CHEAP SSD UPGRADE! - Adding 1TB to a Surface Pro 9 

How did you remove it

@@Sidb26 The heatsink? It's clipped on. You can just carefully bend the collar a bit and it should come apart into two easily, then bend it back to put it together. Just be careful not to bend it too much otherwise it may not go back together. Also don't worry too much if the plastic bit doesn't go back in - didn't on mine, doesn't appear to have any actual purpose.

@habilain I did it, the temp went down from 41 to 36

@@Sidb26 Nice!

Plus, at the time I was looking, only the Platinum color was coming with the 1tb.

I want to buy an sf9 in 2024 for my light video editing needs, is this device still relevant? Give me a review of your daily use, thank you.

Do you use surface pro 9?

@@WiikLyID Nope.

@@bryans8656 I want to buy it but honestly It's so hard to find the latest sf9 review in 2024

Good to know 👍🏻

All the videos I have seen say Torx T3

The Surface manual recommends a Torx Plus 31P driver for removing the screw attaching the SSD disc to the Surface Pro. BUT 'Torx Plus' is different than 'Torx' (both screwdrivers have six stars but Torx Plus have slightly rounded-off star points). Notwithstanding this very clear video, I'm reluctant to take on this job myself without using the recommended Torx Plus 31P. I live in the UK and it seems impossible to find a Torx Plus 31P driver. I've found a company that sells the individual bit, but they don't sell the screwdriver handle in which to fit the bit. Could I buy a cheap generic screwdriver to hold the bit? The only thing I've found is a company selling on Amazon that includes a Torx Plus 31P driver as a 'Vessel Set of 5 Precision Torx Plus and Torx Screwdrivers' - but this is for £53! I'd be grateful if someone could link me to somewhere that I could buy this simple tool as a reasonable price. It seems people are simply using the T3 Torx Screwdriver (and mostly getting away with it?) rather than the recommended Torx Plus 31P drive, but someone on Reddit says this resulted in stripping the threads, which makes me nervous.

It's not great at the end. I have a surfae pro 6, having an additional microSD. Occasionally the microsd disconnects from windows, leaving me WITHOUT access to that drive. So I could either leave it with the soldered, or better yet have the whole drive upgraded

You can see the capacity in the final speed test. The recovery process doesn’t pay any attention to capacity - it just formats the SSD and copies the setup files over. From there it’s just like when you fire up the device for the first time. Hope that makes sense 😁

the reason they can't move away from soldered SSDs is because of greed ... they have literally tons of money in cash offshore. 2TB of Soldered SSD @ Apple 800$ ; 2TB on Amazon of Samsung/ Sabrent / Seagate / Kingston etc costs 200$ roughly. Apple is charging 4x the price. At the same time if your Mac's SSD dies (and your warranty is expired) you'll pay 50% of what you paid for your mac because the way they go about your "repair" is by replacing the whole motherboard (CPU , RAM , SSD , Wifi card and ALL other components) Do you find that Normal , mr Al van der Laan? :)

@@codenamegrs9278 yes, I suspect greed is part of the problem, but I think the bigger reason for not being able to swap out anything is for aesthetics. Apple wants their products to be the thinnest, sleekest, cleanest products out there, they're so anal about this, so they're not gonna deviate from that just to make customer's lives easier. Having said that, the Chinese have been upgrading storage on iPods, iPhones, iPads, even new Apple Silicone Macs, for a while now. Just gotta have the proper tools, and its relatively easy. Wish we had shops here in the US to do the same upgrades.

Sure, you can upgrade the storage but do you really want to run an outdated CPU after a while when better/faster/lower power systems are avail? Upgradeability is overrated.

@@codenamegrs9278 Apple actually embedded their NAND controller in the Apple SoC hence it's not as simple as a SSD swap. The SSD is a proprietary NAND chips.

@@RunForPeace-hk1cu but i definitely don't wanna pay 800$ for 2TB soldered when ALL other SSD manufacturers offer 2TB for 200$. Thass MAD 🤣⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

Thanks 😊 I don’t need that much space. Most of my stuff is in cloud, so it’s just for apps and temporary working space. 1TB is fine for me. That 2TB drive should work fine. 👍🏻

I haven’t noticed a problem. I’m not throwing particularly data heavy workloads at it, but it’s been fine for me.

Thank you

👍torx 2 on mine.

@@ConstantGeekery oh, sorry - how odd. Thankyou again!

@@iainattenborough2582 glad you found it useful. I wonder if Microsoft changed the spec, because it would be easy to strip a T2 if you over-tighten it. Apparently T3 is good for double the torque... I just looked it up... clearly I need to get out more! 😂

@@ConstantGeekery - I pulled out the T2 and thought ... my my that is small. Then tried the T3 and it fitted. 2 hours later Windows 11 has finally finished installing the millionth patch and update. Teams refusing to install due to MS driver signing thing.. oh well :) - thanks again

I haven't had any issues at all.

u can't. pcie 4.0 has fundamental backwards compabitbility issues on surface pro 8 and older. dude above and everyone shilling 4.0 drives for surface pro 8 need a reality check... ur much better off with pcie 3.0 drive,s ry mate for the bad news

Will do. It has been completely fine so far 👍🏻

Only if you clone the drive. If you do a fresh install you’ll need to download them again.

@@ConstantGeekery The Windows 11 on old SSD has the most recent Windows updates. Do I have to re-download and install these same Windows updates after upgrade to a new SSD?

@@Mingbell If you are cloning the drive, then your new drive will be an exact copy of the old drive. You’ll need to Google instructions for that. If you do what I did in this video, you are starting from scratch, so there will be some updates to download afterwards.

@@ConstantGeekery Many thanks for the clarification. I will re-update the Windows after the upgrade as you have demonstrated. Have a nice day.

Exactly, their NVMe SSD model is intended to be used with PCIe 4.0 and the surface is limited to PCIe 3.0

I'm not aware of any. The latest Surface Pro has Thunderbolt and can be used with an eGPU, though that won't help you if you have a specific model that uses M.2

Depends how you do it. If you do a fresh install, the partitions will be done as part of the install process. If you clone an existing smaller drive, you'll need to resize (grow) the main partition afterwards.

I don’t see why not. If it’s a standard 2230 NVMe drive it should work fine.

It should be backward compatible with PCIe 3.0, but I’ve not personally tested it.

You can clone the drive if you have a suitable external enclosure for the new drive, and the right software to do it.

@@ConstantGeekery thank you!!

Unfortunately not. The new drive won’t have anything on it. You still need to download and install Windows. Good time to do it though.

@@ConstantGeekery Thank you. Great video

support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface-recovery-image

Yes

At the time of publishing this video, this was the cheapest main brand 2230 1TB SSD available in the UK, by some margin.

That suits you and thats fine ,, but many people do repair and upgrade their own machines , and some of apples business practices in the past like making it impossible to replace and install proper apple original parts even to the point of making the machine unusable for the most simple job unless its taken back to apple really are pretty shonky business practices . And in my view , if only one small cheap component of my machine needs a replacement that will happily keep the machine running for years longer , why should i have to pay apple half the cost of the original machines cost to have an apple tech do a simple repair that most hands on people could do for a mere fraction of the price.

@@mikldude9376 I think you have choices. With cars for example, if you hate a CVT, find a manufacturer who makes a 9 speed. I think all manufacturers, INCLUDING Apple make products that are easier for them to make. M1’s existence proves Apple engineers are moving in a different direction than “modular”. This meme of Apple solely designing products to rake in repair dollars is beyond paranoid. I would put Apple’s priorities of build quality and design philosophy ranking before “making repair money”.

A lot has changed on the Windows side in 18 years. You may want to take another look.

@@curtisquick1582 I know it has, I'm still happy with the Apple ecosystem they have going. The only reason I would get a PC would be for gaming, and it wold be a machine strictly for gaming, I wouldn't leave Apple. I would still do all my productivity on my MacBook Pro and iPad Pro.