Question Lenovo ideapad Gaming 3-15IMH05 Laptop 81Y400BRCC SSD upgradiblity?

mark_887797

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Sep 22, 2017
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Hi. I am coming from the HDD side of the world and predominately using a custom-built desktop PC where I can fairly easily swap out the components. My PC is from 2011!

I recently purchased a Lenovo ideapad Gaming 3-15IMH05 Laptop 81Y400BRCC with these HDD/SDD and RAM specs:
16 GB RAM (2x 8GB SO-DIMM DDR4-2933)
1 HDD 2.5" Seagate
1 M.2 2242 SSD 512GB (UMIS AM620 RPJTJ512MEE1OWX.

According to the manual. Storage Support :

Up to two drives, 1x 2.5" HDD
+ 1x M.2 2242/2280 SSD —

• 2.5" HDD up to 1TB
• M.2 2280 SSD up to 1TB
• M.2 2242 SSD up to 512GB

What is throwing me off here is I recall seeing a Youtube video of a hard drive upgrade and the user made mention there were limitations in installing the SSD drive as an upgrade. I believe he said only 1 hard drive could be used because the M.2 2280 slot interferes with the other slots (I could be wrong here though).

I am assuming I can only have max two storage devices on the mobo? Either two SSDs or one SSD and one HDD? My current 1 TB HDD is slow as molasses at 5400 rpm.

What I would like to do is swap out my 1 GB HDD with a 1 GB SSD. I guess it must use the M.2 2280 form factor given the fact C drive is using M.2 2242 form factor at 512 GB max?

However, I could see myself eating up a lot of storage on my primary C drive since applications are stored anyway on C drive (C:\Users\XXXX\AppData) anyway even though I may install them on D drive.

As such, what would be my system limitations in upgrading my storage devices?

I also would like to upgrade my RAM down the road to 32 GB.

My manual is available here on Lenovo's website.

Any assistance is appreciated. Thanks.