Getting the back off the hard way

It's a 500gb drive with that optane thing attached. I think I'll just buy another drive for it - I had enough faffing about with optane before! The 27GB will be the 30gb optane part of the drive. The computer probably won't recognise the 500gb without the IRST drivers and I'm not sure I want to go that route. So have ordered another 500gb drive. At least the computer is working now (I think!).

This optane drive came out of my nearly new computer earlier this year. Replaced it with a 1tb Samsung Nvme instead. It runs a bit warmer than before but it's fine.

I just thought - unused 500gb M2 drive sitting there! But even if I installed the IRST drivers it will be nothing but hassle when coming to do system images etc (as I found before). They can just fail as well. More trouble than it's worth!

So have just spent £25 on a new charger and £70 on a new ssd drive for this 7 year old laptop - hope it was worth it! I might just sell it on actually as stepson will want something newer with windows 11 on it now. But probably wouldn't get much more than £100 for it with it's slightly damaged back now!

Thing is - it's a really fast laptop! Core i7 HP Spectre X360 - lovely screen. So no I'll keep it :)

Hazel123 said:

It's a 500gb drive with that optane thing attached. I think I'll just buy another drive for it - I had enough faffing about with optane before! The 27GB will be the 30gb optane part of the drive. The computer probably won't recognise the 500gb without the IRST drivers and I'm not sure I want to go that route. So have ordered another 500gb drive. At least the computer is working now (I think!).

This optane drive came out of my nearly new computer earlier this year. Replaced it with a 1tb Samsung Nvme instead. It runs a bit warmer than before but it's fine.

I just thought - unused 500gb M2 drive sitting there! But even if I installed the IRST drivers it will be nothing but hassle when coming to do system images etc (as I found before). They can just fail as well. More trouble than it's worth!

Click to expand...

Hybrid drive, then.
I've never had the dubious pleasure of dealing with one.

You're lucky! Not sure what posessed me to even try it. (Except it was an unused M2 ssd drive).

Having one of those days when things aren't going as they should! The new SSD arrived. Swapped it over, went to install Windows and it loaded to the install screen but no drive showing. No drive showing in bios. Pressed F2 (to test drive) and it says no hard drive installed. Now I am sure I properly seated it. And although it's possible the new drive is dud, it seems unlikely. I could test it in another computer but somehow I think it's not that.

It's a Samsung Evo 970 plus - never had any problems with installing one before. But googling tells me this is a common problem with HP Spectre X360s when you change the ssd.

Yesterday it didn't find the Optane drive (but it did find the 27GB optane part of the drive), so it can't just be a fault with the ssd connector or it wouldn't have found that. I would expect it not to find the Optane drive as that needs a driver. But should be able to find a Samsung SSD! Never had this issue before.

Tomorrow is another day.

Did a hard reset, reset bios. No different. I was thinking I might need to install a driver. But tried reseating the ssd first and that did the trick. I was absolutely sure I had it in right the first time. But there you go.

Nicely loading Windows 11 now. Battery is totally flat - it used to have good battery life so hope it's still able to keep charge.

Once lithium batteries go to 0v, they are done forever.

Thankfully it's ok :) It's fully charged up and holding it's charge. Strangely in Windows 11 it only goes up to 80% but in Windows 10 it shows 100%. I installed 11 on it and all was good except the screen was a bit dim. So put 10 on it. Just to check what was what with drivers. Might leave 10 on it. It's only a 5th generation processor so not Windows 11 ready but installed it anyway - it had it on before. Don't remember a dim screen last time though. Will see how that is with 10 on (when it's finished all the updates) - it might be a driver thing.

Anyway - everything working- new charger socket and charger, new hard drive, good battery. Hope the screen isn't going!

All that because somebody tripped over the cable and it got yanked a few months ago. Although hard drive would probably have failed anyway. Is that about the life of NVME SSD's? 7 years? Might have been older though if someone had put an old one in before I bought it (ie taken their own hard drive out, which I suspect, as the back had been off before - hence the stripped screws).