how to find my laptop 15-ac168tu SATA Hard Drive supports SATA2 or SATA 3?

[harishkumar666]

hi,

how to find if my laptop 15-ac168tu hard drive supports SATA 2 or 3?

when I bought it came with mechanical drive. I want to upgrade to ssd.

but how will I find if it supports SATA 2 or SATA 3 specification?

thanks,

harish p

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Your notebook's drive controller supports SATA 3 drives.

Here is a way to confirm for sure...

I have zipped up and attached a free utility below that will show you the hard drive speed and the sata controller speed.

Run the program.   A summary window will open.  Close out of that window.

On the left side of the program window, click to expand the Drives section.

Click to expand the (S)ATA /ATAPI Drives category.

Click on the notebook's hard drive listed.

On the right side of the program window, the first line will give the drive speed and the drive controller speed.

If your notebook supports SATA III drives, the report will read:  Drive Controller: Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 6Gb/s

[harishkumar666]

Hi,

Thank you so much for helpful inputs. It is supporting SATA 3. Good news for me.

I can happily upgrade to SSD.

I have another question as continuation. 

Right now my Laptop is only having one SATA bay. I downloaded Win 1903 Update using Windows Media Creation Tool, I have it in USB Pendrive, it is as such booting from Pen Drive.

The question is if i have to place new SSD in HDD/SATA bay, will i be able to do fresh Windows Installation on to SSD directly, i do not want to clone existing installation. Let me know your thoughts on this. whether cloning HDD to SSD is fine?

Secondly, what will be my activation key? Win 10 came with that Laptop pre-installed. No body gave me any key. Is the Activation Key embedded in UEFI partition or BIOS. 

Like my question is  will i be able to do fresh windows installation on SSD without activation key  using the downloaded Windows Tool.

thanks,

harish pathangay

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Here is some more good news for you...

You can clean install W10 right onto the new SSD, and as long as you install the right version such as W10 Home or W10 Home Single Language (whatever is installed now), you won't even need to use the product key.

If you want to be absolutely sure what version of W10 to install, I have zipped up and attached below, a free utility that will show you both the product key and the version of W10 that is installed in your notebook.

[harishkumar666]

hi,

Wow this group is amazing. I never expected this much support from HP community.

Great and Great and Lots of Appreciation from me to you both individually and collectively as a community.

I am very happy today that I could finalize my decision to upgrade to SSD and I am going to sleep deep and peaceful today with an extremely happy feeling.

You people just rock!!!!

thanks,

harish pathangay

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Please post back and let us know how your notebook's SSD upgrade went.

Here is the link to the service manual in case you need it.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04653884

[harishkumar666]

Hi,

Just received WD SSD Blue Color.

Planning to Install Win 10 from Scratch. I am worried about device drivers, chipset drivers installation.

Like Intel Graphics Drivers, So many Realtek Module [LAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth] Drivers, Chip Set Drivers, Synaptic Point Mouse driver etc...

Will these be bundled in my Windows OS Installation? I do not have a LAN Internet, so definitely need my Wi-Fi Adapter to connect to Internet directly during or after installation of Windows 10.  I cannot do any post compilation of drivers, since SSD will be inside the HDD Bay.

Is it really grim or Should I clone from existing HDD to SSD?

thanks,

Harish P

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I recommend you reinstall W10 by making bootable installation media from the media creation tool at the link below.

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

You can create a bootable W10 USB installer.  You will need an 8 GB flash drive for this purpose.

W10 may automatically install the wifi driver for you but if not, here it is...

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp96501-97000/sp96885.exe

So...what I recommend is this...connect to the internet and download the HP support assistant by clicking on the orange download button on the upper right side of the page.

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/hpsupportassistant/hpsupport.html

The support assistant should automatically download the drivers you need, but if not, you can get them all on your notebook's support page at the link below.

https://support.hp.com/in-en/drivers/selfservice/HP-15-Notebook-PC-series/8499326/model/8960682

There are multiple drivers listed, so when you see the same driver type, for example graphics, you need to install the Intel graphics driver for Broadwell chipsets.

If you have any issues trying to find the right drivers, let me know, and I'll see what I can do to help.

If you need help, please post the device description name and the hardware ID.

Use this guide for how to find the hardware ID for a device.

https://www.howtogeek.com/193798/how-to-find-drivers-for-unknown-devices-in-the-device-manager/

[harishkumar666]

Hi Paul,

You are simply great and too helpful.

I did complete re-installation of Windows in SSD by fitting it inside the HDD Bay. What a breeze?

WoW!!!! SSD Rocks!!! The Whole installation is done in about less than 10 minutes. First I did not believe that it really installed, may be it is skipping some files or errors. But SSD are unimaginably fast coming from a mechanical hard drive time span.

I also downloaded the drivers you have provided through the HP website link. But was not sure which things to install.

So went into Device Manager - Installed Intel HD Graphics Driver, Real Tek HD Audio Driver.

I don't know what else to install from driver perspective.

I did find one thing odd. Why my BIOS version got downgraded? this I could not understand.

BIOS Version: Insyde F.28 21-11-2018

Definitely this was F.29 a year before itself I remember flashing my bios by a support representative.

How can this get reverted by re-installation of OS?

The new F.29 sp96831.exe is not able to flash the bios, don't know why. How do I fix this?

Thanks,

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't know why the BIOS would downgrade itself. 

I've never heard of that happening before.

Also, I wouldn't be able to help you with why the F.29 BIOS file won't let you update the BIOS.

I rarely if ever, update the BIOS' in my notebooks. 

I've read too many stories of BIOS updates gone bad.

If you do not see any devices listed under an Other Devices category with a little ! mark next to them, then you have installed all of the required drivers.