Laptop 17-cn1053cl Dead HDD want to upgrade to SDD

[Smoot504]

My mother has Laptop 17-cn1053cl which started hardly running (60 minutes to boot up?) All hardware checks pass, so the HDD has to be nearly dead. I want to upgrade her to a SDD and just replace the HDD totally. Can I just swap the HDD with SDD and boot from a USB image with Win11?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, you can do that.

You have two options:

1. You can replace the 1 TB 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SATA SSD

2. The notebook has a M.2 slot that supports M.2 2280 NVMe SSD's which are up to 5x faster than a SATA SSD.

Below is the link to the service manual:

Maintenance and Service Guide

You can use the HP cloud recovery tool to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall Windows, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook on the new drive.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.  You will need a 32 GB USB flash drive for this:

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Support

You can download the software from the Microsoft Store.

HP Cloud Recovery Tool - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

If you want to use another PC to make the recovery media, since it appears the notebook's drive is about to quit working, you will have to enter the notebook's product number in the tool's search window in order to proceed.

The notebook's product number is 4S324UA#ABA

Since you have to replace the drive you may want to take the opportunity to remove the 4 GB memory chip and install an 8 GB memory chip so you have 16 GB of memory running in dual channel mode, rather than 12 GB running in single channel mode.

[Smoot504]

@paul I replaced the HDD with SSD as we discussed. I created the USB bootdrive from another computer as described as well. When I try to boot the laptop, it does not detect the SSD. The SSD is fine and works when plugged into another computer. Please advise! Thank you!

edit to add: the SSD is Crucial BX500

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Did you make the recovery media with the HP cloud recovery tool?

If so, I am very surprised that Windows does not find the drive.

Does the recovery give you any option to load the Intel storage controller drivers that are needed for Windows to find the drive in your notebook?

If not, you will have to clean install Windows.

Make a bootable Windows 11 USB flash drive with the media creation tool from the link below.

Download Windows 11

Boot from the installation media and when you get to the screen that asks, 'Where do you want to install Windows,' load the Intel storage controller drivers that I zipped up and attached below so Windows can find the drive.

Unzip and copy all of the files in the folder in the attachment to a USB flash drive.

Have the flash drive and your Windows installation media plugged into USB ports.

Boot from the Windows installation flash drive.

When you get to the screen where no drives can be found, click on the Load driver option, browse to the flash drive with the storage controller drivers on it.

If you check the box, it will only include the compatible driver.

If Windows still can't find the drive, uncheck the box to include the compatible driver and try any of the ones listed.

Click Next, and Windows should install.

After Windows has installed, you can either use the cloud recovery media on the drive since Windows should see it, or you can leave the current installation and install the drivers and available software from your notebook's support page:

HP Laptop 17-cn1053cl (4S324UA) Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Support

[Smoot504]

Thanks, I will try this now.

When I put the new SSD in and rebooted from the Cloud Recovery USB it would just pop up with a message saying No HDD and turn off. I didn't get to any windows install options or anything.

Trying this now.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

If you don't even get that far, I recommend that you check the hard drive connections to make sure you installed them correctly.