Notebook 9 Pro (i7-6700HQ chip)

[Kennyfukuda]

Hi,

Just recently purchased the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro (the 2015 version). It's got a M2 SATAIII SSD, made by "Lite-On." Why Samsung didn't include it's own SSDs is beyond me...

Does anyone know the reliability of those SSDs? I'm thinking about upgrading the SSD to a 1TB Samsung SSD.

Also -- what happens if you put in a PCIe drive in that slot?

Other question is this: as I understand it, it has a USB-C 3.1 slot, which uses the same Alpine Ridge controller as Thunderbolt 3. Does anyone know if a BIOS update will come that enables the Thunderbolt3? Or...is that a dumb question?

 

[g-unit1111]

A lot of laptop manufacturers include Lite-On drives. It's mainly a cost-cutting thing. Although I do agree that is strange that Samsung wouldn't include its' own SSDs with its' laptops.

 

[Eximo]

Probably a deal between the actual builder/assembler and Lite-On and Samsung has to go along with it.

One of my co-workers had a Lite-On SSD go bad in his Dell, just over three years. Only one I have heard of so far in our company. I'm sure there are others, but we do have the oldest of that model. My fan recently stopped working.

I do know they really, really don't like being full. The whole computer freezes during, presumably, garbage collection or trim when the drive is about 90% full.

 

[jaguarskx]

It has to do with production capacity. Samsung makes SSDs for their own laptops, but also for others brands. They do not have the production capacity to meet everyone's demand. Expanding production is not always a viable solution since that means spending money to expand and hiring more employees. Sure if demand is always high then that is great. However, when demand drops that means the production facilities may not be used and employees are downsized. There are a lot of costs involved with hiring employees and also downsizing them.... a lot of costs. Especially in countries with a significant amount of labor laws. Idle production facilities still require money to maintain which increases expenses for the company and lowers profits. It also takes a lot of money and time to build new production facilities. Plan this out incorrectly and the production facilities can finally come on line during a slump in the global economy which makes the new facilities a liability for Samsung.

Samsung has legal contracts to fill orders placed by third parties whether they are online stores selling SSDs to consumers, or system builders. Delivering SSDs to the customer orders to fulfill contracts takes precedence over another division within Samsung. A system builder like Dell can sue Samsung for not honoring contracts. On the other hand, a division of Samsung cannot sue Samsung itself.

Rather than stopping production until more Samsung SSDs are made available to Samsung system builder division (which means they make no sale, but still incur expenses), they use SSDs from other manufactures. This is standard business procedure.

 

[Kennyfukuda]

So -- can I replace the stock SSD with a new SATA3 SSD?

 

[g-unit1111]

So -- can I replace the stock SSD with a new SATA3 SSD?

You can replace it with another M2 drive of the same form factor.

 

[jaguarskx]

Yes.

You will need to buy a USB to SATA cable to connect your new Samsung 850 EVO SSD to the laptop so that you can clone the Lite-On SSD to the Samsung SSD using Samsung's software (or another software). After the cloning is done, you can replace the SSD in the laptop.

 

[jaguarskx]

A PCIe SSD will not fit into a SATA interface.

 

[Kennyfukuda]

Got it. Thanks. I'm looking at the Samsung EVO 850 M2 drive.