damn, maybe there is an ssd slot in there you are not aware of? I "found" a hard drive on a laptop I acquired (moms last hand-me-down), a 2tb ssd. Also had a similar laptop (dads) that only had an m.2 but there was a space for an ssd/hdd minus the ribbon cable. Yeah the cost of storage is idiotic now, hopefully something will come from the collusion/price fixing cases coming up against samsung/sk hynix/etc

I had bought a 2tb m.2 for my pc, then a month later purchased a 1tb m.2 (for a laptop I was giving to a friend) for about $30 more than I paid for the 2tb, a little over 2x the price for half the storage, YAY.