Most modern laptops support some kind of SSD. If your doesn’t support an NVMe and working with a hard drive, you can still get yourself a SATA SSD. However, NVMe drives are faster than the SATA SSDs. There are many generations of NVMe drives. Also, the M.2 port can have two variations i.e. M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe. Because of many interfaces, form factors, names, generations, and sizes, it can become confusing to decide on which laptop to choose for your laptop. However, if you know what your laptop supports, it becomes pretty easy to make your decision. In this article, I will help you with the same.
If you can open up your laptop, you can just check the ports and tell which SSD is supported. But, it is always good to look at your laptop’s user manual to check the supported drive capacity, interface, etc. Let’s see how you can do the same on your laptop.
How to check which SSD is supported?
We will talk about 3 key methods to check which SSD is supported by your laptop.
1. Check the User Manual
Visit your laptop’s official support page and search for your specific model to find its user manual. Just search on Google with your Laptop’s brand followed by “Laptop Support”. For example, “Lenovo Laptop Support” or “HP Laptop Support“. Make sure you go to the official support website and then find your laptop carefully. Most support pages would allow you to identify your products automatically using the Detect Product or Detect Laptop option. However, you can easily find your laptop manually in the browse product section.
Find your laptop’s user manual by clicking on the options like Guides & Manuals or User Manual.
Now, when you have your user manual, you’ll have to find its storage section to check the storage specifications. Most laptop user manuals will have an index at the start. You can look at the storage option in the index or search the whole document for the “storage” phrase. For this IdeaPad 1 14AMN7, I found out that it has an M.2 slot for 2242 and 2280 form factor.
But, this doesn’t tell anything in detail about the capacity and the interface. In this case, I would recommend either going to our next steps or talking to customer support to know what actually are the full storage specifications.
Now, some user manuals will give you all the important details about the storage devices like this one.
In this case, I know that my laptop supports M.2 SATA SSD of up to 256GB. Also, I am now assured that NVMe isn’t supported so I would never make a wrong purchase with this user manual.
2. Inspecting the SSD slot
For this, you’ll have to open your laptop because the storage slots are on the motherboard. In most laptops, you’ll have to open the back panel to physically check the available ports. If there is a hard drive already working on your laptop, you can easily replace it with a SATA 2.5″ SSD without having to worry about compatibility.
Most people get confused about the M.2 SSD compatibility. So, I’ll give you a simple method. Just check the M.2 port’s slot or notch. If it has a notch on the right side, this laptop would support the M.2 NVMe as well as the M.2 SATA SSD. If the notch is on the left side, it is an M.2 SATA-only port.
Now, even if you have identified the port, you aren’t done. Not all laptops would allow SSDs of any size. In most cases, they would be limited to 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1TB SSDs. If you install drives bigger than this size, it may not work on your laptop. You can confirm the maximum supported size again on the user manual or by talking to customer support.
The SATA slot would be the same for all SATA-based SSDs and Hard drives. However, laptops generally come with 2.5″ hard drives and the SATA 2.5″ SSDs share the same dimensions.
3. Visit the Laptop Part Store
On your laptop’s support website, you can buy the original upgrade or repair parts. Now, this tool is made for those who want to repair their laptops, but we can use it to detect our laptop’s supported SSDs. For, this search on Google “Your Laptop’s brand” + Laptop Parts Store. For example, the Lenovo Laptop Parts Store or the Asus Laptop Parts Store. This doesn’t work for all brands and all models but look in the image, I have found the suitable SSD along with its specifications for my laptop on the official website. Now, I can easily buy another SSD with the same specifications and it would work on my laptop.
4. Use Speccy or HWINFO (Third-Party Software)
Alternatively, you can install Speccy or HWInfo to easily find the type of installed drive and its details. They don’t give you the information about the free slots and their types but you can still know what is installed if you want to upgrade your system with a new drive.
How to check whether an SSD or Hard Drive is installed in your laptop?
The first method is to open the Optimize Drives menu in Windows. Here, you will see the list of all the installed drives in your laptop and their type whether they are SSDs or Hard Drives.
If you want to see more details, you can open the System Information menu and find the Storage section. To open this menu, you can simply search in the Windows Start search for System Information.
Again, Speccy and HWInfo will give you the details about the installed drives.
What if you are not able to figure it out?
The user manual should give you all the required information about the supported SSD and the specifications. However, if you don’t find it and you also can’t open up your laptop to look through the motherboard, it is best to go to an authorized service center for your laptop.
I hope this helps!