Hard Drive Upgrade

[Shunte74]

I have a HP Envy 15t-as100 notebook with 2 TB 5400 rpm SATA .  The product number is W9C44AV.  When I ordered the laptop, there was an option to upgrade the hard drive to 1 TB 5400 rpm SATA + 128 GB M.2 SSD (or 256 GB M.2 SSD).  I now see that I should have just paid the additional money to upgrade to one of the SSD options.  What should I do? Do I order a M.2 SSD and add it to what I currently have or do I just order a 2.5 inch SSD drive to replace my current hard drive? I guess the option that HP offered when I ordered the laptop has me confused.  Please help...

Thank you in advance.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Shunte74

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

The simplest solution would be to replace the 2TBH HDD with a 1TB SSD -- but to do that easily, you will have to shrink down the OS partition on the HDD until the total of all the partitions fit easily into 1TB.

Then, you can follow these steps:

1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Connect the new drive to the PC using a USB-to-Hard-Drive drive adapter (like the one illustrated below)
3) Follow the instructions in this link: http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Cloning+a+disk
4) Shutdown the PC when done
5) Swap the drives and reboot the PC.

A second, much more difficult process, would be to add an NVMe SSD, migrate the Windows OS stuff to that SSD, boot from that, and continue to use the 2TB HDD as a "storage" drive.

But that is a LOT of work, involving the following:

1) Shrinking down the OS partition on the HDD until the total of all partitions (except the Recovery partition) fit easily onto the new NVMe SSD

2) Inserting the NMVe SSD into your PC

3) Rebooting your PC but changing the options in the UEFI boot setup to force booting from the HDD (I can't tell you how to do this)

4) Using an MR function to "migrate" the OS  and UEFI boot partitions from the HDD to the SDD

5) Rebooting your PC, but changing the options in the UEFI boot setup to force booting from the SSD (once again, I can't tell you how to do this as I can not see the UEFI screens)

6) Once the PC is booting OK from the SSD, removing the boot and OS partitions from the HDD, and converting it to a DATA storage device.

Personally, I would do the second -- but I would need the PC in front of me to do that, as I would need to see the screens (and, I have done this before on my own PCs).  But ... I recommend you do the first, as that is easiest and less prone to problems.

Good Luck