Upgrading to NVMe SSD

[Cathy97]

I understand by looking at the manual my laptop would only take Sata DDS and not an NVMe SSD.  Though, when I look at what Speccy shows, it says there is a PCI-e x4 slot.  I don't totally believe the manual, due to it trying to cover multiple laptops and in some areas being vague and confusing.   The manual also says the max RAM is 16GB and I have successfully installed 32GB. (The HP scan I did on my laptop showed the max as 32GB)  

The requirments I have read for Samsung's SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2 say an interface of PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.2.  According to my Speccy scan I do have a PICe x4 slot, though, I am not sure if it is a generation 3.0.

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[Huffer]

That is why this is so confusing. Even an M.2 that can only do SATA is still technically a PCIe type interface and will come up as such on apps like Speccy. 

[Petro_]

No. I am done here. My wining is not going to change anything, obviously...

I am ending this with a link: https://www.win-raid.com/t871f50-Guide-How-to-get-full-NVMe-support-for-all-Systems-with-an-AMI-UEFI...

My claim is that NVMe is possible IF HP bothered to upgrade our BIOS but will they? Apparantly not. Next laptop is an ASUS or Lenovo or whatever name as long as they update to date...

Over and out.

[Cathy97]

I am definitely in over my head, but what I am understanding that you and Huffer are both saying my laptop's M.2 slot will not support an NVMe SSD, but you both disagree on why. You are saying that my BIOS won't support it, but if HP would provide a BIOS update it would. Huffer is saying that is a physical characteristic of the M.2 slot and not the BIOS?   I know you said you were done, I am just trying to learn what I can from the conversation. 

[Petro_]

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@Cathy97 wrote:

I am definitely in over my head, but what I am understanding that you and Huffer are both saying my laptop's M.2 slot will not support an NVMe SSD, but you both disagree on why. You are saying that my BIOS won't support it, but if HP would provide a BIOS update it would. Huffer is saying that is a physical characteristic of the M.2 slot and not the BIOS?   I know you said you were done, I am just trying to learn what I can from the conversation. 

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Hello Cathy.

There's nothing personal with Mr. Huffer, it's just that all the HP experts here is linking to a manual.pdf with a more or less yes or no answer... I am sure they help the most novice users but when it comes to more advanced ones -like you who know your hardware and how to read it- this expertise falling short. HP has not put any effort to educate for advanced users, in my mind the top of HP looks down to their laptop customers and see a lot of novice morons. I ended up here cos on their Swedish web page there is NO number to ring them, only mail. When I finally got their number one week later by complaining to the US site they wouldn't answer. On one of the numbers a secretary actually answered and she couldn't answer when I said I had advanced BIOS questions and wondered more how I got her number... I felt like a stalker there for a second! 8D

HP has no customer service other than this site and it is so poor. No offense to the lady's and gentlemen here who's actually doing an effort but HP has not drilled them properly for advanced matters and that is not their fault.

Sorry for the long bla-bla, I just need to explain why I am so frustrated, it didn't start here but days before.

Now to our "problem".

Cathy, I have a 7th gen intel cpu and chipset, a slot M socket on our M.2, and an 4 lane PCIe.

All this added together spells NVMe. NVMe however needs some tweaking, it (probably) works on our hardware but cant boot, you need to tell older BIOS's that you running NVMe. Even on new motherboards they recommend to change from "auto" in BIOS to "NVMe" for a problem free experience.

That's it, nothing strange here. 

So, why might one ask. why do we have this “modern” hardware and why is it not in use?

The specs on our laptops were intended for the specs we purchased them for but the same motherboards is being used in more advanced systems. Mine as an example, has an empty space for dedicated graphics and memory and so on... 

This is what all the manufacturers do and how they save costs, they make one motherboard with all included and then they just skip soldering on parts that are not needed on the lower end laptops.

In the case of the storage how ever they didn't change the slot to a B, nor cutted it down to PCIe2, it's intact and identical to it's more expensive NVMe-cusins, as you pointed out and I also have seen with HWinfo. 

A BIOS upgrade CAN fix this, I even linked above here how one can do it if one dares...  

The sad part is how Hp doesn't care and just throw 3-4 people in to this forum and use them to more or less silence every customer down individually. I wish I could face the engineers instead or even better the decisionmakers but why would they care...

If HP could be bothered, my email is petro.larsson@gmail.com, you are welcome to mail me with the technical reasons why NVMe cant be implanted.

Closing Cathy, in a few metaphoric worlds:

We have the plot, we have the house, we just need the building rights.

No offense and nothing personal to anybody here. 😎

Petro Larsson

[Petro_]

How hard can this be to our sleepy HP engineers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_qRvvCWpWA

Sorry for the bad music in the clip! 8D

"It is no problem to get a M.2 connected NVMe SSD working with any Intel Chipset system from 6-Series up without modifying the mainboard BIOSfile, if the NVMe SSD will be used for the storage of data (as drive D:, E:.), but the usage of such SSD as bootable system drive C: (incl. the boot sector) usually requires a special mainboard BIOS EFI module, which has to be loaded while booting."

[Huffer]

I am really sorry this is so confusing and I guess I can just say I have been on this Forum or its predecessor since 2002. I am not an electronics engineer but I have a lot of experience with actual hands on laptop repair and have assisted thousands to find the Solution to their issues. We have a few outspoken people here who are disgruntled with their HP Product and believe that some magic bullet will turn it into what they want rather than what they bought and they have just enough knowledge and resources to put up a smokescreen of apparent support for their position. Kind of like a lot of the internet these days. 

The video clips posted above address a very different issue: a desktop motherboard that will recognize but not boot from an NVME M.2. HP laptops that support only SATA M.2 will not recognize the NVME M.2 for any purpose; as storage or as a boot disk.  

Nobody is silencing anyone. And I do not work for or take any direction from HP. In your case, an NVME M.2 will not be supported. Even if there were a BIOS flash that could fix it, such is not available so if wishes were horses beggars would ride. 

Sorry again and good luck. 

[tunklebug]

I have just tried to upgrade the old m.2 Sata drive in my  4 yr old Spectre 360 (gen 1) with new NVME drive and the module gets recognized and will load files from setup, but will not boot .. So now what?