Installing 3rd storage device in HP OMEN 17 laptop

[Relentless94]

I currently have a HP Omen 17 cb1008na laptop with a stock storage configuration including a 512gb m.2 NVME SSD boot drive and 1tb 2.5" HDD, and am looking to upgrade and install a second NVME drive into the spare unpopulated second m.2 slot on the motherboard.

I am unable to determine from the upgrade and service manuals if it is possible to run with this configuration of 3 storage options installed together of 2x m.2 NVME SSD drives and the 2.5" HDD as there are only dual storage configurations provided in the user manual. 

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/product/omen-17-cb1000-laptop-pc-series/32827283/model/34899404/manuals

I would be looking at installing a 1tb Western digital SN750 2280 as the new m.2 NVME drive.

Any Advice on wether this configuration is possible would be appreciated

[Huffer]

Yes its possible to do all 3. I will say there is not a lot of reason to have an NVME purely as a storage disk but its not that much more expensive than a SATA. I have a Zbook 15 G3 that also has 3 storage options: 2 x M.2 and 1 x  2.5. I have a 2 TB mechanical drive in the 2.5 bay for pure long-term storage, a 1 TB SATA M.2 SSD for quick access storage and then a 512 NVME M.2 as the system bootdisk. 

[Relentless94]

Awesome, thank you for your reply. Would you know if my specific laptop is compatible with SATA M.2 drives as I only saw NVME m.2 tlc drives listed in the user/service manual? And would I need to run the 2 ssd drives in RAID configuration or are they both able to operate separately with the 3 drive configuration?

Thanks again

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Mine is compatible with either SATA or NVME M.2 but the chipset cannot RAID 2 NVME M.2 disks. Yours might (I will check specs) but you generally want 2 identical disks to do a RAID array. NVME RAID would be overkill I think, but awesome. RAID is not required, but optional.

Manual says this:

Support for M.2 PCIe/SATA solid-state drive

Manual confirms you can RAID a pair of NVME but says nothing about RAID'ing SATA. I would guess you can but it has to be 2 SATA or 2 NVME to RAID. 

Post back with any more questions and please accept as solution if this is the info you needed. 

[Relentless94]

ok great, thanks. As long as it is possible to run with all 3 storage drives together that was my main issue to understand from the manuals.

thanks for all you assistance again.