X7847 SSD Upgrade Question

[PocketDog]

I have the Erazer X7847 MD60537 MSN 30022557 that has an M.2 SATA Samsung 128GB SSD and a 1TB Toshiba 2.5 HDD.

I was hoping to replace the M.2 SATA SSD with a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD which would be much faster - does anyone know if this is possible (I assume I will have to find a PCIe slot in there somewhere unless the SATA SSD is connected to a port that supports both, I am unsure if this laptop has the spare slots).

And if it is possible, is there an easy way to transfer the boot SSD to the new NVMe SSD?

Any help would be great!  

[sweetpoison]

Hi @PocketDog , welcome to the forum

First off, make sure the M2 replacement is same protocol with existing one (SATA mode or NVMe) because there are not compatible and "if it fits will work" does not apply to M2 slot.

Second thing, about SSD clone, it's possible and quite easy yet it imply following a few steps.

The program that helps a lot for this is AOMEI Data Backuper   (well, there are a lot of them but this one I like it for friendly interface and possibilities/options when it comes about SDD with different sizes).

If you are interested I can draw few steps which you need to follow in order to clone the OS disk

Cheers.

[PocketDog]

@sweetpoison thank you for the reply.  And thank you for the  AOMEI Data Backuper recommendation  🙂 

Yes it would definitely be easier to replace SATA for SATA, but I was hoping that there would be a spare PCIe slot I could use for an NVMe PCIe SSD as they are so much faster.  Would anyone know if this model has a spare slot that could be used for this and also used as a boot drive?

[sweetpoison]

From what I know, it's only 1xM2 slot (I hope to be wrong).

Replacing sata with sata is not easy, it's the only possible option. Same goes for NVMe: cannot be replaced with SATA.  And SATA cannot be replaced with NVMe.

Cheers

[PocketDog]

Ah ok thank you again.  So seems this may be my only option.

I was checking the motherboard (MEDION P670RP6M) using HWiNFO64 and it says -

"Motherboard Slots: 3xPCI Express x1, 3xPCI Express x4, 1xPCI Express x16" 

and I didn't know if any of these would be spare and thus enable use of a PCIe HDD.  If not possible I will look for a good SATA replacement (maybe something like the Samsung SSD 860 EVO).  Sorry I am a bit new to this 🙂  I did install a M.2 SSD in a different laptop but was lucky enough to find instructions for that particular laptop.  

[sweetpoison]

My apologize, my mind was to a laptop, sorry for confusion. Please ignore everything I said about M2 slots. The part about the program it's still good.

Sorry

[Fishtown]

Hi @PocketDog 

M.2 SSD Limitation: When slot 3 has an M.2 SATA SSD installed, then slot 2 will not be avail-able for M.2 PCIe SSDs.

look here, service Manual:

https://my.hidrive.com/share/yze8mg-wf8#$/CLEVO%20Service%20Manual%20Books/P_Series/P6_Series/P6xxRx...

bye Fishtown

[PocketDog]

@Fishtown ah thank you for the link, much appreciated!

So it appears that I can indeed change my SATA SSD to a PCIe SSD but not use the SATA at the same time, which ti me is not a problem, I am happy with just the 1 larger faster SSD.  However this raises the question as to how to clone my current SSD to the new one when the system cannot read both at the same time.  I will look to do some research but if you know of a way to do this, that would also be very helpful!  🙂   

[sweetpoison]

Hi @PocketDog 

If you decide to use AOMEI Data Backuper  there's what you need to do:

1. Clear as much as possible the OS (remove temp files, old install updates, checkpoints, restores), remove hybernation.sys if you have it and transfer all personal data drom desktop and documents folder in order to reduce the size of back-up file.

2. Have a USB stick ready to be made bootable and with a decent size (32Gb would do, 64GB is perfect)

3. Install and run Backuper. Make a bootable USB stick with windows PE support.

3. Under Backuper select disk "back up" then select the OS disk as source and the usb stick as destination. Try to do this right in 1st try because on second back up the size of image is double (no idea why and since it's a free program I can't complain either).

4. Do the hardware work to disconnect/connect the SSD and once it's done boot the computer from usb stick. The Backuper program will start  automatically and you can select restore disk from image (the image is on usb stick). Whatever you can choose to resize the partitions during restore or later on under windows manage/disk management. Note. The new SSD doesn't need to be partitioned and it will also be erased when you restore the OS from backup image. The back up image should have about 22-30 GB

Have fun.

[PocketDog]

Just as an update, I decided to go with another SATA M.2 SSD so I could still use the existing 256GB SSD Drive along with the regular 1TB Hard Drive.  I went with the Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB SATA and seems to be working great.

I was all set up to use AOMEI as per advice however when the drive came it suggested the Samsung clone utility and as I was moving the OS from Samsung to Samsung, I thought I'd give it a try and it worked perfectly.

Thank you for all your help @sweetpoison @Fishtown it's really appreciated.  🙂