Need to upgrade the HD on my Predator G3-710

I picked up one of these for the kids in December but it was a bit of a compromise, there were 3 models and I picked the one with the best graphics card at the expense of an SSD.
Now I am fed up with the complaints about how long it takes to start up and we are already short on hard drive space so I want to add large SSD.
The spec is;
G3-710 i5 7400
16GB Ram (I already added 8GB to it)
2TB Hard drive ( I am not actually sure from here if that is a partitioned 2TB or 2x1TB)

Any recommendations on a decent size SSD for the boot drive and open to suggestions on any other upgrade to speed it up.

Cheers
Paul

Accepted answers

All comments

ven98

If you are planning to use the SSD as a boot drive only without installing games on it 128GB or 256GB would be just fine.

To find out if the HDD is partitioned or there are 2 HDDs go to disk management.

Rizzit

I was intending to use it for OS and games, then give myself and my wife 1TB each and the kids another 1TB drive for all their school stuff.

billsey

...

Get as big of SSD as fits your budget, I'd look at 256GB, 512GB and 1TB M.2 models. You have three HD bays plus the ODD bay, and have four SATA connectors so having multiple drives isn't an issue. Since the SSD is M.2 you don't tie up a SATA slot. I believe the existing drive is a 2TB, but it's pretty easy to count if you open up the side.

Rizzit

I take it there is just a slot on the motherboard to plug the M.2 drive into then?

billsey

Yep, Between the GPU slot and the two 1x slots.

...

Rizzit

I have ordered one of these, fingers crossed it installs ok

Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB V-NAND M.2 PCI Express Solid State Drive

Thanks for the help everyone

Rizzit

Ok so I have the new M.2 SSD, after some head scratching I have found where it fits and installed it, booted up the PC but it does not show up anywhere.
Should it just appear or will I need to do anything with the BIOS to enable it or anything else?

Rizzit

I just checked in the BIOS and it does show up there and is recognised correctly, I just do not see it in windows under local storage

ven98

Go to disk management and if the ssd is there shown as unallocated space just right-click on it and select allocate.

Rizzit

No its not there, I thought it was at first but I realised it was showing me the 2TB disk in 4 partitions and the SSD not there at all.

Rizzit

Updated to the latest BIOS now and no change

billsey

...

Check in Device Manager as well as Disk Management. Sometimes you'll need a driver update to see drives that aren't typical SATA connections.

Rizzit

I could not find anything in device manager, did manage to install a 4TB SATA drive in the pull out bay without any headaches tonight, just wish the M.2 was so simple.

billsey

...

Try booting to recovery mode and use the command line to run diskpart to see if it sees the drive (list disk is the command). I don't see why it wouldn't show up in Disk Management if it's showing up in the BIOS.

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