What is this SSD in the G750JZ?

[technicallyarti]

Hey. So I got a G750JZ-DS71 with an 250gb ssd. I had a 500 gb samsung SSD so the original plan was to just swap that out and give my daughter the smaller one. But when I opened it up, I have no idea what I'm looking at or how to take it out or if it can even come out.

Is anybody familiar with the hard drive in this thing and what it is? Is it upgradable at all if I want to go to 500gb or a TB at some point?

[Darnassus]

What you're most likely looking at is two MSata's in Raid configuration, attached to a daughterboard then linked to the motherboard. If you want an SSD in there, a full size 2.5", then you need to pull apart the laptop, take out the MSata daughter board, unplug it, and replace the connection with a dual Sata.

The dual sata is a whole different "part" that you need to replace in the hard drive bay. I do not know where you can buy it from, or how much it costs.

The laptop is difficult to disassemble.

[technicallyarti]

Well, good to know. I replaced the motherboard in a G73SW, so I can't imagine it's that much worse. I guess I'll dig into the parts. Thanks!

[VHJC]

Maybe you can take a picture of the actual SSD, so we can tell you which kind of SSD it is.

[Prostar_Compute]

VHJC wrote:
Maybe you can take a picture of the actual SSD, so we can tell you which kind of SSD it is.

This would probably be best. Upload the image here for us and anyone seasoned/knowledgeable can let you know what you're looking at and advise further. 🙂

[technicallyarti]

Here's an image of the drive.

[VHJC]

That's a RAID board with two M.2 SATA SSDs, Darnassus is right, if you want to have a 2.5" SSD you will need to replace the RAID board with a board with 2 "normal" SATA connectors.

I wish I have your JZ instead of mine 😮

[hmscott]

technicallyartistic wrote:
Here's an image of the drive.

technicallyartistic, you will want to keep that RAID0, maybe upgrade the individual M.2's to higher capacity / speed units down the road, but for now, they are as important to the value of the JZ as the 880m is, perhaps more so because everything uses IO, and to get peak performance you need to remove the IO bottleneck, and RAID0 does that.

CrystalDiskMark results from my JH (predecessor to the JZ) with RAID0 2 x 128GB M.2 SATA drives - just like yours:



Here is what a single 2.5" Samsung 840 Pro 512GB gets in the 2nd Bay of the JH:



Even the fastest SSD can only go as fast as 1 SATA III port, but 2 SATA III ports in a RAID0 can go up to 2x as fast.

The 2 x 128GB M.2 SATA SSD speed is good, but they aren't the fastest M.2 SATA cards available.

Put in a couple of Crucial M550 512GB's in a RAID0 configuration and get 2x the single SATA III speed.

I wish I had a RAID0 card in the 2nd Bay too 🙂

There are 3 SATA III ports, and 1 SATA 1 port (optical drive), most G750's only have 2 SATA III's, some only have 1 SATA III and 1 SATA II port.

Your JZ is the top of the line, enjoy the added speed from the RAID0, and put that other SSD in the 2nd Bay, and put the spinning drive into an external USB 3.0/SATA III enclosure. That will also remove the heat generated from the spinning drive from the laptop.

Here is what my 1TB performance looks like in an external USB 3.0 enclosure, hardly worth using, compared to even a single SSD throughput:



If you do end up upgrading your M.2 SATA SSD's, make sure to not get one of the new PCIE M.2's, they are faster, but not compatible with the JH/JZ M.2 SATA ports.

Please let us know how it works out for you 🙂

[technicallyarti]

Yeah, that's actually what I was going to look into. It looked like they were removable. I just couldn't find any identification on them to see what they are to know what to search for. It already seems like this thing is way faster than my last computer with the SSD in it. I know part of it is windows 8 but this thing turns on nearly instantly It's hard to tell the difference between a power down and sleep. So I'd rather not loose that. Suppose I am going to need a whole new set of equipment now though to clone a drive.

I avoided raid 0 up to now because while it's 2X the speed it's also 2X the failure points and I didn't want to loose any work I may be doing on the thing, but this is hard to go back from.