How easy is it to add or replace M2 drives?

A

Animal_79

Bronze Level Poster
Hi all.

I am looking at upgrading my laptop later in the year an was just pondering the HDD options.

My current machine has a 0.5 TB M2 hard drive, which is at times restrictive and I have to move things off to a portable drive periodically and can only have a very small number of games installed at once.

I'm keen for everything to load/operate quickly and the 2TB drives are a bit pricey and so am looking at getting a 1TB M2 drive in the new machine.

I have two main questions:

Firstly, is there any real benefit to having a small SSD drive in addition to the M2 drive? Aside from the small amount of additional storage it seems to me that they are slower and not really necessary, although they do not add a huge amount to the overall cost.

Secondly, if I get a 1TB M2 drive, would it be easy for me to take the 0.5TB drive out of my current machine and add it to the new one for additional space? What would I need to check to confirm compatibility? (N.B. my only machine is almost 5 years old now and a bit beaten up so doesn't have any significant resale value). Alternatively if I were to buy an additional drive at some point in the future, are they easily enough to install or to they need to be welded in?

Many thanks in advance,

Ben
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
Fitting drives is straightforward but you will need to check with PCS which will be ok with your machine. In some cases only one very high speed is possible and other slot is a slower type.

Personally think it always worth keeping OS on a different drive from data. You may need to do a clean install at some point so will not want the hassle of shuffling loads of files.
 
Martinr36

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
They just click into the socket, then the front end is held down by a small screw, then you just need to initialise it & create the simple partition in disk management
 
D

Deleted member 17413

Guest
Just make sure you check out exactly what M.2 your motherboard will support, I added a firecuda to mine at Xmas, had to remove the GPU, couple of heat sync panels to access the ports, very easy to install though, slots into the port and then gently pin down with a fixing screw.

Most the hassle was actually getting to the port, rather than putting the drive in.
 
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