Solved SSD in MiniPCI Slot?

I have a HP ProBook 450 G3 and I was thinking of installing a SSD. I already have a 1TB Hybrid drive installed in the regular HDD location, but I had heard that it is possible to remove the wifi card from a laptop and use that slot for a SSD as long as the SSD is small enough to fit. I'm not sure if my laptop uses a miniPCIe slot for the wifi card or if its a WWan slot, or if that's the same thing, so can someone help me. And if it's possible could you recommend a good SSD that would fit in that spot, preferably at least 120GB. I was thinking about getting this one from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...&qid=1516206285&sr=8-2&keywords=mini+pcie+ssd also once I buy the SSD will I be able to boot off of it?

Bruce said:

laptop wifi cards are usually 25mmx25mm (something like that).
you'd be chasing a mSata SSD and they don't come in that small size I think. smallest is 50mm that I've seen.
m.2 or NVMe are also too big plus you need to make sure the wifi card port is compatible with other cards, that is, is it a generic PCI or PCIe slot?

personally, I've seen little benefit in performance with hybrid drives, I'd be swapping your current 1TB unit for a fully SSD drive.
you could then put the hybrid into a caddy as an external backup drive.

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I just found out that I won't have to remove the wifi card, there is a M.2 slot right next to it, HP says its a 2230, but I CANNOT find a 256GB M.2 2230 SSD for the life of me, I've tried newegg, Amazon, all the major memory manufacturers websites but i can't find anything in 2230. I actually measured the spot where it goes and it measures 22 by 42 so shouldn't a 2242 fit? I also can't find a brand name 2242 SSD they are all these companies I have never heard of. Do you know of any websites where i can get brand name M.2 2242 SSD's. I just am afraid i'm going to spend $100.00 and the drive will fail a month later because its not from a reputable company like Samsung, or Kingston.

Okay after a ton of research I found out it is a M keyed M.2 slot that can take a 2280, I just purchased a B & M keyed Samsung 256GB SSD which I found out will work with my M keyed slot, but we will see if that is actually true when I try to install it. I also found out I am going to have to do some finagling to get my ProBook to boot from the SSD, so that should be tons of fun. How new is this M.2 architecture anyway, I thought it was now pretty standard on laptops?

vger said:

Any updates for us?

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Okay, so I got my M.2 SSD yesterday. It is a 250GB WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD M.2 2280. I installed the SSD in the M.2 slot. Went into BIOS and saw it was detected, so I changed the boot order in UEFI and Lagacy boot, to USB, SSD, DVD Drive, then SSHD. I plugged in my flash drive with Windows 10 Media Creation Tool on it then booted up . It installed Windows 10 on the new SSD and everything went fine. I copied all of my files to a external HHD then logged onto the SSD and in Disk Management setup the SSHD as Storage by deleting the main partition and then setting it up for just storage, so now I can't put an OS on it.

Then I changed the default storage locations for all new files from the C drive, to the D drive (my SSHD). I also changed the path for Videos, Documents, Music, and Pictures to D instead of C drive. Now I am just going through the hassle of reinstalling all my applications and changing my settings to how I had them before. So everything worked out awesome and this SSD is REALLY fast, startup only takes about 3 seconds. So I've pretty much upgraded everything I can on this notebook, I now have a 250GB SSD, a 1TB SSHD, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM, its to bad I can't upgrade the CPU.

I was wondering though, when I go into disk management my SSHD still has two other partitions on it that I can't delete within Disk Management, a Recovery Partition, and a EFI partition. My understanding is that the EFI partition is the UEFI interface since my SSHD was setup as a GPT disk, and since I don't have those partitions on my SSD I am assuming that my SSD isn't setup as GPT, so can i set my SSD as GPT without it deleting all of my data? And if I can then how do I delete the EFI and Recovery partition from the SSHD?

Bruce said:

woohoo, excellent outcome indeed.
welcome to the real world of SSD's and not those silly hybrid half solutions.

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Yeah this thing is FAST, and now that I have all of my applications installed it is running nice and smooth, I just wish I didn't have crappy AT&T for a ISP, and I wish I could upgrade mt CPU, I wonder how much it would cost to buy a new MB with a better CPU for my laptop?

vger said:

Brandon, shall we mark this thread as solved?

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Yes, thanks for the help.