Microsoft Invents The Surface Removal SSD
You Could Upgrade Your Surface Pro 7+, But They’d Rather You Didn’t
Microsoft have come up with a brainstorm! They have this insane idea to enable Enterprise customers to be able to swap out the SSD in the relatively new Surface Pro 7+ with a different one, called a Surface Removal SSD or rSSD. They do not want to encourage you to do this however, the move is a reluctant acceptance that many Enterprise customers prefer to purchase systems which they can remove and replace the drive when deploying it to a new employee.
They will not make these Surface Removal SSDs for consumers, only Enterprise customers will be able to purchase the drives, so don’t go thinking you will be able to replace a bad SSD a few years down the road if the one installed in your Surface Pro 7+ goes bad. As well, Microsoft strongly discourages you from replacing your rSSD with one of higher capacity, even if Windows hits the point where your OS takes up the vast majority of the 128GB drive which came with your Surface Pro 7+.
Their statement reads “Installing a third-party SSD or a different Microsoft SSD (of another volume size) may result in reduced performance and unsupported configurations.” You might well wonder when Microsoft designed their own unique SSD, including flash and controller, which is somehow designed in a way which is completely different from any other manufacturers. You might also wonder how installing a larger bespoke SSD, with or without a larger cache, would negatively impact performance, as we certainly do. Perhaps, as in many cases, you can blame BitLocker?
Unveiling the range of Surface Removal SSDs (rSSDs), Microsoft admitted that popping in something bigger to replace an existing storage device was "technically possible", but it "strongly discourages" users from doing so.
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Getting paid to advertise much? They did not invent that… they bought it.
He wasn’t advertising. He was making fun of them. Did you read it?
This is a critical feature, example: Automotive Design Engineer drops his surface pro and screen cracks, The IT Dept needs to send it back to Microsoft for new screen Or new machine, but the hard drive is filled with confidential design secrets. It is absolutely critical that the hard drive be removed before sending the computer back to the manufacturer for repair. This has been a limiting factor for mass adoption of Surface Pro. By adding this removable drive this opens Microsoft surface pro for as an enterprise solution for big companies like Honda, Toyota, Tesla, GM, NASA, SpaceX. Etc….
This is all much to do about “status quo”…. Corporate Ass Covering. After MS gave companies what they wanted, removable SSD, Then they put out of a statement about using Non-MS rSSD’s or different volume SSD To cover their ass in case of a service/warranty issue. EVERY…Company has TOS & warranty policies like this to some degree or other. So what??
*citation needed.
Lenovo, Bosanova and Dell have never suggested replacing an SSD/HDD/DOM would degrade performance nor do they refuse to honour a warranty on laptops/desktop/thinclients that do not contain the drive originally shipped on the bill of lading.
Source? I am an Enterprise customer who has literally sent back 100’s of devices for warranty repair. Servers are a different beast of course.
So… The Surface Pro 7+ has a user-replaceable (2230) SSD – with a VERY easily accessible door, no need to even remove the back panel (let alone some of the finagling some other laptops require, like hiding the m.2 slot on the opposite side of the system board) – and the only thing stopping you from doing it is Microsoft telling you pretty-please not to? Sounds like a win to me.