Is the m.2 slot in the 15-cx0056wm compatible with PCIe/NVMe, SATA III, or both SSD's?

[Ajt6464]

The laptop has been ordered, but I'm wanting to know a few upgrade details before I receive it so I can upgrade asap. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KQXHP4M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Amazon link has the item as well as people answering questions, but I'm still in doubt. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079X7LMLY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A25SITGFW0OQJA&psc=1

The SSD I'm looking to buy to upgrade my laptop. 

P.S Don't refer me to service and etc. manual for the HP Pavillion Gaming Laptop series as that is a general manual and has all the different configurations HP sell them in, not if my model is able to have those SSD's in them. 

[Huffer]

P.S.S. there is no manual for your specific model. HP makes hundreds of models and Manuals are at the model series level and in your case it is the 15-cx0000 series. The answer to (almost) any question you might have about your laptop's layout and design is in that manual if you know how to read it. But my best advice is to wait until you recieve the laptop. Why? you ask? Well because see the wm at the end of your model number? Means it is designed and built to be sold by WalMart and in many cases those models are defeatured and lack upgrade slots. If you want more help let us know. I am not linking you to a Manual as it appears you have already seen it. 

[Ajt6464]

Ok, that's alright. But could you help me out with this, please?

So in the manual, it said that HP sells these Pavillion gaming laptops with 128/256gb PCIe and 128gb SATA in the m.2 slot. Do you know if the m.2 slot in the general 15-cx0000 series can handle more than 128gb of SATA? Is it possible for laptops to be compatible with 128gb of SATA, but not 256gb of SATA? I ask this because an HP rep confusedly said this to me, but I think that person didn't know what he was exactly talking about (like me). Also, I assume they use the same board layout for these laptops and hence the same m.2 slot. 

[Huffer]

If it has an M.2 slot on the motherboard that slot can accept either a SATA or NVME type M.2 as large as you can find in the market. The Manual only catalogues the configurations HP sold, it does not define the capability. However, as I said on wm and some other high volume model series like the ones sold at Costco, HP will sometimes order the factory to make the motherboard without the slot, presumably to save a little money. 

M.2 slot circled in red

So best advice, is to get the laptop open the back to find the slot. "How to" starts on p. 36. If the slot is there and you want to add an M.2, get the NVME kind like a Samsung Evo 970 and get one as large in capacity as your budget allows. A 1 or 2 TB would be no problem or anything up to that size. 

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

[Bo_G_Man]

Mine has the slot, Installed a 1gb NVME drive but haven't figured how to clone the HDD so I can boot off of NVME. Just got a USB adapter to remove hdd and try to boot from and then clone drive. Then I can try to boot without hdd in it see if it defaults to NVME drive or not.

[Upgrades87]

@Bo_G_Man - To have the nvme flash drive act as your boot drive you simply need to go into BIOS and change the boot device order. You'll be able to simply arrow up and down to set the order that you want, and when you save and reboot from there, it will look for the boot files on whichever hardware slot you have set to #1. You do not need to have any USB adapters or anything crazy like that. 

You have two options for setting up the nvme drive:

#1 - Just install the nvme drive and use a thumb drive with a windows 10 image (this can be downloaded directly from Microsoft - It will recognize your Windows 10 license from your motherboard so you do not have to enter it) and go through that installation process in order to have a fresh copy of Windows 10. You will need to change your boot order so that USB is moved to the first boot device to do this. You can have your regular hard drive remain installed and can simply pull off any of your files from there that you may want to keep and reinstall any programs you want to keep on the new nvme drive, before wiping clean the original hard drive to use as just a storage drive moving forward.

#2 - Get some free imaging software (if your SSD did not come with any - some do) and create an image of your hard disk drive. Use the software to copy that image over to your new nvme drive. Once completed and tested to make sure it boots properly from the nvme drive, go ahead and format the disk drive so you can use it for storage now.