Laptop NVMe and SATA reliability?

[MrDaedalean]

Okay I have pretty much a last question. This is a pretty basic laptop. With Intel Pentium Silver N5000.

I noticed! That the motherboard in fact has an M.2 Sata slot. And from the looks of it. It's an M key configuration(A key). My question is if I can upgrade it with a regular HP NVMe 3.0 SSD. I have that in stock nearby. Here is the processor information.

Expansion Options
PCI Express Revision            _  2.0

PCI Express Configurations ‡            _  1x4 + 1x2 or 4x1 or 2x1+1x2 + 1x2

Max # of PCI Express Lanes            _  6

(It maybe because it supported mSATA at some point? I may be wrong. I am speculating.)

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-ex900-m.2-500gb-solid-state-drive/23815833/manuals 

[partof]

Your laptop model indeed has a M.2 slot, but according to specifications , it should be already taken by 128GB NVMe SATA SSD.

I think it can be safely upgraded, but you still will be restricted by low bandwidth of PCIe Revision 2.0 and probably with 1x2 maximum NVMe SSD configuration.

[erico]

@partof 

I did find that HP has published what appears to be conflicting information on this notebook.  There appear to be two specifications web documents.

One shows NVMe M.2 as being compatible and the other does not show that. That is the one you provided.  It does not state anything about NVMe M.2 SSD on it  

There is a specifications page  for this specific model that shows the notebook as being delivered with an NVMe M.2 SSD

https://support.hp.com/ie-en/document/c06412801

[partof]

You are right, about M.2 SATA SSD.

However, this M.2 slot might be compatible and support both SATA and NVMe SSDs, because other laptop models from the same 15-dw0083 series, are made with NVMe SSDs pre-installed.

Now the real question are they need to be backed up by processor (i.e. Core i5) to work?

[MrDaedalean]

Very amusing. But, the product specifications for the United States region are like this;

And on this page.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06620364

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06620364 

[MrDaedalean]

Well that's why I posted the expansion options in the question. That information is already included.

Here are the posted options for the;

Intel® Core™ i5-8265U Processor

Expansion Options
PCI Express Revision            _  3.0

PCI Express Configurations ‡            _  1x4, 2x2, 1x2+2x1 and 4x1

Max # of PCI Express Lanes            _  16

It already looks different.

I suspect that I may have a very difficult time finding compatible SSD NVMe products. But, some may work? Still unanswered. The posts I made previously just recommend M.2 Sata SSD.

[MrDaedalean]

I can't exactly confirm the quoted text on this topic I just know that related to the original question. The hard drive is working very well with the other device;

Intel® Core™ i7-6770HQ Processor

Expansion Options
PCI Express Revision            _  3.0

PCI Express Configurations ‡            _  Up to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4

Max # of PCI Express Lanes            _  16

[partof]

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@MrDaedalean wrote:

I suspect that I may have a very difficult time finding compatible SSD NVMe products. But, some may work? Still unanswered. The posts I made previously just recommend M.2 Sata SSD.

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Nobody will tell you for sure, unless they have tryed it on the same laptop model.

The problem might be not with the M.2 slot itself, but with CPU (Core i3, i5, i7) that must support NVMe configuration.

In theory it could work and there should be no harm in trying, so if you can get any Gen3x2 M.2 NVMe drive you can install it and see if it works.

If it won't work (i.e. won't be detected by BIOS, etc), it will mean NVMe drives are not supported by laptops with non-Core CPUs and you should use M.2 SATA drives only.

[MrDaedalean]

Well, the HP EX900 is very much that out of the box. It doesn't come as a volume. Had to create partitions and gpt table. Another person on some forum still arguing about the term table. I already noticed that it will not recognize that disk with Server 2008, 2012 and 2016.

Even with diskpart. That's shift-f10 by the way. During installation. Still asking for drivers. And I assume that can only be fixed with a custom Windows PE with drivers. A very low blow, that one is.