NVME M.2 support

[randomGuy000]

Hello, everyone!

I have a 14-ck0517sa notebook which is serving me very well for my modest needs. But I now want to upgrade the disk to a bigger one (it now has an m2 sata 256GB).

The specs say "Hard drive: 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD". This seems to suggest without doubts that NVME M.2 is supported on this mobo/chipset/whatever, but the fact that I actually have a SATA makes me wonder whether I own a slightly older version of this product for which SATA was the only M2. option. Another possibility is that the previous owner (I bought this laptop second hand a few years ago) changed the drive for whatever reason, and mounted a SATA. M.2

Does anyone know if there is a way to know for sure if NVME M.2 is supported on this laptop? I have read online of some people managing to run NVME M.2 drives ("it's just PCIe, after all!), but with horrible workarounds, like the need of another drive to boot the system, because the NMVE M.2 drive can't be used for booting up.

Thank you!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Chapter 1 of the service manual indicates that NVMe SSD's are supported in the notebooks that come with the Intel core processors such as yours has.

HP 14 Laptop PC Maintenance and Service Guide

In some circumstances the HP specs can be incorrect.

Have you googled the part number of the SSD HP installed that is listed under the disk drives device manager category to confirm what type it is?

[randomGuy000]

Thank you for your reply!

Here is some info from lsblk:

me@me-HP~$ lsblk -io NAME,TYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,FSTYPE,MODEL | grep sda
sda                  disk 238.5G                                          MTFDDAV256TBN-1AR1ZABHA
|-sda1               part   512M /boot/efi                    vfat        
`-sda2               part   238G                              LVM2_member 

So that's definitely a SATA. Just because I am curious, I even took a look inside for myself:

 

No reason to believe lsblk was wrong, but still 😄 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Then I guess the HP specs for your notebook are incorrect.

If you want a couple of recommendations for NVMe SSD's, go with either the Samsung 980 (not 980 Pro) or the Western Digital Blue SN570 in a capacity that meets your storage needs and budget.

All of the posts I have read indicate that the 14-ck0517sa came with a M.2 SATA SSD, not just yours.

All of the replies were like mine...NVMe is supported but no one actually replied that they installed one and it worked.

Search - HP Support Community

[randomGuy000]

Thanks again!

It is a bit disappointing not to know for sure! NVME M.2 drives are so much faster, it's a bit of a pity to settle for a slower SATA "just to be sure" 😞 

I could obviously buy one via amazon and return if it doesn't work, but I am never sure whether you actually get a refund in these cases or not. Once it's out of the packaging, it could be damaged and the seller may not be so keen to give the buyer their money back!

I'll take a look at your suggestions for SSDs 😉 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

I think you'll be OK with a NVMe SSD.

It's possible that if one of the other folks that asked, installed a NVMe SSD and it didn't work, they would have replied and indicated that.

If you decide you do not want to take the chance on a NVMe SSD, I recommend the Western Digital Blue SA510 M.2 SATA SSD which should have the best performance for the price.