SABRENTRocket 2230 1TB NVMe SSD – PCIe Gen4 M.2 2230 Internal SSD for Steam Deck, Surface Pro, Ultrabook, HTPC – DRAM-Less with HMB, Up to 5GB/s [SB-2130-1TB]

I had read a lot of horror stories about upgrading the M.2 NVMe drive on the Surface Pro 8 (SP8). There were a lot of stories about overheating and BSOD when trying to re-install Windows. When I saw this Sabrent drive advertised on Amazon it specifically said Surface Pro compatible and that it ran cool, so I took a chance on it. I am very pleased with the result.I'll do the TL;DR part up front:I upgraded my 256GB M.2 Drive on my Surface Pro 8 with the 1 TB Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe M.2 drive, and the drive runs great at PCIe 4.0 Speeds according to CrystalMark 8. No BSOD and runs under 50 Celsius *EDIT*: Under maximum load, about 35 degrees celcius degrees idle/normal operations *END EDIT* according to CrystalDiskInfo 8. I was able to copy all of my files using Acronis partitioning software you get to use free from Sabrent when you purchase their drive.If you want to know exactly how I copied everything over without ever having to go into the BIOS, keep reading:UPFRONT DISCLAIMER: You will need to purchase three things to do this upgrade if you don't have them already. Two of them you would need anyway if you were to upgrade like Microsoft suggests: #4 Torx screwdriver/bit, thermal compound, and an external NVMe drive enclosure.1) First I did purchase an external NVMe enclosure to copy the old drive to the new one. You can find them on Amazon for under $30 US. You need to make sure the enclosure can take 2230 size drives. I got one that had USB C to USB C cable and was thunderbolt compatible. Another consideration is that after you swap the NVMe drives you can use the enclosure with your old drive and have another high speed hard drive to back stuff up on, although I found you will need an NVMe thermal pad/heatsink for the old drive or it can overheat.2) After reading about BSOD NVMe upgrade horror stories on the SP8 it lead me to articles talking about AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM. HIPM/DIPM power management is not on by default and you actually have to do a Windows registry edit to make it available. There are some good guides on how to do this via a quick google search. I recommend you enable it and turn the feature on.3) I had to disable drive encryption before copying files over (it is on by default). You can either disable encryption or get a USB encryption key. I chose to decrypt the drive which will take hours depending on how much data you have on the drive. You can re-encrypt once everything is over to the new drive.THIS NEXT PART IS WHERE MOVING FILES OVER AND GETTING WINDOWS SETEP ON THE NEW DRIVE DIFFERS FROM WHAT MICROSOFT WANTS YOU TO DO.4) I cannot stress enough the kudos to Sabrent for having their own disk partition software. Acronis, which you can get from Sabrent's website, will copy all of your files over for you verbatim; no reinstalling necessary. Follow the disk cloning prompts, and the best part is it will automatically increase the size of your main windows drive to maximum while keeping your boot partition and recovery partition intact (just make sure you chose the correct cloning prompt). Acronis alone makes it worth it to go with Sabrent.5) The SP8 comes with a front and back metal sleave for the NVMe drive. YOU WILL NEED a #4 Torx screwdriver bit (very tiny!) to unscrew the drive and screw it back in. The metal casing snaps off (do so gently so as not to bend the casing). I cleaned off the thermal compound the old drive had, put in the Sabrent drive, re-applied some CPU thermal compound I already had, and put the casing back together, then screwed it back into the SP8. A lot of videos show using a thermal pad instead of re-using the Microsoft drive enclosure. I think the drive enclosure helps distribute heat evenly back into the SP8 chassis.I turned the SP8 on and it recognized me with all of my files intact without ever having to go into the BIOS the first time. I have been running normally for almost two weeks and not a single issue. Drive runs cool and fast. Works great and couldn't be happier.I hope this helps you out if you are on the fence!

I purchased a steamdeck and managed to pick up a 2TB grey market western digital drive (guessing for a surface off of Amazon) and had my 512GB steamdeck drive slapped into my surface pro 9 that only came with 256GB of storage. Half a year later I wanted a larger drive for my surface so that I can dual boot it and use it like a giant kindle so I looked around and found out about the new Sabrent model. I recall a rep talking about the 1TB model and stating they hope to be able to release a 2TB model if it fits their thermal specs and four months later things went well and we have this 2TB model. If I had to do it again I would have put one of these in my steamdeck as well but luckily my weird 2TB drive is going strong but after great luck with Sabrent I'm a happy camper with this 2TB drive in my Surface Pro 9. I use Sabrent PCIe to M.2 adapters and I also use their 4TB gen 3 drives in a six drive ZFS array that I play game off of over 25Gbps OM4 optics. So I trust Sabrent drives enough to offload all my high speed NAS usage needs to an all NVMe RAID built from their drives and I find their M.2 to PCIe adapters quite handy given I'm using a motherboard lacking PCIe lanes to M.2 sockets so their adapter boards have come in handy in expanding my RAID to 6 drives and I bet I can pull off a 7th with a x8/x8 bifurcation adapter for my raptor lake CPU.I always thought M.2 2230 was a dumb standard, now I get it. I hope the slightly longer standard of 42mm, starts to take off after the success of this product. For those of you who are only familiar with M.2 2280, the way to decode that number is M.2 22mm x 80mm. All M.2 drives in the consumer space are the same width (all are typically PCIe x4 so this can't change much) and so only the length of the card differs. This is the shortest kind of M.2 since it's only 30mm in length, which is why it's a "M.2 2230" card. Before you purchase this card, make sure you really need a short M.2 2230 drive, perhaps a 2242, 2280 (very common) will fit and on the plus side the performance should be better since higher end controllers can be used, especially in the very common M.2 2280 form factor (22mm by 80mm "stick of gum" form factor). It's great that this card is gen 4 for future proofing, but most of the devices that can accomdinate this card today are not going to put that bandwidth to great use so expect some slight slowdowns (or a lot on the steamdeck, not that you should be expecting much there in the first place).Very happy using this product to dual boot Windows 11 Pro and Linux Mint 21.1, I think split the drive in half Windows:Linux 50:50 and it's working great. Again make sure the device you are attempting to purchase this drive for really needs a M.2 2230 drive to fit. I can use it on a Surface Pro 9 and Steamdeck which are small/thin requiring such a short (30mm) M.2 drive. If your system can accomindate a longer drive like 80mm (M.2 2280) then get that since cooling will be better and performance much higher. This drive is made for small stuff so use it in small stuff, otherwise go with something where the thermals/performance will be better, the only use case that makes sense of using this drive in a M.2 2280 socket would be to leverage the drive later in a compact device. But for compact spaces this drive thrives and I'm glad it was brought to the market.

I bought the 2TB for my Steam Deck. It was way more drive than I needed, but it worked great. Good quality, great performance. I will buy another when I need one for another project. I now have it mounted in a lap top

Great NVMe drive. Fit perfectly in the Steamdeck. Single sided drive with no heat issues so far.

Used with my Rog Ally, 100w power source, mouse, keyboard, and a portable 15 inch display, it all worked perfectly, my only gripe would be that this dock doesn't have an ethernet port

Weird. This outputs to my monitor when all other pricey docks would not, and has done so without issue.Only complaints are,- no Ethernet port, but there are dongles for that- steam deck does NOT fit into the dock when it has an outer protective case. I literally have to use the protective kick-Stand to sit it up right.But why does this one work when others do not? No clue …..

Nice clean looking dockCurrent setup is the Rog Ally Z1XRunning to a 1080p ultra wide (1440p as well)I have the original 65w Ally charger which works just fine for me and still able to achieve 30w TURBOI'm running a m.2 external drive off the type c,2 out of the 3 USB 3.0 for mouse and keyboard dongleShe's smooth easy to pack and travelOnly thing was the JSAUX BACKPLATE along with aScreen protector made it a snug fitWould highly recommend

So far so good! Used it for almost 24 hours in total now