I have a HP Envy X360 15XXXX which came with a 128 M.2 SATA SSD (C:) with the system drive on and a standard 1TB 2.5" SATA drive (D:).
I initially configured it so that the bulk of installed app files went to D: drive with only the essential ones going to C: drive. However, two and a half years on and C: was quite full.
I decided to go for I purchased the 500GB M.2 version of this drive, along with a Sabrant M.2 SSD 2.5inch SATA III Aluminium enclosure adapter (EC-M25A). I already had a WAV Link dual bay SATA III disk cloner which will also act an external drive bay.
I downloaded a free version of AOMEI Backupper for copying. For managing the disk, I used two built in utilities - Windows Powershell - needed to remove partitions. Windows Disk Management (Found under computer management in Control Panel). This is used firstly to mount the new disk and give it a drive letter. I suspect some who reported the disk DOA failed to do this. Also for managing the partition sizes.
I proceeded as follows:
1. Having created recovery disks, the recovery partition was obsolete as it is a one-time deal creating the media. I used HP recovery manager to delete the partition - except it doesn't, it just deletes the data.
2. I used Powershell to delete the partition and there are instructions here if you don't know how to do it https://www.windowscentral.com/how-delete-drive-partition-windows-10
3. I inserted the new drive into the Sabrant adaptor, placed it in a bay of the WAV Link SATA bays and connected it to the USB 3 port. (There us a USB-C version of the adaptor to connect directly to a USB C port if you don't have a dive bay)
4. The drive is not detected in Windows until it has been mounted, so I opened Disk Management > Storage and found the unmounted drive. I right clicked and used the wizard to do a basic mount and assign it F: Drive.
5. I opened AOMEI Backupper and selected the clone option from the left-hand side. I selected the Disk Clone option from the bottom row.
6. On the next screen, I selected Disk 0 - the one with Windows on - as the source disk.
7. On the next screen, I selected Disk 2 - the new disk and the destination. Hit OK and it took less than 10 minutes to clone.
8. I then opened Disk Management and found the cloned volume at 118GB with around 350 GB of unallocated disk.
9. I right clicked on the cloned windows partition and selected 'Extend Volume' and allocated the maximum available space and the new window volume increased to 465GB. I removed it from the adaptor.
10. I turned of the Laptop, removed the rear cover and disconnected the battery by removing all the screws and lifting out.
11. I then located the current disk, removed the screw and replaced it with the cloned disk.
12. I reconnected the battery, replaced the cover and booted up the machine. There was a pause and a message as the BIOS had detected the hardware change. It then rebooted through to windows and everything looked hunky-dory.
13. The I ran all major applications and everything was sweet. It was as if I had done nothing, except the was an appreciable increase in speed, especially on boot up. and Windows hello was working great every time - it had started to hang and drop to PIN access.
The disk has been sweet since Monday (now Thursday) and I am considering up grading the D: to an SSD as well.
So far - very happy. I am of course keeping the Old disk safe . . . . just in case!
| Brand | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 9.98 x 0.69 x 6.99 cm; 37 g |
| Item model number | WDS250G2B0A |
| Manufacturer | Western Digital |
| Series | WDS250G2B0A WD BLUE 3D NAND SATA SSD |
| Colour | Blue - High Performance |
| Form Factor | Form Factor 2.5" / 7mm cased |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR4 SDRAM |
| Hard Drive Size | 250 GB |
| Hard Disk Description | Solid State Drive |
| Hard Drive Interface | Serial ATA |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 1 |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Wattage | 3600 |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Lithium Battery Energy Content | 1 Milliampere Hour (mAh) |
| Lithium Battery Packaging | Batteries packed with equipment |
| Lithium Battery Weight | 500 g |
| Number Of Lithium Ion Cells | 1 |
| Number of Lithium Metal Cells | 1 |
| Item Weight | 37 g |
| Guaranteed software updates until | unknown |
