SSD or Spinning HD?

[IMThepipe]

I recently ordered a new HP 17" Envy laptop.  I ordered it with a 1 TB 7200 rpm SATA and a 16 GB PCIe NVMe.  When I look at my drives in the defrag utility (yes, I know not to defrag an SSD), all I see is my 1TB drive - but it says it's an SSD.  In the Device Manager under disk drives, the device is listed as one item - Intel Optane+932 GBHDD.

The 1TB drive is my boot (C:) drive.  Does the system consider the HDD and NVMe as one drive?  If so, what steps/precautions should I take when upgrading?  Specifically, I was going to replace the spinning HDD with an SSD of equivalent size.  Can I just image the exissting HDD to the SSD, then swap them out?  Or does the 16 GB PCIe NVMe raise issues?  Note - ignore the flash drive and SD card.  They just happen to be in the laptop when I did the screen grabs.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

[iomare]

Hi,

The Intel Optane is acting as a cache drive for the hard drive. So, yes it could be considered a single drive in a type of RAID.

So if you replace the hard drive with an SSD, you should remove the Optane drive as it is not needed. You can disable before replacing the drive and remove

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05591811

You could replace the Intel Optane with an M2 PCIe NVMe SSD such as the Samsung 970 Evo Plus which will be much faster than any 2.5" SSD.

If you provide the exact model number of the PC or product number we can take a look at how this is done.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00033108

Hope it helps,

David

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[IMThepipe]

Thanks for the fast response.  I was going to install a 3 yo Samsung 850 EVO, because it'as just sitting around.  I know it's not as fast as an NVMe drive, but it's definitely faster than the HDD/Optane combo currently installed.  Plus, I'm not sure I want to spring for a new drive.  It would be nice to have installation info for both a 2.5" SSD and an NVMe drive though.

[iomare]

Let me know the exact model or product number (not serial)

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00033108

[IMThepipe]

Hmmm ... my replies don't seem to be showing up for some reason.  I'll try again.

I'm a little confused on the model number.  In different emails, HP has provided 2 different numbers ...

In one email it is listed as 17t-bw000 CTO.  But in another email, it's listed as product number 3EN04AV.

Clear as mud!

[iomare]

Hi,

OK. yes, they are both for the same product. One is the model number and the other is the product number.

To Install an M2 SSD you can see on page 29 of service manual the steps to install the drive

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06001790

M2 slot

On page 27 of the service manual, you can see how to replace the hard drive with the 2.5" SSD you have.

You will need to reinstall the OS either by using recovery disks, migrating an image (cloning) or performing a clean install

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Hope it helps,

David

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Please click on accept as solution if answered your question

[IMThepipe]

Many thanks!  I recall some mention of software related to the RAID function of the 16GB Optane drive  and HDD.  If an image of the existing HDD is used on a new SSD or M2 drive, will this be problematic?  In other words, should the RAID function/software be turned off before imaging?  I don't plan on using both an SSD and an M2 - just one or the other.