220-1101 Question 240
Single answer2.5-inchA technician is upgrading an older laptop that currently uses a 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. The user wants significantly faster boot times without replacing the laptop. After opening the system, the technician confirms there is only one internal drive bay and no M.2 slot on the motherboard. Which upgrade should the technician recommend?
- A
Replace the existing 2.5-inch SATA hard drive with a 2.5-inch SATA SSD
- B
Install a 3.5-inch desktop SSD using a mounting bracket inside the laptop
- C
Add an NVMe drive by connecting it to the laptop's SATA port
- D
Keep the 2.5-inch hard drive and add more RAM because storage speed will not affect boot time
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best recommendation is to replace the existing 2.5-inch SATA HDD with a 2.5-inch SATA SSD. In A+ Core 1 scenarios, technicians must match both the form factor and interface to the existing hardware. Here, the laptop has a single 2.5-inch internal bay and no M.2 slot, so a 2.5-inch SATA SSD is the correct and realistic upgrade path. This aligns with common manufacturer documentation for older laptops that support 7mm or 9.5mm 2.5-inch SATA drives. A 3.5-inch drive is not a laptop solution, and NVMe cannot be attached directly to a SATA port because the protocols and connectors differ. As a best practice, technicians should also verify drive thickness, confirm SATA compatibility, back up user data before replacement, and reinstall or clone the operating system as needed.
- A. Correct.
This is correct. A 2.5-inch SATA SSD is a direct, practical replacement for a 2.5-inch SATA hard drive in laptops that use a standard SATA drive bay. It provides much lower latency and faster read/write performance than a mechanical HDD, which commonly results in noticeably faster boot and application load times without requiring a new motherboard or different interface.
- B. Incorrect.
This is incorrect. A 3.5-inch drive is designed for desktop systems and is physically too large for a standard laptop drive bay. Even with a bracket, the laptop chassis and power/data layout are not intended for 3.5-inch drives.
- C. Incorrect.
This is incorrect. NVMe drives use PCIe, not SATA. A SATA port cannot natively support an NVMe drive, and the scenario specifically states there is no M.2 slot. This option confuses storage form factor and interface type.
- D. Incorrect.
This is incorrect. Additional RAM can improve multitasking and reduce paging in some situations, but it does not replace the performance benefits of moving from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD. Boot time is heavily affected by storage performance, especially in systems still using 2.5-inch HDDs.