What is my best option to upgrade HDD in my Aspire A315-42-R9ZV? SSD or M.2?

WPJH

Hello,

I would like to upgrade my hard drive - performance is getting a little slow, and it feels a good time for a refresh! I have a 1TB HDD installed, and so assume a straight swap for an SSD (having cloned) would be the first choice. But I also appear to have an M.2 bay available. What will give me the best result?

Crucial suggest SSD's like this (M.2 drives did not come up in their suggestions…?)

https://uk.crucial.com/ssd/mx500/ct1000mx500ssd1/ct15433188#res-install

Would I also see benefit in upgrading the RAM (I have 8GB installed?)

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/704537/what-is-my-best-option-to-upgrade-hdd-in-my-aspire-a315-42-r9zv-ssd-or-m-2

There are two aspects to take into consideration: A Sata SSD that I recommend as the 2.5" Sata-3 Samsung 870 Evo V-NAND 2TB and a M.2 NVMe SSD for the 3x2 PCIe slot like Samsung 970 Evo Plus up to 1TB, the Gen3 NVMe will run only at SATA SSD speed so there is not much to gain in performance. My recommendation is to replace the HDD for a SSD. You can clone the HDD but I prefer the old fashioned way with a backup drive and Windows7 backup app that creates an image .VHD file stored on an external backup drive that you can mount in any Windows File Explorer to copy and browse (plus it is free), you can find the BU program in Control panel of Windows10-11, at the end it will ask if you want to make a Windows Recovery flash drive that is used to restore the image file. As a backup drive I can recommend Seagate 4TB backup SSD ($100).

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/704537/what-is-my-best-option-to-upgrade-hdd-in-my-aspire-a315-42-r9zv-ssd-or-m-2

There are two aspects to take into consideration: A Sata SSD that I recommend as the 2.5" Sata-3 Samsung 870 Evo V-NAND 2TB and a M.2 NVMe SSD for the 3x2 PCIe slot like Samsung 970 Evo Plus up to 1TB, the Gen3 NVMe will run only at SATA SSD speed so there is not much to gain in performance. My recommendation is to replace the HDD for a SSD. You can clone the HDD but I prefer the old fashioned way with a backup drive and Windows7 backup app that creates an image .VHD file stored on an external backup drive that you can mount in any Windows File Explorer to copy and browse (plus it is free), you can find the BU program in Control panel of Windows10-11, at the end it will ask if you want to make a Windows Recovery flash drive that is used to restore the image file. As a backup drive I can recommend Seagate 4TB backup SSD ($100).

WPJH

That's very helpful and clear - thank you!! Good to know about the speed limitation.