admin_hub

sysop@hub:~/tools/storage-upgrade-planner$

storage-upgrade-planner

The cheapest upgrade with the largest effect, and the one where the wrong part gets ordered most often. Say what is in the machine and what you want: you get what to buy, what to watch for, and the steps to move the system over without losing anything.

M.2: the notches and the lengths

B keySATA, or slow PCIeM keyNVMe, up to 4 lanesB+M keySATA drive, fits bothnotch on the leftnotch on the righttwo notches
The notch decides what goes in, not what works. A B+M drive fits an M-key slot and is still a SATA drive: if the slot is wired for NVMe only, it is not found.
223030 mm224242 mm226060 mm228080 mm22110110 mm
22 mm wide, and as long as the last digits say. 2280 is the standard in PCs and notebooks, 2230 in handhelds and some slim notebooks, 22110 in servers.
  • The service manual of the PC or board says what the slot takes: "PCIe/NVMe", "SATA" or both. That line decides, not the look of the slot.
  • The second M.2 slot of a board is often slower, or shares its lanes with SATA ports or a PCIe slot.
  • The short slot with two small antenna plugs next to it is for the Wi-Fi card (key E). No drive goes there.

2.5 inch: one plug, three heights

2.5 inch SATApowerdata7 mm: every SSD9.5 mm: old notebook hard disks15 mm: server and high-capacity disks
One connector for all 2.5 inch drives, three heights. A slim notebook bay takes 7 mm only.
  • Keep the frame, the rubber rails and the little adapter cable of the old notebook drive. They are not in the box of the new one.
  • SATA is hot-pluggable on paper. Shut the machine down anyway.

find out what is in the machine

wmic diskdrive get model,size,interfacetype        # Windows, old but quick
Get-PhysicalDisk | Format-Table FriendlyName,MediaType,BusType,Size,HealthStatus
lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,ROTA,TRAN,MODEL              # Linux: ROTA 1 = hard disk, TRAN = sata or nvme
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda                           # health: paste the output into the SMART reader

The planner gives a direction, not a compatibility guarantee: the service manual of the device has the last word, and servers want drives from the maker's list. Sizes are rounded up to leave about a third free. Back up before any of this. Related: SMART reader, notebook hardware guide, desktop PC hardware guide, server hardware guide, connector identifier, disk wiping cheat sheet, BitLocker cheat sheet, RAID calculator.