Surface Pro 5 Storage Upgrade Mod

[gam3boy03]

When I opened my Surface Pro 5 recently I realized that there was an unpopulated space for another NAND-Chip there (right next to the chip in yellow on the photo) which seems to be populated on the 1TB Model, but not on the 512GB model.

I googled the Part Number on my Chip (which is a Samsung chip instead) and found that it actually just was a 512GB NAND-Chip and you could buy it online. (kus020203m-b000)

 

Does anyone out there know if you can just solder another one on there? (Or did they pull an Cupertino move and created an Firmware Lock)

[bellabichon]

It's an unpopulated slot, so it should (physically) fit, but there'd be no way of knowing whether it would actually detect properly until you try. Looking around online, I can't find anyone with experience in BGA soldering who has actually given it a go.

 

So hey, if you're willing to become a pioneer (by possibly bricking your shiny new PC), go for it! Otherwise, you might just wanna buy a MicroSDXC card and shove it into the back. 

[gam3boy03]

6 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

Otherwise, you might just wanna buy a MicroSDXC card and shove it into the back. 

The problem with the MicroSDXC slot is, that is always registers as detachable storage and you cannot get it to not change the registry entry with the flag for that to not change on reboot...

[manikyath]

there's probably more to it than just populating the slot. presumably the firmware is either coded to expect only one slot (because really, if it's soldered, why should it have sensing logic?) or there's some jumpers indicating storage size.

 

past that the formatting of the storage will be quite confused if you just add a chip there and it ends up detected.

 

so.. to answer your question: yes.. i'd dare to say it's got a 'firmware lock', but it's not for greed, it's for practicality. these chips are in a sense "self contained storage media", but they arent expected to 'autodetect' in the system the same way adding an M.2 SSD would 'autodetect'.

[gam3boy03]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

there's probably more to it than just populating the slot. presumably the firmware is either coded to expect only one slot (because really, if it's soldered, why should it have sensing logic?) or there's some jumpers indicating storage size.

I think those Chips are NVMe, which means PCIe devices (doesn't it?), Jumpers also wouldn't matter, as you could just solder them...

 

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

past that the formatting of the storage will be quite confused if you just add a chip there and it ends up detected.

This could be a Problem, which could possibly be resolved by formatting the drive with an USB Linux boot.

7 minutes ago, manikyath said:

so.. to answer your question: yes.. i'd dare to say it's got a 'firmware lock', but it's not for greed, it's for practicality. these chips are in a sense "self contained storage media", but they arent expected to 'autodetect' in the system the same way adding an M.2 SSD would 'autodetect'.

I think that it is possible for those PCIe Lanes to be disabled or something for simplicity, but we can't know without trying

(my hope is that someone on this forum has tried this or researched this in more detail)

[manikyath]

Just now, gam3boy03 said:

NVMe, which means PCIe devices (doesn't it?)

not necessarily.. as we've learned from apple's A1 devices.