Upgrade HDD on HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15

[AhmedMT]

Hi,

I'm planning to buy & upgrade storage of my HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec2041ne (5B7Q0EA), which have both SSD & HDD, my questions are:

1- Are the drivers physically separated?

2- Is the SSD NVME? what PCIe gen. is it?

3- The HDD is SATA, what is the maximum storage I can upgrade it to? would 10TB lag the system?

4- Would "HP 3D DriveGuard" still work on the upgrade drive?

Waiting your kind reply. 

[Huffer]

I think you mean are the drives physically separated and yes they are distinct devices and can be replaced individually. Here is the Service Manual:

Manual 

See pages 30-34. 

The M.2 SSD is NVME and it is PCIe gen 3.0 which is dictated by the processor:

AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800H | AMD

4 TB is the largest 2.5 inch SATA disk you are going to find on the market and you could use one of them. The actual specs of your model do not mention a hard drive or 2.5 INCH ssd. If you have a mechanical spinning hard drive I strongly recommend you upgrade to a 2.5 inch SATA SSD, which will mount and attach using the same hardware. 

3D drive guard is only needed on a mechanical hard drive as it sends a command which parks the read head if the laptop falls. Not needed with an SSD but the app will work with a spinning hard drive as long as the driver is installed on the laptop. 

Any more questions feel free to ask. 

[AhmedMT]

First of all, much thanks for your fast reply,

you can find the laptop specs. of the following official hp website (I believe it have both NVMe SSd & SATA HDD):

https://www.hp.com/emea_middle_east-en/products/laptops/product-details/product-specifications/21010...

https://www.hp.com/emea_middle_east-en/products/laptops/product-details/product-features/2101042882

in regards to the HDD, I could find many of them (on websites like amazon & ebay) which comes in huge capacity like 5tb (sometimes more), but I'm really worried if it will effect the performance.......

Is there a maximum capacity recommended by HP company to this series/model?

[AhmedMT]

& does it come with the needed cables @Huffer .

Thanks again for your appreciated efforts.

[Huffer]

Trust me, I know how to find the specs of an HP specific model and this is the specs for that exact model number.

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec2041ne Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

This one has only an NVME M.2 SSD. It has a space for a 2.5 inch SATA SSD or hard drive. However, if the laptop does not come with the 2.5 drive option installed the mounting and connecting hardware will not be included. If you see 5 TB sizes, you are likely looking up 3.5 inch desktop hard drives or server type 15 mm thick 2.5 inch drives which will not work in a laptop. They are made for blade servers. 7mm is laptop size thickness or maybe 9.5 mm. No thicker. 

2.5 HDD DATA SHEET (seagate.com)

4 TB is the largest capacity 2.5 inch disk (HDD or SSD) you can put in a laptop and those are rare. 2 TB is the largest you can find in regular retail channels, usually.  A larger capacity disk will not slow anything down. Not sure where you got that idea. A 2 TB drive has the same input and output speed as a half TB disk of the same spin speed or not enough difference to really make a difference. 

[AhmedMT]

Many thanks to you, because if it wasn't for you I would have bought a 15mm HDD & got stuck with it :'(

So how can I know if the HDD that comes with ec2041ne is 7mm or 9.5mm? I couldn't find this information online......

And does the following models accept adding HDD (they don't come with HDD drives, but is there a space for HDD):

15-dk2095ne //  15-dk2093ne