Help with laptop question, adding Optane or SSD swap?

[billabeasta]

Hi everyone, so I am kinda new to like building computers, and stuff like that, and I was wondering if I could get some help. So I have a HP Pavilion x360 - 15-bk127cl, and I have had it for a few years, now I am noticing the boot time is getting obnoxious, and is generally getting slower for accessing files and things like that. I'm currently a grad student/ TA so stuff like that really slows down, pretty much everything. So I know generally laptops aren't that upgradable but I figured swapping out the hard drive would be something easy to do that would make a big difference for my purposes. I started getting really into the linus tech tips videos, trying to learn stuff cause I am still super new to this, and i thought that either giving this a ssd or adding a optane drive would be super helpful. I looked up some stuff for the optane drive and I was thinking about getting the 16 gb one, but my only issue is I am not sure if my laptop supports it. So on the product maintenance and service guide it doesn't look like it supports a m.2 drive, but I could swap out the hard drive for a ssd (again not sure if I am reading it right.) I think the board is the 863887-601 mentioned in the book on page 27. So I am kinda confused just cause the book says no other internal slots, but on the intel rapid storage solution it says there is another internal port. (I included screenshots to help) I also as a side note while writing this saw that the hp diagnostic thing (added a screenshot) says I have more RAM capability, even though the book and task manager says i only have one slot, and it is sodered. So generally a whole lot of stuff on this bad boy says a lot of conflicting things, so my question is really which do I believe, and from that what would be the best option. I would get a new laptop but I am living that grad student budget life so a small thing like this would be kinda doable. Any help would really appreciated, I have been researching it for a while and it is just getting really confusing for me . I also have minimal experience opening stuff up, I tried opening up my old laptop that had a busted hard drive so I can recognize some things.

hp pavlion x360 convertable PC (model numbers 15-bk100 through 15-bk199 and 15-bk000 through 15-bk099).pdf

[SidM]

Im sorry bruh, but ur laptop doesnt have that m.2 slot to have a optane ssd, my best recommendation would be to get an ssd, crucial is the best brand as far as price to performance ratios go. 

[billabeasta]

gotcha, thank you for the help i appreciate it

[Firewrath9]

I'd just get a 2.5" 1TB SSD (they are 100-120$), if you have a 1TB HDD, then you can use a SATA to USB adapter so you can use the HDD as external storage.

[billabeasta]

That's a really good idea actually, thank you I appreciate it. Out of curiosity would anyone know why the intel rapid storage techn reads there's an extra internal empty port? That is just more for my own curiosity more than anything else.

[Slayerking92]

Not a lot of free memory left either.  that could lead to a lot of swap file usage, which could slow things down a bit on a spindle drive.  Might want to look at that as an upgrade option as well.

[billabeasta]

I was looking into that, and I actually might have a solution. So I have this old laptop, a dell inspiron 15 3000 series with 4 GB of removable ram, but the harddrive on that, and fan are both shot (fall damage was taken), so I am thinking about just taking the ram from that, and putting it into this laptop when I swap out the hard drive for a ssd. I don't know if that will actually work, but they are both ddr3l and i think operate at the same speed, so i could maybe gain the 4 gb there, but i'm not sure if it'll work cause one is dell and one is hp. and it would be a different size then what is already there. But i figure it is worth a shot just because I already have the extra ram laying around. I am not even sure if my laptop has an open ram slot, but crucial and the manual seem to think i do even though task manager doesn't, but I will find out once it is opened i guess.