Upgrade HDD On An EliteBook8540w - What HDD Will Fit?

Question

Hello fellow HP Laptop users I own an EliteBook 8540w and am wondering what HDD I can use to upgrade this box. Detailed specs of the box are as follows. CPU Type: Mobile QuadCore Intel Core i7-740QM, 2100 MHz (16 x 131)
Motherboard Name: Hewlett-Packard HP EliteBook 8540w
Motherboard Chipset: Intel Ibex Peak-M QM57, Intel Clarksfield
System Memory: 8119 MB  (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM) DIMM1: Samsung M471B5273CH0-CH9 4 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM  (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz)  (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz)  (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz)  (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz)  (5-5-5-14 @ 380 MHz) DIMM2: Samsung M471B5273CH0-CH9 4 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM  (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz)  (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz)  (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz)  (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz)  (5-5-5-14 @ 380 MHz) Video Adapter: NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800M  (1 GB) HDD:The HDD I have now is this one.I assume the height of the HDD is the key factor here, so not so many restrictions on the HDD, is this correct? I could get a SSD as well as long as the height is fine, right? Thank you for your help. Best RegardsW9Y

Answer 1

Dear Huffer Thank you for your informative reply here as well! I recently had a laptop over for setting up a new OS and there was an SSHD in it that made the boot up process blazing fast, though the transfer rate was mediocre. So I have sort of come in touch with a sort of SSD already and liked what I experienced there. Would you by any chance be able to recommend a few good SSDs off the top of your head? Let's say in the 100GB, 250GB and 500GB size league? What makes are good and what makes should one try to avoid? The box is primarily used for simple graphics editing (Illustrator, Sketch, etc), running various OSs with VirtualBox as well as office work (MS Office 2013) and mostly coding (WAMP, webdev work, etc). I have come to quite like running VMs and doing work there while keeping the host free from Windows rot. Works great so far. No gaming or intensive video editing is planned, at least the gaming part I have no interest whatsoever, might take a dab in video editing though. Why do I mention this? Well I assume depending on what the SSD is used for there are possibly better or worse choices. Since I also do frequent images of the host OS (Macrium Reflect Free does a truly excellent job there for years now!) it would be great to have a fast transfer rate on the SSD itself, I mean from the common C: partition to the D: partition. I am accepting your reply as the solution to my question and would be super happy to hear about your SSD experience, you being a true fan of this technology it seems. Again, thank you for your help. Kind RegardsW9Y edit:For example looking at this review of this heavily marketed SSD it seems great for gaming but "In our real-world workloads, however, it generally performed well below par.." so nothing I would even consider taking into consideration I like fast or at least solid internal transfer rates as well as decent performance when using VMs or imaging the host OS. So yeah there you go, what is great for one type of user should not even be looked at another type of user. Fun fact about that review is the productivity scenario they pick for "most users", that being , here it comes, "32-bit Vista", "IE8", and "Office 2007". Let me ask you, who uses Vista in 2015? Who actually does still use Vista at all these days? Anyways without wanting to sound arrogant or anything, it did make me laugh when checking that SSD review..