New Laptop - empty m.2 socket - doesn'r recognise SSD

bobkn said:

I didn't notice the anti-tamper sticker in the online image. Your path makes more sense to me now.

Now I understand why you were advocating swapping out the SSD for a bigger capacity.

If I could guarantee getting the anti-tamper label off in one piece, I'd happily swap the 2242 SSD for a 2280 - but of course I won't know how it would turn out until I attempted it - then Murphy's Law would kick in, the label would tear and the laptop subsequently go belly-up!

Too bad that 42 mm long SSDs are so scarce, and that there's no option for a regular 2.5" SATA drive. (The SATA performance would be inferior to PCI-E/NVME. but better than adequate for most purposes.)

Agreed. The previous laptop had a small (16GB) Intel Optaine SSD and a 1TB 2.5" hard disk. I couldn't work out where the OS was (I suspected the Optane drive) but when one drive failed and the laptop wouldn't boot (and because I could get data off the hard disk when attached to another pc via a USB caddy) I suspected the Optaine SSD. That laptop was under a 2-year warranty and failed after 13 months. This new laptop isn't of the same high spec as the previous machine, but perfectly adequate for my wife's email/YouTube/WP etc.

I've found a 512Gb and 1TB 2242 in the correct m.2 PCIe NVMe format. I've bought a small (128GB) SSD to clone the existing installation (after I've installed Office 2016/VLC/Acrobat etc, etc) so that I can save the pain of reinstallation if the SSD needs replacing and it will serve as 'proof of concept' that the empty m.2 drive does indeed work as advertised.

If it does, then I'll get the bigger SSD for documents & storage because although her laptop is now just around 2 weeks old, she's used 30% of the disk.

I'm also educating her to get used to storing documents & photos in an external disk.

Art

Thanks Denis.

Nearly ready to post the text document to run as a repeating task as per your advice last week.

Art

Hi Try3

Here is the proposed batch file for the SD save ...

Set BackupDrive=M:

Robocopy "C:\desktop" "%BackupDrive%\Desktop" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\birkdale\2019-20" "%BackupDrive%\documents\birkdale\2019-20" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\computer stuff" "%BackupDrive%\documents\computer stuff"/S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\house" "%BackupDrive%\documents\house" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\maths teaching" "%BackupDrive%\documents\maths teaching /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\print screen files" "%BackupDrive%\documents\print screen files" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\scan" "%BackupDrive%\documents\scan" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\tutoring" "%BackupDrive%\documents\tutoring" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Robocopy "C:\documents\web orders" "%BackupDrive%\documents\web orders" /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY: DAT /XA:SH /MIR

Pause to look at the results until you are confident in the file. This line makes the batch file stay open when it has finished its job.

:: Put two colons in front of Pause after you decide you no longer want it to remain open when it has finished. Or just delete the Pause line and this line.

NOTE: The actual file DOESN'T have a space in the middle of the command DCOPY: DAT (as shown here) If I leave the space out I get a bloody smiley!

Art

Thanks Denis or should that be 'Eagle Eyes' ??

Well spotted! Yes, the locations of the various folders are in C: drive.

Didn't know about the 'No Parse' command - that's very useful info.

So, I amend the text file, save it with a '.bat' extension and check that Notepad hasn't added '.txt' on the end.

Given the folders I'd like to copy is it simply that the SD card needs a folder called 'Documents' on it or do I need to create all of the sub-folders too, such as 'documents\birkdale\2019-20' ??

Then run 'Task Scheduler' and point it at the '.bat' file?

Have I got that right?

Also, if you could, can you explain what each of the switches in the Robocopy command does - e.g. the '/MIR' in /S /R:10 / MT:1 /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR. Robocopy /help says that MIR mirrors a complete directory tree (does that mean that it creates sub-folders as necessary??)

Thanks in advance,

Art

Thank you Denis.

In a word FAN-TAS-TIC!

Art

- - - Updated - - -

UPDATE:

The 'Test' 128GB Toshiba SSD arrived in the post this morning and was installed and running in minutes (no drivers or formatting required).

The newly-installed drive appears in 'This PC' as D: drive.



The above information is intended to help anyone else with the same laptop - Lenovo IdeaPad S540-IWL install a second SSD. Adding an additional SSD to the empty m.2 socket is easy - the only really tricky part is opening up the laptop! Make sure that you get a m.2 NVMe PCIe 2242 card. The trouble is that these m.2 PCIe 2242 form-factor cards (22 x 42mm) aren't widely available.

Of course, you could just remove the existing 256GB card and adapter freeing up the m.2 PCIe 2280 4x connector in the process and put the existing 2242 card in the 'JSSD2' socket. I haven't done that (as has been discussed earlier in this thread) as I'm guessing that removal or damage to the Lenovo 'Anti-Tamper' label would invalidate the 3-year guarantee on this laptop. The 2280 cards (22 x 80mm) are readily available from a wide variety of manufacturers.

Anyway, in this new configuration, my wife has an additional 50% storage capacity (until I source a larger card - currently waiting for the WD 2242 card to be back in stock at Misco).

Unfortunately, this post had images of the new card in situ. However in 'Preview' all of the image could be seen but when posted, the most relevant parts of the image were 'off the page'. Ho hum!

I hope this helps,

Art

- - - Updated - - -
@Try3

I've discovered that you don't need to create the folders on the SD card before copying the files, the command you gave including the switches /S /R:10 /MT:1 /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR automatically creates the required folders - so, for example the following command:
Robocopy "C:\Users\AD\My Pictures" "%BackupDrive%\My Pictures" /S /R:10 /MT:1 /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR
will create the folder 'My Pictures' on the SD card complete with its contents (in my case 45.4GB of pictures).

Similarly to copy across the folder Documents\COMPUTER STUFF just required the command:
Robocopy "C:\Users\DAD\Documents\COMPUTER STUFF" "%BackupDrive%\Documents\COMPUTER STUFF" /S /R:10 /MT:1 /DCOPY:DAT /XA:SH /MIR

There was a mistake in each line of the example file posted on 27th Feb (post #25 this thread) - I'd included a space after the '/' and before the 'MT:1' command. Needless to say, Robocopy threw up an error.

The above examples have rectified this.

Due to some of the folders having a LOT of stuff in them (e.g. the 'COMPUTER STUFF' folder is 60GB in size with 898 files and 89 folders, I am using a 256GB Integral SD Card, formatted as NTFS.

The above is just for information, I hope this helps folks.

Art