The Crucial P5 500GB HD (3400/3000MB/s) did what was asked and more. It definitely made our office HP 15-cs3073cl laptops all around better performing. It is a really decent laptop, but the hard drives (1TB 5400rpms are garbage). It was an easy way (cost efficient as well) to upgrade a our laptops (that supports NVME M.2 with a M Key - the little slit on its end. There are B keys, M Keys and B/M Keys on different M.2s) so you are way ahead of most admin/staff laptops in school districts. Now, I have this super fast Crucial HD as my main hard drive and the old 1Tb 5400rpm HD as by back up. This is great because I have speed and still space to store pictures and videos, etc.. So, if you have a laptop and it can use a MVME M.2 HD w/ a M-Key, do not hesitate to purchase this one. A+ Product. UserBenchmarks: Crucial's P5 500gb M.2 got a score = 258% (exceptional.) My WD Black SN750 NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB got a 283% (exceptional.) My Samsung 860 Evo 500GB got a 118% (Outstanding). My WD Blue 1TB (2012 - 102% Outstanding. The original HP15 WD WD10SPZX-00HKTT0 (5400rpm) got a 61.7% (Good...BUT IT IS SO SLOW next to a SSD or M.2.) If this was a grading scale...a 61.7% is not good it is barely passing in education. Plus, it is really easy to see the difference. Startups, downloads, and updates take FOREVER on the the 5400rpm HD. If you have never updated your drive...then you do not know what you are missing. Just saying....
Side note: This is the easiest area to cut costs when purchasing a laptop/computer and EASIEST way to update it on a budget and still save money in laptops and computers. Ram is another area. Crucial makes both.
Latops - you typically can't upgrade much other than the HD and RAM. Most higher end laptops have some wiggle room, but not in all cases. When you buy it...if they give you "upgrade options"...then you know where you can add or subtract down the road. Keep in mind that in some cases they even solder the RAM to the board - which makes it difficult to do much there.
To Clone: Crucial makes it easy. All you have to do is... (You must have a M.2 connection and a SATA connection. At least one of each to do the following. Otherwise, you will need to search online on how to clone your hard drive with what your present setup looks like.) Most laptops and computers have at least 2 connections. One may be M.2. If it is not, then do not but this hard drive. You can use my directions below, but not with this hard drive.
1.Download the Software and Install it: Acronis True Image for Crucial (other brands have the same thing also) - do a search Crucial Clone Software.
2. Install the new hard drive. DO NOT REMOVE your old hard drive at this time. Please leave your old one in as your MAIN still. Let it boot up.
3. Find your NEW HD. It can be found by running DISK MANAGEMENT on your computer and formatting your new drive to add it to your computer. (It should be found under "THIS PC" shortcut on Win10.
4. Make sure your new hard drive is the same size or larger than your old one. (Remove some programs that are easily reinstalled - like video games if you need a little space.) You want to CLONE everything over to the new one. I went from 500gb to 500gb...the amount moving over was smaller than the new empty hard drive. I deleted a couple of video games too - off the record of course. :)
5. Start Acronis software and Clone (under tools) your old one onto the new one. If the old one is a 5400rpm HD...go eat lunch or dinner. You will have some time. Our 500gb - 5400rpm HDs took about 30-45mins. A 500bg 2.5 SSD - 10 minutes max from start to finish.
6. Once it is cloned, turn off your computer and either disconnect the SATA connection or take out your old hard drive. Start up your computer and it will find the new hard drive. If the process results in a corrupt set of files on boot, I did not mess with it. I reinstalled my old one and booted from it and formatted the new drive and started over. (I was not wasting time "fixing" a fresh CLONE. Who was to say other errors might not show up later?) I wanted to be safe versus sorry. Shortcuts get me in trouble sometimes.
7. Once you are ready to boot form the new drive, disconnect the old one again. If it boots, then it should be your main one now for booting.
8. You can shut it down and reconnect or install the old one and it should be your backup drive now. Go to "THIS PC" and see which one is your "C" and which is your "D". If it is not correct, you should have noticed the load up time in the beginning was ridiculous if using the 5400rpm and/or it is labeled as "C". How do know which is which? Well, once I clone my original drive, I delete something off of it to make it smaller. Secondly, I look at the total sizes. Typically those are not identical. In my case, one is 464gb and the other is 931gb. Pretty easy for me to tell them apart.)
9. If everything worked out and the M.2 is now your main drive, then you are good to go! Enjoy.
10. If it did not work, then you will need to shut your computer down and go into your bios. If you do not know how to get into it...look it up. Some are f2, others are f8 or F12 and mine was F10.
11. Hold the specific F-key down when you restart it and enter the bios. You will need to change the HD boot order. It needs to be your M.2 first and then the other drive. Save your progress and restart.
12. Check how fast it starts up. Then check "This PC" if it is correct, then all is well.
13. If it is not...then you probably did not save your work when you entered the bios. Try that again.
14. Most of this can be found on the internet as well. Best of luck.
THANK YOU, CRUCIAL for making my upgrade EASY.
| Hard Drive | 1 TB Solid State Drive |
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