Is my laptop compatible with SSD NVME M2?

[francofgp]

I want to upgrade my laptop with an SSD, and i wonder if the SSD Wester Digital Black 256GB NVME is compatible with it?

its interface is PCIe Gen3 8 Gb/s , and its format M.2  2280

This is the link of the SSD:

https://www.wdc.com/es-es/products/internal-ssd/wd-black-pcie-ssd.html

[erico]

Offhand I would say yes, but there is a difficulty in determining precisely which kind of memory Western Digital is using for their Black NVMe SSD.

They are calling their product's memory Western Digital 3D NAND, but proprietary names  muddy the water a bit.

It does make it difficult to determine whether it is TLC  memory.  TLC memory is what your notebook needs.

The Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD products are known compatible with your notebook.

[francofgp]

So, my laptop needs and SSD m2 with TLC right?

I was searching and i found the kingston A1000

link: https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/consumer/SA1000M8

And, the webpage says that it is TLC, so it will work right?

PD: I know that the samsung ssd will work, but here in argentina it is overpriced, and because of that i was looking for alternatives, like the WD Black, but know i found the KINGSTON A1000

[erico]

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@francofgp wrote:

So, my laptop needs and SSD m2 with TLC right?

I was searching and i found the kingston A1000

link: https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/consumer/SA1000M8

And, the webpage says that it is TLC, so it will work right?

PD: I know that the samsung ssd will work, but here in argentina it is overpriced, and because of that i was looking for alternatives, like the WD Black, but know i found the KINGSTON A1000

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Yes. The Kingston A1000 M.2 SSD does fit the specification requirements of your notebook.

[David_J_W]

I don't see why TLC is a requirement. So long as a system supports M.2 NVMe drives then any M.2 NVMe drive that physically fits should work. Almost all M.2 SSDs and system board M.2 slots are 2280 size.

With the recent launch of QLC, there are now four types of construction used in SSDs: SLC (single layer cell - 1 layer), MLC (multi layer cell - often 2 layers in practice, though it could be any number of layers other than one), TLC (triple layer cell - 3 layers) and QLC (quad layer cell - 4 layers). For a given SSD capacity, more layers means the memory takes up less physical space and the device is typically cheaper to produce. However, more layers typically means a decrease in the life of each block and a greater probability of a given block failing (which does not necessarily mean a hard error will occur; the controller in an SSD manages the memory in a way that attempts to take failing blocks out of use before they hard fail).

For some server workloads only SLC will do. For a typical tablet or laptop, TLC is fine - data is not read or written frequently enough to the SSD for the limits of the more fragile TLC flash memory to be breached during the lifetime of a typical laptop.

I cannot think there will be an issue using QLC SSDs in a laptop range that used TLC SSDs from the factory. Of course you only get a guarantee of compatibility if you buy an SSD from HP Parts using a part number listed for your device, but the chances are that any other SSD meeting the standards will work.

HP's prices for factory fitted SSDs are really rather high. I specified a ZBook recently that had two M.2 SSD slots. HP wanted nearly £800 for a 2TB NVMe SSD fitted in the secondary slot, which according to the QuickSpec is a Toshiba XG5P. You can buy a 2TB Samsung EVO 970 from amazon.co.uk for £600, which is typically some way faster than the 1TB XG5 and may well be faster than the improved XG5P model (the paper specifications say the Samsung is faster, but headline figures are best case scenario and do not necessarily indicate the real world performance on a mixed workload).

I do understand that HP will test components extensively for compatibility, will enter into long term arrangements for spares availability and support, also they will provide on site warranty support for a failed HP supplied SSD if the laptop in which it was sold has an on site warranty. Even so, paying a third more for a slower drive than I can buy retail grates when all HP are doing is inserting the drive into the slot and fixing it with a screw. The retail Samsung SSD has a 5 year warranty, which is the longest warranty HP will provide on the ZBook (and that is if you upgrade the warranty; the standard UK warranty is 3 years). The Samsung SSD is a Self Encrypting Drive unlike the HP supplied SSD - though booting from a NVMe drive in SED mode often proves very difficult if not impossible to achieve at present judging by the many stories of failure reported online. The only advantage I can think of with the HP supplied SSD is that if you upgrade the HP warranty to one that allows you to retain failed drives (for confidentiality reasons), you can get a replacement for a failed drive and keep the failed drive. With a retail SSD, you will only get a replacement for a failed drive if you return the failed drive - though this is perhaps less of an issue if the entire drive was encrypted.

I chose to specify the ZBook with the secondary slot empty as the initial workload only requires a single SSD. The ZBook can always have a secondary SSD installed later when prices will likely have dropped and available capacities might have risen.

[erico]

@David_J_W

The answer is quite simple and is derived from the policy of the forum. The particular policy I am referring to is called simply  "do no harm".

Recommending a device based on what you"think" rather than using the appropriate HP reference manuals is your choice, not mine. I don't want a member to spend money based on what "I think".

My own preference is using the reference manuals. 

Suggesting other than what is known to work is historically known to not be a good practice in the forum.

[David_J_W]

In that case, the only answer that can be given is "buy a HP branded drive with a part number currently listed in PartSurfer for the specific system in question from HP Parts or an authorised HP part reseller". These are the only parts qualified for a device and guaranteed to have no compatibility issues. Anything else has some level of compatibility risk. The drives supplied to HP may well be OEM specials not sold retail and might have firmware specific to HP, so even if you can find exactly the model of drive HP use in the retail channel or a second hand drive pulled from a system of another brand, it may well not be running the same firmware as a drive supplied by HP.

NVMe is a standard. So long as a laptop has hardware support for NVMe (PCIe lanes on the M.2 slot and appropriate keying of the M.2 connector) and BIOS support for booting from NVMe, any NVMe drive that physically fits should work. If HP offers a particular model with NVMe drives, all these things are in place.

I have answered a different query here in the forums about NVMe compatibility by recommending the user sticks to SATA SSDs because HP do not list any NVMe drives in the Service and Maintenance Guide. I am sure you have taken the same approach and given that same answer many more times than I have. It is best to be conservative when there is genuine technical reason for caution. NVMe support will not necessarily be tested on devices where HP do not supply NVMe drives even if a user happens to install an NVMe drive and it works initially. A future critical BIOS update could break NVMe support on a device with no factory supported NVMe drives. There might be a reliability issue with the M.2 PCIe support on a particular system board that led HP to a decision not to sell NVMe drives with that system.

Really, the only difference between SSDs is between 'enterprise level' models suitable for intensive server workloads and everything else. Servers need SLC SSDs, though for some workloads special server MLC SSDs described as 'eMLC' will do. The manufacturers of client grade SSDs are not always clear about the underlying memory technology because that information is not really needed as part of a buying decision, though you might get that information from a specialist reviewer.

I'm struggling to see why newer internal architecture of the SSD increases compatibility risk, as the controller on the drive sits between the flash memory and the host system. I see no reason why any current or future client grade NVMe SSD designed to fit the M.2 slot in the original poster's system will not work in that system except in the unlikely event that there is a future revision to the NVMe standard that breaks backward compatibility.

My feeling is that HP states the drives they supply are TLC to give some idea of the generation of the drive and its likely performance. They describe some of their drives as having Self Encrypting Drive (SED) features. Unless local policy requires the use of SEDs, there is likely no technical reason preventing you from fitting a drive that doesn't have SED capability; I have yet to hear about a laptop BIOS that mandates SED or whitelists only certain SSD models, though both of these restrictions are theoretically possible.

Maybe we will have to agree to differ on the importance of buying a TLC NVMe SSD as opposed to any NVMe SSD described as suitable for use in a laptop or client computer. Fortunately, in the current marketplace, it is unlikely to make any difference, as any current model NVMe client grade SSD bought today is almost certainly TLC. This will begin to change over the next few months as the industry starts to transition to QLC.