Which SSD will fit?

[Richtqy85]

Hi. Without taking the laptop apart, how do I know what SSD drive will fit my laptop? Current harddrive is the stock 2.5” SATA 1GB but if I’m going to invest I’d want the fastest access speed, not necessarily storage space. Ideally I’d like to keep the current one in as a secondary drive.

Thanks!

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Your notebook's M.2 slot supports both SATA and NVMe SSD's.   

NVMe SSD's have faster read/write speeds than SATA ones do.

See chapter 1 of the service manual at the link below for the supported drive types.

HP 15 Laptop PC Maintenance and Service Guide

[Richtqy85]

Thanks for that, I’ve ordered a NVMe SSD card.

When it comes to fitting it, I want to swap the stock 2.5” HDD with a 2TB (WD Elements portable which I will take the drive from), so I end up with the SSD for Windows / System and the 2TB for applications. 

I’ll need to move the recovery partition data (ideally clone the HDD as well although it’s not the end of the world if have to format and reinstall). Is there a “simple” method for this? 

I’m assuming the steps are;

1. Physically install SSD

2. Copy partitions exactly as they are on the current drive (currently has 260MB EFI partition showing as 100% Free, 564MB Recovery Partition showing 100% free, 930.68MB NTFS Parition (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition) and 9MB Unallocated space.

3. Move all data over to the SSD (disk clone??)

Does this mean the EFI and recovery partitions are actually empty or just windows not showing anything on them?

Thanks!!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, you should be able to to clone the 2.5" drive to the SSD.

The free Macrium reflect software might be a good choice for that.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Then remove the 2.5" drive that came with the notebook, and install the 2 TB 2.5" drive.

The notebook will always want to boot from the 2.5" drive if there is an operating system installed on it, so that is why I recommend you remove the 2.5" drive and make sure the notebook boots from the SSD.

Unfortunately, I don't know how the partitions are set up or what they contain.

[Richtqy85]

That’s extremely helpful, thank you!!

This time tomorrow I will be doing the install so I may be back on here begging for help!!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

[Richtqy85]

If I were to do a fresh install of Windows 10, through a USB for example, how do I save the licence key on the current HDD? 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The W10 product key/license is in the notebook's BIOS chip on the motherboard.

You don't need it or even need to know what it is in order to install W10.

If you want to install W10 and not clone the disk, try this first...

Get a 32 GB USB flash drive and use the HP cloud recovery tool now to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with your notebook on the SSD.

Here is an info link for how to use that utility...

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10, 7) | HP® Customer Support

Then disconnect the 2.5" drive, install your M.2 SSD and use the bootable USB drive created by the tool to install W10.

Don't put in the 2 TB drive or the tool will probably install W10 on that instead.

Or you can use the media creation tool to create a plain W10 installation flash drive, and clean install W10 on the SSD.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

If you want to see the W10 product key and the version of W10 the key is good for, you can install the free Showkey plus utility from the Microsoft Store. 

It will also allow you to save the report as a text file and you can print it out if you want.

Get ShowKeyPlus - Microsoft Store

[Richtqy85]

Ok, so the questions start!

Reading the user manual, the only M2 slot is taken up by the 16GB optane card. Apparently I cannot use both an SSD and the optane memory.

Am I going to lose performance by removing this? 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

What you are going to need to do will be to remove the Intel Optane memory and put the SSD in its place.

You will not lose performance over what you have now.  The optane memory is used to accelerate the mechanical hard drive.

There is a special procedure you need to follow to remove the Optane memory.

How To - Enable / Disable Your Optane Memory H10 Using the Intel Optane Management App - YouTube

If there is a setting in the BIOS to disable the Intel Optane memory, change the setting to disabled.

But you first disable the Optane memory in the Intel RST software.

There is a HP link for this also, but naturally, just when you really need it, their entire support site is down...

Service Unavailable (hp.com)