Hybrid SDD HDD, replacing with large SDD

Harry Bloomfield

Harry Bloomfield

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An HP latop which uses a small SDD, large HDD, I have never opened it up to take a look, but might it be possible to swap out both, for a single SDD, or just swap the HDD for a SDD?

It was my fastest system, replacing a much older slower Acer laptop, but since swapping it's HDD for an SDD it is now much faster than my latest laptop.
 
When you say "small" and "large" are you referring to physical size or bytes storage capacity?
 
Are all your capacities out by a thousand? A 128 megabyte drive would struggle with windows 95..
(And SDD is a typo of SSD?)
 
Some hybrid Hard Disks had a relatively small Solid State Cache that was aimed to speed up access of commonly used bits of the OS etc from the drive.
That is completely different to a SSD of which a 128GB for the OS, and cached most used programs and files will be moved, from a separate skinny disk drive, to is likely more than adequate for W10/11.

Harry you need to determine a exactly what is inside this HP though to get accurate advice. Check the purchase order/receipt of HP's own web service area.

If it is a hybrid then replacement and cloning of stuff to a SSD will be well worth it. If two disks inside, one SSD, then probably not. It also matters what hard disk slots and connections it has (sata, M2 etc.,.). The HP model spec may help with that.

FWIW my current HP laptop had a single hard drive slot and 1TB disk originally, that I replaced with a 2.5 inch 512MB sata SSD a year or two ago. It does have a DVD-RW that some replace with a second HDD.
 
First off, give us a screenshot of the device manager, with the "disk drives" node expanded
 
I think that's the idea already, we just need to get a handle on what it has already which gives a steer on what they could be replaced with (type/connector..)

For simplicity I think I'd replace with just one large one
 
robinbanks said:
First off, give us a screenshot of the device manager, with the "disk drives" node expanded
Click to expand...

Back home now, and.....

HP Pavillion Notebook 4XY78EA#ABU Ser # 5CD90169FZ

System Family / Range:103C_5335KV HP Pavilion

Device name Latest-Laptop
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8300H CPU @ 2.30GHz 2.30 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.81 GB usable)
Device ID B638DDBB-D6D9-42C7-9B61-97220108D086
Product ID 00325-81283-40228-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

Intel Optane + 932Gb

1699125137040.png
 
Last edited:
www.intel.com

Intel® Optane™ Memory - Revolutionary Memory: What is Optane Memory?...

Intel® Optane™ memory technology deliver an amazingly responsive computing and storage experience on the latest Intel® Core™ processor-based systems.
www.intel.com www.intel.com

So a PCI-E card with a nominal 13GB of this fast, non-volatile Optane memory (a specialised SSD) to serve up the most used files dragged off the 1TB (932GB formatted) sata spinny disk. Intel have stopped making Optane as it became uneconomic (I read).

Someone may know more about all this than me... and what is worth doing/not doing and how; as it appears to me that the Optane PCI-E and SATA HDD are currently set up to work together as a single storage volume.

Time for some technical reading up for you, I think? A quick Google found me this https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Noteb...s/SSD-upgrade-with-Optane-memory/td-p/7817578

So I suspect the HP forums may be worth going to...

Good Luck!
 
Right, some progress made, and it's not nearly as straight forward because of the Optane memory/SSD, as simply going from HDD, to an SSD.... Though I have so far, just ordered the large SSD, to replace, and fit in place of the Optane PCB.

1. Use Optane RST software, to disable the Optane. Reboot
2. Go into BIOS settings, for the Optane, and disable it there.
3. install SSD pcb, in place of Optane pcb.
4. Boot up
5. Use Macrium Reflect, to clone from HDD, to the new SSD

The final stage, which I have yet to work out how to do - set it to boot from the SSD, as priority.

Wish me luck ;)
 
Harry Bloomfield said:
Right, some progress made, and it's not nearly as straight forward because of the Optane memory/SSD, as simply going from HDD, to an SSD.... Though I have so far, just ordered the large SSD, to replace, and fit in place of the Optane PCB.

1. Use Optane RST software, to disable the Optane. Reboot
2. Go into BIOS settings, for the Optane, and disable it there.
3. install SSD pcb, in place of Optane pcb.
4. Boot up
5. Use Macrium Reflect, to clone from HDD, to the new SSD

The final stage, which I have yet to work out how to do - set it to boot from the SSD, as priority.

Wish me luck ;)
Click to expand...
It should be in the BIOS somewhere as a boot order... one would hope.
But from what I read on the HP forum, you may need to remove/delete the OS from the HDD!

If no boot order option in the BIOS, once cloned disconnect / remove the spinny HDD and see if it boots to the M2 SSD before deleting stuff off the spinny disk? Just in case.

You may be better to do a clean install on the new SSD rather than cloning the old HDD?

Best of luck.
 
My main problem is, selecting what I should clone from the below...

I'm guessing the 16Gb Optane #2, will disappear, once I go through the process of disabling it, but what is the 100Mb #1?

I also wonder what the 687Mb #4 is, might that be for Restore?


1699371507578.png
 
I tried to follow my interpretation of the instructions, after my SSD arrived this morning.

Optane disabled, via the Optane windows utility.

I then went into the BIOS settings, and all mentions of the Optane had gone from there, so no chance to disable in there.

Fitted the SSD in place of the Optane, rebooted fine, though desperately slow booting from the HDD.

The SSD failed to show in Explorer, just the HDD, so a bit of panic, until I got the bright idea to run Macrium Reflect, whereupon it showed up. At the moment MR is cloning the HDD, to the SSD.
 
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