SSD upgrade Folio 9470m ?

[daNY_b]

Hello i have a Elitebook 9470m ultrabook with a 500 gb mechanical hard drive and a 32 gb cache mSATA drive.

My ultrabook is still in waranty so my question is can i take it to an HP service to replace the mechanical HDD with an SSD or mSATA SSD ? if yes do i have to pay the full price of the new drive or can i get a discount from the original drive? 

Or if i replace the HDD myself do i lose the warranty?

any advice would be appreciated !

[Huffer]

Hard drives are user accessible meaning it does not void the warranty if you swap them out for something else. The HP Service Center is not really set up for upgrades; they are there to fix things that have broken. They do not have parts for upgrade....just to replace like kind broken parts and when they do sell you a part it is very expensive.

HP has not posted a Service Manual for the Ultrabook version of the 9470 Elitebook. This is the Manual for the regular 9470 Elitebook:

Service Manual

Look on Page 43. The hard drive compartment holds both a 2.5 mm 7 mm thick mechanical or SSD drive and also an mSATA drive. Does your Ultrabook look the same on the bottom?

What precisely do you wish to accomplish? I would advise against removing the 32 gig accelerator cache drive unless you want to install a 2.5 inch SSD. You do not want to have a 2.5 inch SSD and an mSATA mSSD drive in there at the same time. So if you can give us a little more idea what you are trying to do we can perhaps give you better advice. This has gotten somewhat complicated and it is not easy to configure the drives in these latest generation laptops particularly with Windows 8. You can easily get yourself into a no-boot situation.

[daNY_b]

yes it does look like that ! im still using W7 and im actually thinking of swapping the HDD and the 32 gb mSATA and replacing them with just one mSATA SSD as my only drive. What do you think? is this a good idea can it be done?

[Huffer]

Yes HP sold them like that with a 256 gig mSSD as the only drive. mSATAs are not much more money than a regular 2.5 inch SSD and are probably a little faster. I would have a hard time living with only 256 gig of storage since I always dual boot Windows and Linux. Personally I would opt for a 480 or bigger 2.5 inch SSD. They are down around $300 now.

[daNY_b]

I has thinking more about a 128 Gb model like the Air and to be honest the only reason im considering changing my HDD with a mSATA is because of battery life, i get about 4.5 h of battery life( 35% screen wifi on browsing youtube) and for an ultrabook that is very short in terms of battery life....im hopping that with this upgrade i'll get +1h of battery.What do you think is this realistic? is my current battery life normal?

[Huffer]

Yes advertising claims are wildly optimistic. The only laptops that do better than 4.5 hours are the small low voltage models. 4.5 hours is excellent and you might add 30-60 minutes to that with an SSD. I think an mSATA drive probably draws a bit less power than a SATA but not sure why I think that. 

[daNY_b]

Thanks for you answer this is actually a ULV model...ive been doing some reading and couldn't find out if there are any restrictions regarding the type(manufacturer) of the mSATA SSD that i can use in the Folio. Are you aware of any? Im asking because i wouldn't want to buy the wrong thing...also does the mSATA slot support SATA 3 speeds or only SATA 2 speeds on the Folio ?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

your chipset will do SATA-III either through the mini-pcie slot or through a SATA connection. 

[daNY_b]

Ok and one more question and then i think i can close this topic: Can i remove the 32gb mSATA and leave the HDD with the OS on it and still work.? i want to sell the mSATA to raise the money i need for the other one and till then i still want to be able to use my system.