Upgrade to M.2 or 2.5" SSD?

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Upgrading the wife's Asus X407M laptop.Has the traditional mechanical hdd now. It has an empty M.2 ssd slot. Cost aside, should I go with an M.2 ssd or replace the hdd with 2.5 inch ssd? I'm considering Samsung EVO series, which have both formats.
 
Doesn't this computer come with both an SSD and a separate mechanical Spin drive? If so, are you are just replacing the SSD portion? or is the spin drive the only drive? Either way, the EVO is the way to go, but I don't see a real benefit of using an M2 if the standard 2.5 is cheaper. Just get the biggest you can get that will fit your needs, as between a SATA 3 2.5″ SSD and an M.2 SATA SSD, you will see no difference in the overall performance.
 
I had a 256 GB 2.5" SSD and upgraded to a 1 TB M.2. Don't know if the M.2 is better but it's so cool. LOL. Since it snaps right into the Mobo it feels like it should be faster than using a SATA cable.
 

Confirmed the M.2 slot in the laptop is SATA so a correct M.2 SATA SSD would be no faster than a 2.5" SATA SSD. You can basically shop by price, whichever's cheaper.

Do NOT get an M.2 NVMe SSD.
 
I'd leave the spinner in there and just throw in a sata m.2 as yours isn't an nvme sadly but that's not a big deal really,

But nvme has become cheaper. A 1tb wd blue nvme is cheaper and faster than the sata m.2 variant. Get the wd blue sata m.2.

My wd ssd has been perfect for 3 years. Health is reported at 94% and it's a smaller but adequate 512gb variant. Has almost 10tb written on it so far.
 
I guess it's too late since you went with SSD, but personally I would've gone with M.2 and keep the HDD as a data drive. Most data is lost because people have all their stuff on one drive. Having two separate drives, one for OS and another one for storage is a very good practice.
 
I guess it's too late since you went with SSD, but personally I would've gone with M.2 and keep the HDD as a data drive. Most data is lost because people have all their stuff on one drive. Having two separate drives, one for OS and another one for storage is a very good practice.
You can still store your stuff in a data drive off the computer. 2 separate drives won't protect you if you are losing the data drive instead of the OS drive, and HDD are less shock tolerant than SSD despite longer data retention and heat tolerance, they both have their places.

There's no substitute for backups.
 
I guess it's too late since you went with SSD, but personally I would've gone with M.2 and keep the HDD as a data drive. Most data is lost because people have all their stuff on one drive. Having two separate drives, one for OS and another one for storage is a very good practice.
While I practice that my steam folder alone is 1.3TB.. and its not Economical to buy larger than 2TB ssd

The separate mechanical hdd "data drive" scheme(for a laptop) is less robust than having everything on 1 ssd.

It does make for easier data backups..
 
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