GL503 (VM) SSD upgrade

[sznyoky]

Hi Guys,

Do you have experience upgrading the main SSD in GL503? I already replaced the original HDD with a 1 TB Western Digital Black which is working just fine. I just performed a performance check and I am dissatisfied with the result of the m2 one.

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 561.616 MB/s [ 535.6 IOPS] < 14905.52 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 506.164 MB/s [ 482.7 IOPS] < 2070.29 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 399.366 MB/s [ 97501.5 IOPS] < 5224.29 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 27.517 MB/s [ 6718.0 IOPS] < 148.57 us>

[Write]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 269.500 MB/s [ 257.0 IOPS] < 30958.89 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 270.278 MB/s [ 257.8 IOPS] < 3873.02 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 270.204 MB/s [ 65967.8 IOPS] < 7749.34 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 66.039 MB/s [ 16122.8 IOPS] < 61.79 us>

Profile: Default
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Interval: 5 sec] <DefaultAffinity=DISABLED>

I am considering to change the original Sk Hynix HFS256G39TND-N210A for a faster 512 GB one. Did somebody change the m2 SSD in their laptop?
My previous Acer laptop had almost the same SSD + HDD combo.I tried to replace the SSD with a 256 GB WD Black, but after a windows install, it downloaded the drivers automatically when reaching internet and entered an endless BSOD restart loop. The Desktop pc already has 2 SSDs now and I don't want to but one more in it just to store some data.

I would appresiate any kind of thoughts including that "read the forum before ask duplicated questions" and "buy a new laptop instead of GL503VM"

Cheers

[xeromist]

I have not heard of anyone experiencing an issue changing the SSD. If you are concerned I would just make sure to buy from a retailer that accepts returns just in case you have a problem.

[sznyoky]

Thanks Xeromist! I was searching the SSDs when I just realised that the SSD that I bought ages ago was actually a PCIe one (WD Black WDS256G1X0C). I totally forget it's parameters after it was not fit to my previous Acer laptop (Probably the SATA3 - PCIe compatibility which could be resolved by a BIOS update now) and I just put it to the desktop PC and used as storage for Steam to get it used (it already had Windows installed on a WD Green 2,5" SSD).

I have free time on this week so my plan is to get clonezilla and make a copy of the original SK Hynix SSD to the WD Black and see if the Asus can deal with that. Will post here the result.

[sznyoky]

I managed to clone the original SSD to the WD Black WDS256G1X0C. That worked just fine but still seemed a bit slow. Once I had to restart the laptop while I played that took almost 2 minutes to load the windows. It feelt like using a Windows XP from an old 5400 RPM HDD.

I replaced the WDS256G1X0C with a newer WDS500G3X0C that I found discounted on Amazon and performed a clean Windows install (originally this laptop come with a pre-installed Windows 10 Home). Without the unnecesary Asus softwares and pre-installed things the laptop is mutch faster and not overheating as it used to, I don't event had to install Throttlestop yet to lower the voltage and disable Turbo Boost.