Upgrade question

System
System Member Posts: 4,549 Seasoned Practitioner WiFi Icon
edited November 2023 in 2020 Archives
This discussion was created from comments split from: How to open chase and upgrade SSD in switch alpha 12?.

Answers

  • PittAussie
    PittAussie Member Posts: 3 New User
    edited May 2020
    I know this is an older thread, but I am sure there are still plenty of people using this great device.
    I am going to try upgrading the SSD later this week. After doing a LOT of searching online, there are actually a couple of M.2 NVMe drives that are B & M keyed. So long as the connector supports both SATA (600MB/sec) and PCIe 3.0 x2 (2000MB/sec), which supposedly many do, the bandwidth is more than triple that of a SATA m.2 drive.
    I will update you all in a few days to let you know if it works.

    The 2 models I found that are both NVMe and have B & M key are:
    Kingston A1000 - Available 240Gb, 480Gb and 960Gb
    WD Blue SN500 - Available in 250Gb and 500Gb models

    I will be trying the Kingston A1000 960Gb once it arrives.

    BTW, If you encounter issues where you try to turn the Switch Alpha on but only get the blue light but no display, you don't have to open the case and disconnect the battery to fix it. Instead just unplug the power supply and drain the battery completely by plugging in a high drain USB device such as charging a cell phone or battery pack until the PCs battery drains and the blue power light goes out. That might take 24hr or so depending on how how how full your battery was. Then plug in the power supply and it should then boot normally.
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,101 Trailblazer
    It doesn't matter that the connector has B&M keys, what matters is the chipset sitting behind that. The M.2 slot on the SA12 supports SATA drives, not NVMe. You can put any size drive you like in, as long as it's M.2 SATA 2280. I upsized mine fairly early on without any issues, but I put a SATA 512GB in...
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.