will laptop boot from an M.2 2230 SSD in WLAN M.2 port? 14-ax020nr, 14-ax0XX

[MichaelOD]

I have an HP Stream 14 laptop (model # 14-ax020nr, product # x7s45UA#ABA, born on date 3/26/2018, BIOS Insyde F.45), running as delivered Win10, which has an internal 32GB SSD.  It's effectively 25GB because HP uses 7GB for their own purposes.  I'm unable to update windows because the harddrive is too small and Windows insists on this upgrade using C: drive, not USB or a network share.

Since Windows cannot be upgraded (and required upgrades out of the box, thus missing security updates, so the system is insecure).  It also doesn't have enough space to install any useful software.

I wish to replace the internal WLAN card with an M.2 2230 PCIe SSD.  Though difficult to find, they do exist.  I would then get a USB wifi card to cover wifi needs.  Can you tell me if the machine will boot from an SSD in this location?

Thank you,

Michael O'

[banhien]

@MichaelOD 

Your question:  will laptop boot from an M.2 2230 SSD in WLAN M.2 port?

My answer: No laptops (all of them) won't boot from WLAN M.2 slot. The M.2 WLAN slot (Socket 1) is designed for wifi card and few others:

Different socket types are part of the M.2 specification that requires support for specific device types within a given socket.

Socket 1 is designed for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth®, NFC and WI Gig

Socket 2 is designed for WWAN, SSD (caching) and GNSS

Socket 3 is designed for SSDs (both SATA and PCIe, up to x4 performance)

More information:

   https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/system-builder/m2_faq

Regards.