ACER Predator Orion 5000 PO5-600s motherboard layout - any room for a second M.2 SSD?

Manxie

Hi, I've got an ACER Predator Orion 5000 PO5-600s and wondered if anyone knew whether there was room on the motherboard for an additional M.2 SSD.  I've not been able to find a layout for one.

I'd decided to opt for a larger M.2 SSD to replace the original C:drive with a 1 TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe which I've now got. A local Tech Repair shop is going to clone the SSD for me, but I just wondered if there was any way I could continue with leaving the existing SSD on C:drive and move Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) to the new SSD and avoid having to copy so much over.  I'd leave the rest on the HDD on D:drive and this would be a new E:drive.  It's the MSFS that I'm really wanting to get on the new SSD.  It gets regular upgrades and they are often pretty big.  The last one was over 4 GB and the SIM is on the C:drive (using about 50 GB) with (ahem) 191 GB on D:drive for the world, aircraft and updates. So the new SSD would be primarily for MSFS.

I realise there are adapters from M.2 to SATA and PCIe but wondered if they would slow the new SSD down and if the PO5-600s had any expansion ports I could use to do so.  For example it does have an "Easy Swap HDD cage"  mmo_87900784_1612359408_6867_10833.pdf (icecat.biz)   just underneath the Optical Disc Drive (ODD).  It's just whether it would detract from the new SSD if I used one of those with an adapter instead of either putting in another M.2 slot or using the Easy Swap HDD cage.  The 970 EVO Plus has a PCIE x 4 Hard disk interface.

Grateful for any advice please.

billsey

It shouldn't take all that long to clone a drive, even if it has a couple of hundred gig in use. I'd use an NVMe to USB-C external case and start with the new drive installed in that. Clone the internal 512GB SSD to the external much larger drive and when it's done use Disk Management to verify the 100MB EFI partition is still 100MB, that the one or two Recovery partitions are also still the same size, and that the System partition has been resized to fill the remainder of the disk. Once you are sure that all looks right shut down, remove the old drive and put the new one in it's place. Boot it up and verify everything works, then put the old drive in the external case and use Disk Management again to wipe all partitions off it, then rebuild it as a single data partition.

billsey

There are two M.2 slots on the MB, #18 & 20 in this diagram, but #20 is only for WiFi/Bluetooth cards and can't be used for a SSD. You do have several SATA ports (#11) so I'd configure it with the OS and MSFS executables on the NVMe SSD and a separate 2.5" SSD on a SATA port that contains the data files. That will give you the best performance without using up all that space on the system drive. The other option is to use a larger SSD in the M.2 slot and partition it as a system and data partition. I have a 2TB M.2 NVMe in my desktop...

Manxie

Thanks billsey, the current SSD on C:drive has the OS etc on it, but it's only quite small (512 GB) (this is the one that you may recall had made up another E:drive that was really just another part of C:drive). 

The original idea and still the most likely one we'll use, is to clone the existing C:drive SSD and replace it with the new (cloned) 970 EVO Plus NVMe.  Nevertheless, cloning the new NVMe from C:drive  is going to take many hours - it's got 183 GB* on it, and moving over the 191 GB MSFS files from the HDD to the new NVMe will take many hours more.  Had there been another M.2 slot I had hoped that would have saved cloning the original C:drive and we could have "just" copied MSFS over to the new one. 

There does seem to be an adapter for the 970 EVO Plus PCIe x 4 to SATA 2.5 inch so could I put that in the Easy Swap HDD cage?  (And save having to clone the existing C:drive).  Mind you that HDD cage is SATA.  Would I not lose a lot of speed with that?   Are there any other PCIe x 4 slots going free?  I don't think there are.

 *Strangely, counting up all the individual Programs etc listed when I explore C:drive it comes to about 183 GB as opposed to the 155 GB shown if I go to "This PC" and right click on Acer (C:)  So there is about 28 GB more than shown in Acer (C:) Properties - I've no idea what's going on there...

Thanks again for all your help, billsey.

Manxie

On closer inspection that adapter may not be suitable. 

billsey

It shouldn't take all that long to clone a drive, even if it has a couple of hundred gig in use. I'd use an NVMe to USB-C external case and start with the new drive installed in that. Clone the internal 512GB SSD to the external much larger drive and when it's done use Disk Management to verify the 100MB EFI partition is still 100MB, that the one or two Recovery partitions are also still the same size, and that the System partition has been resized to fill the remainder of the disk. Once you are sure that all looks right shut down, remove the old drive and put the new one in it's place. Boot it up and verify everything works, then put the old drive in the external case and use Disk Management again to wipe all partitions off it, then rebuild it as a single data partition.

Manxie

Thanks again billsey.

billsey

Let us know how it comes out...

Manxie

Will do.  Thanks.