CPU/Mobo Would adding RAM help my laptop?

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I have confirmed from the HP support forums that this laptop has a M.2 socket which supports NVMe Gen 3 but only 2 lanes work so it will give half the advertised speed for the installed drive. That is still potentially 3x of the Sata SSD speed, which is great.
Now the question is will I be able to clone the OS drive on the M.2 drive? Which tool is recommended?
 
Emil said:
will I be able to clone the OS drive on the M.2 drive?
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You won't, unless you buy a 1 TB SSD. Cloning requires that both drives be same size.

I'd say don't even try to do that. Just go with a fresh installation of Windows on the new drive. You'll anyway have the data in your old drive.

Emil said:
That is still potentially 3x of the Sata SSD speed, which is great.
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Also, this sounds good in theory, but the real world difference is barely noticeable. I just moved my NUC from Kingston A400 to WD black and I hardly see any difference. It is probably a second or so faster during boot, but I really can't tell unless I actually take a stopwatch and measure out.

So don't get too excited about this or you'll be disappointed. Your boot time is still likely to be around around 15-20 seconds.
 
gourav said:
You won't, unless you buy a 1 TB SSD. Cloning requires that both drives be same size.

I'd say don't even try to do that. Just go with a fresh installation of Windows on the new drive. You'll anyway have the data in your old drive.
Click to expand...
What about the Windows product key? The laptop came with Windows 10 pre-installed.
 
Well, cloning does not require both the drives to be of same size. The target drive must have free storage more than the used storage of source drive.
Emil said:
What about the Windows product key? The laptop came with Windows 10 pre-installed.
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Windows itself will read the key and activate using the OEM key. Or you can use ShowKeyPlus (https://github.com/Superfly-Inc/ShowKeyPlus/releases) to read the key and manually activate the Windows using this key.
 
Thanks for the responses. I found that my windows activation is linked to the windows outlook account so I guess that's all I might need. I just realized today that this laptop also has MS Office pre-installed. I am wondering what happens to this with a fresh install.
My alternative is to use the HP Cloud Recovery tool to restore the original state of the system on the SSD I guess.
 
Emil said:
Thanks for the responses. I found that my windows activation is linked to the windows outlook account so I guess that's all I might need. I just realized today that this laptop also has MS Office pre-installed. I am wondering what happens to this with a fresh install.
My alternative is to use the HP Cloud Recovery tool to restore the original state of the system on the SSD I guess.
Click to expand...
Or use Macrium Reflect. <mod edit: no piracy> You can write this iso file to a USB drive using Rufus and then take a backup to external USB HDD, then restore to SSD. Just don't format the current drive until the restore is done and system boots fine with SSD.
ashokbishnoi said:
Or use Macrium Reflect. PM me for iso file. You can write this iso file to a USB drive using Rufus and then take a backup to external USB HDD, then restore to SSD. Just don't format the current drive until the restore is done and system boots fine with SSD.
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This way you won't have to go through these long Windows/Office activation and HP Cloud Recovery processes.
 
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ashokbishnoi said:
Or use Macrium Reflect. You can write this iso file to a USB drive using Rufus and then take a backup to external USB HDD, then restore to SSD. Just don't format the current drive until the restore is done and system boots fine with SSD.

This way you won't have to go through these long Windows/Office activation and HP Cloud Recovery processes.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I will connect with you if I am unable to use the Cloud Recovery tool for any reason
 
I have contacted Microsoft and confirmed that I will be able to activate the Office 2019 license after I do a clean Windows 10 install. My bootable USB is ready. I have to travel a bit over the next 2 weeks. I will buy the SSD in the meanwhile and complete the upgrade when I'm back. I will post back here when I'm done.
 
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Emil said:
I have contacted Microsoft and confirmed that I will be able to activate the Office 2019 license after I do a clean Windows 10 install. Microsoft support has information to do a clean install but the instructions I have seen are to save on a USB flash drive and install on the existing drive. It is not clear if I can install the SSD, remove the HDD and boot from the flash drive to install the clean OS on the SSD. I would appreciate some guidance about a clean install from a bootable flash drive.
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The process is the same. Just have to do a partition if it's not there.
 
I finally got time to do this yesterday. I created the bootable Windows install on a flash drive, removed the HDD and installed a new WD SN570 500 GB. Then switched on the laptop and it went pretty smoothly like clockwork. The installation also showed me a list of apps that were previously installed and gave me the option of installing them again. This reduced my task quite a bit too.
The process I followed was to download the appropriate Windows from the Microsoft website and used Rufus to create the bootable flash.
The laptop now boots up in a few seconds as opposed to several minutes before the upgrade. It is also very responsive to startup of apps.
Thanks to all of you who helped me with suggestions and advice.
 
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Glad you were able to shift to SSD , just commenting easy workaround to help someone else who maybe looking to do the same with their old hdd laptop.

Buy Crucial MX series SSD (BXseries is its lower end variant few hundreds difference)
It comes with "Acronis cloning tool" for windows (I tried dozens of free windows apps which didn't help me until i realised its comes with free Acronis app that works like charm)
Here's the tutorial:
1) Connect SSD by USB port on laptop (will need SATA to USB adapter or hdd enclosure costs ~500rs , dont worry in future you can re use this adapter for internal laptop hdd that you're gonna take out)
2) Open Acronis app on laptop and follow its cloning process (its self explanatory)
3) Once your SSD is cloned, open laptop replace hdd by SSD
4) Start laptop: Job done in these 4 steps
No need to reinstall anything.

* I insisted on Acronis tool for this guide because my internal HDD had bad sectors i guess which was causing errors in most free apps , But acronis proceeded without any issue. And yeah it works free only with crucial brand .
 
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