Darren "Dazbo" Lester

Posted on May 24 • Originally published at Medium on May 23

Upgrading Your Microsoft Surface Laptop Hard Disk — Easier Than You Think!

#laptopupgrade #surfacelaptop #microsoftsurface #ssd

Overview

Older generations of Microsoft Surface devices were not upgradeable. You made your choice and you were stuck with the consequences. But the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is surprisingly easy to upgrade.

Here I’ll walk you through:

What types of upgrade SSDs are compatible
How to create your recovery image
How to open up your case, including the screwdriver you’ll need
How to use the recovery image, including some common gotchas
A few handy links of bits and pieces you might want to buy

Why Would You Want to Do This?

I love the Microsoft Surface Laptop range. I currently have a Surface Laptop 7 and I think it’s a great bit of kit. (By the way, you should check out my blog: Should You Switch to a Windows ARM Laptop? My Experience of the Surface Laptop 7.)

But these are not cheap. They’re premium devices with premium prices. And when you buy one, you need to think carefully about the spec you’re getting. When the Surface Laptop 7 launched, here’s what the line-up looked like, and how much each model would set you back:

Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 - Launch Configurations and Prices - Google Drive

docs.google.com

But what do you do if you’ve already bought it, and now your disk is full? My laptop has a 512GB and it’s full. No amount of housekeeping is going to save me!

And what if you wanted to put in a 2TB disk? There’s no option for that.

Upgrade Walkthrough

Ordering Parts

First you’re going to need your replacement SSD. The internal drive on the Surface Laptop 7 is a M.2 SSD. But it’s not the standard 80mm card. For this laptop you need the shorter 30mm format, called “ 2230 ”. Then pick your size. I wanted to upgrade my 512GB to 1TB.

There are a few popular choices for this SSD upgrade, including the Corsair MP600 Micro, the WD Black SN770M, and the Sabrent Rocket 2230. I went with the Corsair and bought one of these on Amazon:

This model cost me £145.

Next, you’re going to need an appropriate screwdriver to take the laptop apart. After a bit of research I determined that the screws used are “5IP”, aka Torx Plus 5. OMG, I fell down a rabbit hole of screws used in devices. Here is an excellent article that explains what Torx and Torx Plus screws are, and why they exist.

But it turns out that getting a Torx Plus screwdriver is difficult; certainly here in the UK. But here’s the good news: a standard Torx T5 screwdriver does the job fine. You could just buy such a screwdriver on its own, but I ended up buying this very cool JOREST precision screwdriver set from Amazon for a tenner. It includes the T5 bit that we need.

The other great thing about this set is that the screwdriver bits are magnetic, and so too is the case. This is very handy, because the screws you’re working with are TINY! They are easy to lose. Being able to lift them out with the screwdriver and then drop them into a magnetised case is a life-saver!

Create Your USB Recovery Drive

Time required: approx 30 mins. (Most of it spent downloading and waiting for the copy.)

You’re going to need a bootable USB recovery drive to perform a clean install of Windows 11 on your Surface Laptop after you’ve installed your shiny new SSD.

This Microsoft guide explains what to do. There are some things to note:

First, we download the Surface Laptop 7 factory image from this page. You’ll need to choose “Surface Laptop” from the dropdown, and enter your serial number.

I downloaded the newer “ Windows 11 Home Version 25H2 ”. It turns out that this creates a minor problem, but easy to solve. I tell you more in a minute.

Next we need to create a USB recovery drive. First we create the recovery drive from Windows, and then we’ll transfer the factory image files to it. The documentation is ambiguous about the size of flash drive you can use. The MS guide says “32GB is large enough but you may be able to use a smaller size”. And I’ve found other blogs and advice online that says it won’t work if your drive is bigger than 32GB. This is incorrect; you can go larger. I used a 128GB and it was fine. Basically, the “Create a recovery drive” option in Windows will format your USB drive with a 32GB FAT32 partition. (By the way, you can run this step from any machine running Windows 11. It doesn’t have to be done on your Surface Laptop.)
Now, unzip the recovery image you downloaded previously, and then copy all folders and files directly to your recovery drive. The file transfer took me about 10 minutes. (You should definitely unzip first. It’s much faster if you do this, rather than just opening the zip and then copying over all the contents.) When prompted, select “Replace the files in the destination.”

Swap the SSD

Time required: 5 minutes.

First we need to take off the back plate. Ensure the device is powered off and disconnected from power. Then remove the four black rubber stoppers from the laptop to expose the screws we need to remove. The screwdriver kit I mentioned earlier comes with a handy tool that’s great for removing these stoppers.

Now we need to remove the screws themselves. This is what a Torx Plus 5 screw looks like, up close and personal!

We can go ahead and use our Torx T5 screwdriver bit. Be careful. Since this isn’t the perfect fitting screwdriver, you don’t want to damage the screw heads.

One all four screws are removed, we just need to remove the back plate. Again, we can use the plastic tool from our screwdriver set to do this. It comes off incredibly easy.

And now we can see the SSD:

You need to unscrew it with the same Torx T5 screwdriver. And unpeel the tape that is holding it in place. Then remove, and insert your new SSD. Screw it down and put the tape back in place.

Now go ahead and reattach the back plate. When you’re putting the screws back in, don’t over-tighten. Again, we want to be careful not to damage the screw heads.

Booting From the Recovery Drive

Insert the recovery drive into the USB port, and attach power to the laptop. Then go ahead and start the device.

After a few seconds, you might see the error “Couldn’t find a bootable operating system. Check the Boot configuration to try to fix this.”

Eek! We don’t want to see that. But panic not! The issue here is the laptop is set to use Secure Boot in the UEFI, but the Windows 11 factory recovery image is signed with a newer certificate that isn’t recognised by the device!

This is easy to fix. When you press “Ok” on the error, you’ll see the UEFI settings. From here select “Security”, then under “Secure Boot” select “Change configuration”. Now select disable secure boot. (Don’t worry; we’ll revert this later.)

Now your laptop will restart and it should detect your recovery drive. By the way, you’ll see a big red banner with an unlocked padlock as it boots. This is to remind you that Secure Boot is disabled.

You’ll now be prompted how you want to recover. Select “Just remove my files”, and the recovery process will begin. At this point, you’re into a fairly standard Windows install flow.

Re-Enable Secure Boot

Once Windows is installed, we have no more use for the USB recovery drive, and we can re-enable Secure Boot. To do this:

Shutdown the laptop.
Press and hold the volume-up button and then press the power button.
Once the MS logo appears, you can release the volume-up button.
The UEFI screen will appear and you can re-enable Secure Boot in the Security menu.

Wrap-Up

And there you have it! For around £150 and less than an hour of actual desk time, my Surface Laptop 7 has gone from a cramped 512GB base model to a spacious 1TB powerhouse — saving me a massive chunk of cash compared to buying a higher-tier spec directly from Microsoft.

The ability to easily upgrade the internals using a M.2 2230 slot is a massive win for repairability and longevity in the thin-and-light laptop space, and Microsoft deserves real credit for making this generation so incredibly accessible to work on. If you’ve been sitting on the fence wondering if you should pull the trigger on upgrading your own storage, stop hesitating. Grab yourself a solid 2230 drive, a decent precision bit set, and go for it!

You Know What To Do!

Please share this with anyone that you think will be interested. It might help them, and it really helps me!
Please give me 50 claps! (Just hold down the clap button.)
Feel free to leave a comment 💬.
Follow and subscribe, so you don’t miss my content.

DEV Community