What a pain in the rear this has been.
No bottom access panels on this thing (m7-k111dx) for starters.
The M.2 slot is on the bottom of the motherboard naturally.
The top panel is all one piece of oh so delicate aluminum.
I managed to only bend one spot learning how much force (a lot) it
took to disengage the clips holding it on.
I initially ordered an mSATA drive, of which there are plenty, based on some
less than clear wording in the service manual. Pulled apart, confirmed, returned it, installed spare 840 EVO 500gb while I was there and let it be for awhile. 16gb of HyperX happened that trip too I think.
There is a Crucial M550 I really wanted, but they seem to be discontinued and the few left I found were just unreasonably expensive, so I ended up with a Transcend MTS800 500gb.
After performing the pry the top off ritual and gaining a few new grey hairs (not a cheap laptop, least not to me), and disconnecting a moderate handful of ribbon cables and pulling the board out, I was finally able to slide the NGFF in, and it was even the right length.
Then I didn't have a screw. The most tiny screw ever. But not an eyeglass screw, since I actually stock a number of those. After half an hour I found a single solitary screw that fit. But it was too long. Because it couldn't be any other way. Another bag of goodies gifted me with several small rubber washers that did the trick, and back together it went for a test run.
Booted 8, no dice, no drive shown. Did a hold-shift+shutdown, looked in bios, nada, there is jack crap in the bios on this thing of course. Rebooted, no installing drive popup, nothing, it was just there. Go figure.
Fired up Acronis, clone drive, shutdown, disconnect EVO, DISCO we're in business.
Yanked the EVO, stuck my 1tb HGST spinny disk back in and now I have speed and storage.
I believe the MTS is a bit slower than the EVO. Honestly I get such differing results from every benchmark utility, between the different programs and between runs, I take it all with a grain of salt anymore. But I strongly suspect the EVO is faster. Not enough to matter for any sort of normal use so I'm good with it. Still wish it'd been a bit cheaper but hey.
Pics for clicks..
No bottom access panels on this thing (m7-k111dx) for starters.
The M.2 slot is on the bottom of the motherboard naturally.
The top panel is all one piece of oh so delicate aluminum.
I managed to only bend one spot learning how much force (a lot) it
took to disengage the clips holding it on.
I initially ordered an mSATA drive, of which there are plenty, based on some
less than clear wording in the service manual. Pulled apart, confirmed, returned it, installed spare 840 EVO 500gb while I was there and let it be for awhile. 16gb of HyperX happened that trip too I think.
There is a Crucial M550 I really wanted, but they seem to be discontinued and the few left I found were just unreasonably expensive, so I ended up with a Transcend MTS800 500gb.
After performing the pry the top off ritual and gaining a few new grey hairs (not a cheap laptop, least not to me), and disconnecting a moderate handful of ribbon cables and pulling the board out, I was finally able to slide the NGFF in, and it was even the right length.
Then I didn't have a screw. The most tiny screw ever. But not an eyeglass screw, since I actually stock a number of those. After half an hour I found a single solitary screw that fit. But it was too long. Because it couldn't be any other way. Another bag of goodies gifted me with several small rubber washers that did the trick, and back together it went for a test run.
Booted 8, no dice, no drive shown. Did a hold-shift+shutdown, looked in bios, nada, there is jack crap in the bios on this thing of course. Rebooted, no installing drive popup, nothing, it was just there. Go figure.
Fired up Acronis, clone drive, shutdown, disconnect EVO, DISCO we're in business.
Yanked the EVO, stuck my 1tb HGST spinny disk back in and now I have speed and storage.
I believe the MTS is a bit slower than the EVO. Honestly I get such differing results from every benchmark utility, between the different programs and between runs, I take it all with a grain of salt anymore. But I strongly suspect the EVO is faster. Not enough to matter for any sort of normal use so I'm good with it. Still wish it'd been a bit cheaper but hey.
Pics for clicks..
