Does my laptop have an M.2 SSD Socket?

Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we? 

Well before we “look under the hood” or in this case take a part your machine, there are a number of things you can do first.  Look up the model on the manufacturer’s web site. You can find the specs there (in most cases) that will tell you what options are available for upgrades or replacements.  Sometimes this can still be a bit confusing so here’s another tip – contact their customer service and ask what they recommend for a SSD drive uprade. Most manufacturers will have folks standing by to sell you something; Dell is a good example of this.  I have yet to buy anything directly from doing this but it has been quite useful in quickly identifying what your machine can handle and if you have an M.2 slot available.

Next, If it has an M.2 slot available, there’s two other questions that need to be answered:  Is it SATA III or NVMe, as both are available in an M.2 “form factor”. SATAIII M.2 cards use the SATA III hard drive bus for communication, and may run slightly slower than NVMe capable slots / cards, but generally still faster with an SSD than a traditional hard disk. NVMe M.2 cards use the PCIe bus and can run a lot faster than a SATA III M.2 card, but it will only work in an NVMe capable slot.  The NVMe “slot” will take both the new NVMe M.2 card and the old SATA III M.2 card (backward compatibility with older cards).

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