHCI or an SM951 (not NVMe version). And already in 2015, according to the linked topic, it seems they where hard to find... M.2 with PCIe interface and AHCI protocol had small market: they lasted a small amount of time, and where quickly replaced on the market  by M.2 NVMe SSDs.

Thank you, i will give a read to the service manuale you linked.

The easiest thing to do is to buy an M.2 SATA SSD, but as the notebook is still good for my father, i wanted to give a small refresh with a faster SSD with a Windows clean install, and a quick clean of the cpu fan: it could last some more years for basic use.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, that is the gist of it.

When you look deeper into the subject, all of these drives used SATA AHCI controllers.

For example, even the newest one the one guy used is AHCI.

I've never heard of such a thing, but maybe in the older NVMe models they worked differently.

SAMSUNG XP941 M.2 2280 512GB PCI-Express 2.0 x4 MLC SSD - Newegg.com

And the Samsung 950 Pro is ridiculously expensive because they don't make them anymore.

MZ-V5P512BW Samsung 950 512GB PCI Express 3.0 x4 SSD (memory4less.com)

Newer NVMe SSD's use NVMe controllers, not SATA AHCI controllers.

Unless you can find one of those drives used in the discussion a newer model NVMe SSD will probably not work.