Question Is it possible to connect an NVMe SSD to SATA ?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

johnn1111

Distinguished
May 7, 2015
36
0
18,530
Hi Thanks for reading.
My laptop is using a sata 2.5" 5200 rpm internal hard drive for the OS.
Is it possible to connect a faster NVMe SSD to the SATA slot in anyway to increase speed, I mean is there any kind of adapter available to connect the NVMe SSD to the SATA slot?

Or is it possible to connect an NVMe SSD to the laptop through the USB3 port and run the OS externally, would there be any speed improvement?

Many thanks
 
Apr 11, 2024
44
17
35
Maybe your Windows (10? 11?) installation is broken. Try a reinstall and be sure your Windows ISO is from the proper source.

But from the little info you gave, it might be completely unrelated to the installation. Are you sure it's not booting at all? Maybe the screen has some minor damage. You could test this by connecting it to an external monitor, or if you don't have connect it to a TV via HDMI and see if it's actually a screen issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: johnn1111

johnn1111

Distinguished
May 7, 2015
36
0
18,530
All modern SATA SSDs have almost identical speeds and fit in same place as 2.5" HDDs. Difference is negligible. If it's for OS, it's preferable to have built in RAM cache as it helps with small OS files. That one does have it.
Thanks ! Some sata ssd's have a transfer speed of 400mb/s, the samsung 870 evo, according to the manufacturer :
" achieves the maximum SATA limit of 560/530 MB/s sequential speeds "
In real life does this have any meaning ?
Also, with nvme drives some manufacturers claim faster speeds than others, in real life does this affect speed at all, would i see apps working faster?
If not, then what am i paying for purchasing the more expensive drives
Thanks !
 

johnn1111

Distinguished
May 7, 2015
36
0
18,530
The hp elitebook 8570p has two 4gig ram moules , i changed them for two 8gig ram modules to move the ram up to 16gb, and now the laptop will not boot .
Is there a limitation set on the amount of ram that can be used in windows 10, or in bios settings somewhere
Thanks !
 
Thanks ! Some sata ssd's have a transfer speed of 400mb/s, the samsung 870 evo, according to the manufacturer :
" achieves the maximum SATA limit of 560/530 MB/s sequential speeds "
In real life does this have any meaning ?
Also, with nvme drives some manufacturers claim faster speeds than others, in real life does this affect speed at all, would i see apps working faster?
If not, then what am i paying for purchasing the more expensive drives
Thanks !
Those sequential speeds are of least importance. Important only for transfer of very large files. What made first SSDs much faster than HDD was seek time to find data on disk almost instantaneously. What helps system seem to run faster is fast read and write of smaller files between few KB and 1 or so MB because OS is using such size files most of the time. Similarly do programs and games. That's where ram Cache built into drives comes into play and so are somewhat better than those without it.
Other important part is that SSDs use less resources while reading and writing and so may help marginal PCs to work "faster".
So those are things that matter and super fast drives like NVMe can be visibly better than slower SATA drives in "real life". Differences between each type are minimal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: johnn1111

johnn1111

Distinguished
May 7, 2015
36
0
18,530
The laptop boots just fine when using the stock ram, but does not boot when using the new ram I purchased for it. The stock ram is labelled as pc3-10600S, the new ram is pc3L-10600S. So a slight difference between the two. Does this make a difference ? Can the new ram be modified in any way to work ?

Thanks !
 

MWink64

Prominent
Sep 8, 2022
190
56
670
The laptop boots just fine when using the stock ram, but does not boot when using the new ram I purchased for it. The stock ram is labelled as pc3-10600S, the new ram is pc3L-10600S. So a slight difference between the two. Does this make a difference ? Can the new ram be modified in any way to work ?

Thanks !

For your purposes, the L should make no difference. It stands for Low Voltage. However, DDR3L is backwards compatible with regular DDR3.

Are you absolutely sure the original RAM is PC3-10600S (DDR3-1333)? The specs for that machine call for PC3-12800S (DDR3-1600). That said, usually RAM speed isn't a huge deal. In most cases, the faster component will slow down to accommodate the slower component but that doesn't always work perfectly.
 
  • Like
Reactions: johnn1111
Jul 14, 2024
1
0
10
Hi Thanks for reading.
My laptop is using a sata 2.5" 5200 rpm internal hard drive for the OS.
Is it possible to connect a faster NVMe SSD to the SATA slot in anyway to increase speed, I mean is there any kind of adapter available to connect the NVMe SSD to the SATA slot?

Or is it possible to connect an NVMe SSD to the laptop through the USB3 port and run the OS externally, would there be any speed improvement?

Many thanks
YOU CAN NOW BUY 2.5 ENCLOSURES THAT WILL ACT AS AN ADAPTOR FOR A M.2 PCIE NVMe DRIVE, THE Drive's speed is a little but more amazing than a standard 2.3 SATA SSD. At about 832 Megabytes per second. I used a 2280 patriot 300 and a sata to m.2 drive case. Works well for what was a Windows 8 Acer Aspire v3 571G
my laptop. I installed Windows 11 on it with the old CPU security bypass. and it works AWESOME.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
YOU CAN NOW BUY 2.5 ENCLOSURES THAT WILL ACT AS AN ADAPTOR FOR A M.2 PCIE NVMe DRIVE, THE Drive's speed is a little but more amazing than a standard 2.3 SATA SSD. At about 832 Megabytes per second. I used a 2280 patriot 300 and a sata to m.2 drive case. Works well for what was a Windows 8 Acer Aspire v3 571G
my laptop. I installed Windows 11 on it with the old CPU security bypass. and it works AWESOME.
Have a link to one of these things?
 

MWink64

Prominent
Sep 8, 2022
190
56
670
YOU CAN NOW BUY 2.5 ENCLOSURES THAT WILL ACT AS AN ADAPTOR FOR A M.2 PCIE NVMe DRIVE, THE Drive's speed is a little but more amazing than a standard 2.3 SATA SSD. At about 832 Megabytes per second. I used a 2280 patriot 300 and a sata to m.2 drive case. Works well for what was a Windows 8 Acer Aspire v3 571G
my laptop. I installed Windows 11 on it with the old CPU security bypass. and it works AWESOME.

I'd like to see a link as well. I'm also skeptical of the speed claim, since it exceeds even the theoretical maximum of the SATA bus.