which Aspire A515-55 & A515-56 laptops can be upgraded with an HDD ?

mayeri

I'm considering buying an Aspire A515 laptop, but one of my requirements is to be able to add a 1TB HDD (and ideally be able to boot from it if needed). I've seen mentions of being able to do this on "A515" but it's not clear on which models of the A515 series this can be done. Can it be done on any of the new 56 ( GEN 11 i5-1135) models and which of the many 55 series models ? I've tried chatting with "sales/tech" support and wasn't left with a lot of confidence.

StevenGen

mayeri said:

I'm considering buying an Aspire A515 laptop, but one of my requirements is to be able to add a 1TB HDD (and ideally be able to boot from it if needed). I've seen mentions of being able to do this on "A515" but it's not clear on which models of the A515 series this can be done. Can it be done on any of the new 56 ( GEN 11 i5-1135) models and which of the many 55 series models ? I've tried chatting with "sales/tech" support and wasn't left with a lot of confidence.

They both do what you want but, the Aspire A515-56 is the latest so I would be purchasing that. This laptop has a 1x 2280 M.2 NVMe slot and a 2.5” SATA 3 6GB/sec space, you can have a 1x 2.5” 1TB SSD and if you want to buy a spinner 2.5” HDD forget it, as that will not compare to an SSD as a boot drive, its too slow, as installing your operating system on a 2.5” spinner HDD is about and from 100% to 200% slower than an M.2 as a boot drive.

My suggestion is for you to use the Aspire A515-56’s m.2 SSD as the boot drive and use either a 1TB SSD or a spinner HDD as your slave, its how everyone uses the Aspire A515-56. Have a look here at a comprehensive review and internal photos of the Aspire A515-56 Acer Aspire 5 (A515-54G) review – they got it back on track (laptopmedia.com)

mayeri

I'll reconsider making the HDD the boot device ( I presume the bios doesn't prevent it). I wish Acer would clearly indicate in all its spec sheets the existence of the 2.5" bay.

Now the only major issue I have with the Aspire, and far too many other laptops these days, is what passes for an RJ-45 ethernet port on these devices. It' may be the most failure prone component on the laptops. Heaven forbid they had made the laptops just a hair thicker to permit a proper RJ-45 connector. Anyone know of a way to repair them when the spring door breaks ?