Having trouble with upgrading SSD in Pavilion 17t-ab200 CTO

[Psychee]

My notebook has 2 disks.  The boot disk is a 128Gb SSD (SanDisk SD8SNAT), which is an M.2.2280 SATA.  It has less than 1G free space, in spite of moving absolutely everything I can off of it to my second disk, which is a 1Tb HDD (my D:drive). 

I came here initially looking for info re: compatible replacements.  I was told that the system could handle an NVMe drive, so I bought a 1Tb SanDisk Extreme M.2 NVMe SSD. 

---Western Digital asks that users should use their version of Acronis to clone the current disk to the new one.  They strongly recommend that one physically install the new card in the computer and put the older (current) card in an external enclosure, then boot up from their Linux-based media (on USB) and do the cloning that way.

--Acronis could not see the new SSD.  Like it did not exist.  In the thought that I might not have seated it properly, I tried that again, it was still invisible.  I switched the locations of the cards (the old one back where it started, the new one in the enclosure, in order to determine if the card itself was bad.  The new card was visible when it was in the enclosure. 

--After hours of doing one thing after another, I gave up, thinking that maybe it just has a too-high capacity for the system.

--So then I bought a smaller one -- 512 Gb -- which apparently was the largest size that HP had ever put in that slot.

--That one, thoough, ALSO failed to become visible.

So I am now wondering if the fact that the other drive is still in the computer is causing this trouble, and if I have to disconnect it first.  OR, is there some kind of control switch on the processor that has to be set when one changes from using SATA to NVMe? 

The system board is 8219 83.45.  System BIOS is F.35.  It is up to date, according to the "HP assistant".

Would greatly appreciate any ideas.  I'm panicking at this point with the remaining space so small on the current SSD.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

See this discussion I just replied to:

Re: HP Pavilion 17-ab086ng (ENERGY STAR) support NVME - HP Support Community - 9025327

[Psychee · Accepted solution]

Hello again, Paul.  I read through those comments.   You were the person who had initially indicated to me that the NVMe SSD would work with my processor, according to what you read in the manual.  I did not see any comments in the thread you are now referring me to that could have helped with my predicament.  My BIOS is way higher than F09, and it is an AB200 generation.

Also, I do see one post in this forum where someone with a device of the same generation as mine said that the NVMe replacement “worked out just fine”.

That all indicates that it should have worked.

But it did not.  The size of the NVMe did not make a difference.  Changing from Acronis to Macrium did not work (although Macrium, for the record, worked 1000% faster and better.)

What DID work was buying a WD Blue SA510 500Gb SATA SSD.  It installed easily without a single hitch using Macrium.

And from that, I conclude that my Notepad is incompatible with NVMe in its current configuration with a SATA HDD along side it.

[For later readers with the same problem, here's the summary--

My Notepad is a Pavilion 17t-ab200 CTO.  Its system board is 8219 83.45.

System BIOS is F.35. Up to date, according to the "HP assistant".  No NVMe worked.  Bought a WD Blue SA510 500Gb SATA SSD and it did work.   I didn't risk it, but it is possible that a larger SATA SSD might have worked as well]

Paul, thank you anyway for attempting to help!