Customer Ratings & Reviews

I installed the WD BLACK SN770M 2TB in my Steam Deck, and the difference is night and day. Load times are significantly faster, and I now have more than enough space for my entire game library without constantly uninstalling and reinstalling. Installation was straightforward (just make sure to follow the device-specific guide), and the SSD was immediately recognized without issues. It runs cool and quiet, with excellent performance thanks to PCIe Gen 4 speeds. This drive hits the sweet spot between performance, reliability, and capacity — a must-have upgrade for Steam Deck or ROG Ally users who want to get the most out of their device.

1st World Problem #1001 - Asus RoG Ally needs more space and no SD Card. Solution: 1st World Problem #1001 - WD_Black SN770M. The 2TB WD_Black SN770M is just what the doctor ordered for mobile handheld PC storage issues while resolving one of the main hindrances to adoption. Storage will no longer be the reason why you can't play your favorite game and isn't going to be your bottleneck. Now, there are a few choices in the m.2 2230 form factor and I have tested a few in my RoG Ally in various capacities. I settled on the 2TB as a sweetspot but it is still pricey. I will say this one benchmarks the highest of the 3 I've used. Review my screenshot of the speed test for more info. Before beginning, I recommend you review a tutorial on how to upgrade the RoG Ally SSD. Gather a small Phillips screwdriver the Asus Ally factory charger, and find a clean, well-lit work area. Following review, execute backup/restore procedures to prepare your operating system for upgrade. Next, remove any attachments or SD cards connected to your Ally before opening. Then remove the screws from the backplate. Find and disconnect the battery cable connector from the board, lift the black plastic flap, and remove the SSD for replacement. Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly, but remember to connect your battery cable! Power on your device and get to BIOS. You need to hold the [VOL -] + [POWER] keys. OH NO!!!! WAIT!!!!!! Did you break it? Why isn't it powering on with just any charger? It was charged full, but now it doesn't power up. IT IS NOT BROKEN - do not worry!!!! Remove any SD cards and plug your Ally into the wall using the included 65W charger with the device closed back up. Boot into the BIOS, go to the Advanced section, and find Asus Cloud Recovery. You can back up then restore your device or do a fresh install. In short, this is a really simple and snappy upgrade you will notice every time you use your device. From the bootup times to the reboot times, loading screen times, and game load times, results are to be taken seriously only by those who need performance. In the gaming area, my RoG Ally was able to load and play games like Call of Duty MWII, Diablo IV, Red Ded Redemption, and Fortnite with no problems. If you own a RoG Ally, this is the fastest I have tested to date out of the 2TB tier. Whether a small PC or handheld, if it takes the 2230 form factor, the SN770M is my recommendation. I used other drives from other big brands but this drive benchmarks better and feels snappy as the competition. It's no secret the RoG Ally has issues with thermals and the SD card slot. The only way to make it playable is holding more than one AAA game is to upgrade the SSD. This is the answer. I would like to see some sort of heatsink included for the RoG Ally as a kit since we all know with speed comes thermals. The RoG does an excellent job keeping this cool and I didn't notice much throttling under load. Otherwise, there is no complaint here, you get what you pay for!

With a new wave of Ultra-Mobile PCs comes a new market for upgrades. The surprise success of the ASUS ROG Ally and similar handheld PCs has led several OEMs to introduce accessories and components to enhance the mobile gaming experience, and Western Digital leads the charge with one of the first M.2 2230 SSDs to break the 1TB barrier. The 2TB SN770M is among the largest 2230-size disks available at the time of this review, and while the small form factor certainly commands a premium, the SN770M is functionally identical to the larger (2280 size) SN770 released in early 2022, and thus hits a very specific niche with a hugely increased price to match. Note that this drive is sold barebone - there are no adapters, cables, or software included to transfer your data from existing disks to the SSD, and thus this product is not intended for novice users. If you are not familiar with moving or reinstalling your operating system (e.g. Windows, MacOS), speak with a Geek Squad associate for recommended services prior to purchasing. - Unboxing & Installation Unfortunately, my item came in bulk (non-retail) packaging and thus I cannot speak to the unboxing process nor included documentation for retail packaging. This NVMe M.2 disk is the smaller 2230 (22mm x 30mm) size, a little larger than the typical US quarter, and has a sticker covering the NAND with all the usual branding. This 2230 size is far less common than the 2280 (22mm x 80mm) seen in many laptop and desktop mainboards, and is intended for use in handheld PCs like the ASUS ROG Ally and similar products, which use 2230 for smaller packaging. This disk should still be compatible in most devices with full-size M.2 slots as they usually include screw holes for installing 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 size disks - but if you have the option for a larger disk there are many more options to choose from. Installing the SN770M is as simple as installing any other M.2 SSD. Once recognized by the system, the disk will need to be initialized then formatted by the operating system prior to use (this typically occurs during an OS installation). Western Digital uses the 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes metric to market the drive; thus, formatted capacity is 1,863 GB. It does appear that this disk has a full 2TB onboard, but WD (as with most major OEMs) over-provisioned the drive so that the remaining space is used to spread writes and reduce overall wear on the NAND memory. A five-year, 600 terabytes written warranty should cover most use cases as only power users will see that much data written within five years, much less ten. - Performance As a Gen 4 SSD, only more recent devices will be able to run this disk at full speed. It’s fully backward compatible with Gen 3 devices, but this will limit maximum read/write performance to 4GB per second, while Gen 4 can reach 8GB per second - though whether a disk can reach either of these numbers is dependent on the drive’s hardware and quality. Installed in my ASUS ROG Ally, a PCIe Gen4 device, the SN770M readily exceeds the 4GB per second maximum that the older PCIe Gen 3 standard allows. WD claims a maximum read of 5,150 MB/s and maximum write of 4,850 MB/s, and in my testing I saw reads cap out just short of 5,100 MB/s with writes peaking around 4,700 MB/s, which are both right in line with expectations and overhead from background software. I have seen full size (M.2 2280) Gen 4 SSDs reach higher speeds, but the specialized form factor here is certainly a limiter. The important factor is that random read/write performance is just as strong as any competing Gen 4 SSD, with load times for both games and Windows 11 itself improving over the original disk - though we’re only talking a few seconds in either situation, the improvement is small but noticeable. The SN770M’s performance is made all the more impressive by a lack of DRAM cache (as one might expect, the 2230 size doesn’t allow for much in the way of supporting hardware). Without a dedicated buffer to cache writes, WD’s disk relies on its NAND controller to do this work, and I’m pleased to report I didn’t encounter any slowdown when doing long writes to the disk - however, I only filled about 1TB in testing, and it’s after this point that any deficiencies in the controller’s management will come to light as the controller utilizes free space on the disk as its cache area. This is a common technique that budget SSDs employ to keep costs down and performance reasonable, as DRAM is much more expensive per byte than NAND flash, but usually comes with noticeable performance losses as the drive fills up since less space is available for caching. - Bottom Line Performance is up to snuff, which leaves only the value proposition to discuss. While the 2230 size is a specialty that commands a premium, the SN770M is effectively the same product as the larger, 2280-size SN770, which is available for less than half the price as of this review (and in fact is still significantly cheaper than the 1TB version of the SN770M). If you need a large-capacity 2230 disk for your Ally or a similar device, this is one of the few options on the market currently that will satisfy that need, but it’s hard to swallow such a high MSRP even for this form factor. If you can’t wait for the M.2 2230 market to saturate and prices to come down, then this comes conditionally recommended.

Would not work in Microsoft Surface Pro 8/9 or Asus ROG Flow Z13 (tablet). Windows OS would stutter and freeze. I believe it’s related to the power rating of the WD - not due to drivers or firmware or software. Worked fine in the ROG Ally.

Dont buy from this store. Customer service told me to take this ssd in Gulf gate Bestbuy because they will install it, unfortunately the geek squad is not trained to install this upgrade to Rog Ally, I asked to refund but they can only do store credit. One of the staff asked me to take it to Microcenter and they did install it but I got charged for another $200. This store is a scam and I hope somebody from the upper office read this. If planning on buying this update and not sure to install it, pls dont do my mistake

While I love that the Asus ROG Ally has a micro SD card slot for adding memory, the speeds and performance are a noticeable downgrade from running the games on the 512gb SSD that comes built in. Not to mention I had to RMA my first ROG Ally because the micro SD card slot melted so I don’t really trust it. Enter the WD SN770M 2TB, the much needed upgrade for the ROG Ally (or Steam Deck) fans out there. The process for installing the actual drive was quite simple and straightforward once I found the how to guide online. Opening up the device, removing the old Drive, installing the new Drive, closing backup the device only ended up taking about 15 minutes-ish in total. I had no issues with that. The only time I had issues was when installing windows for the first time. I got stuck on a loading screen and had to restart the Windows cloud recovery process (hint: set the time in the bios on first boot after install to not have that same issue). I was bummed that it didn’t come with a way to back up the games I already downloaded due to the fact that I have Xfinity and a data cap. Having to redownload all 120GBs of just Starfield stunk but at least the write speeds were so fast, I didn’t have to wait long. And I could finally breathe with 2 TBs! I’m keeping the micro sd card in but just for little indie games, but the main storage can now hold everything I’m playing and everything I want to play but just didn’t want it to eat up space. This is truly a no-brainer for the ROG Ally or Steam Deck gamer. I’m going on a long trip soon and I’m so happy that I will have a big chunk of my library with me on the go without sacrificing speed. Pros: Ultrafast storage Easy install FINALLY enough storage WD has been more reliable than other in my experience Cons: Have to reinstall Windows and games after install 2TB is negligibly slower than the 1TB (but ultimately worth it) 2TB is actually 1.8~ TB Price (but worth it)

Okay, I am going to start out with this to get it out of the way. WD 2TB 2230 is a perfect 5 out of 5 for the huge upgrade it gives from the 512mb NVMe the Ally comes with. The upgrade process it self, while being a YMMV scenario gets a 2 out of 5 (nothing against WD here, it's all on ASUS). Now being the size of basically a quarter and quadrupling your storage is a no-brainer. WD delivers with this NVMe. I basically could DL my whole steam and epic library and still have room to spare. If you are upgrading your ROG Ally, please read!! This might save you a massive headache. BEFORE you physically replace the storage, make sure you 100% have your BIOS updated to the most recent firmware. Use the MyAsus app not the Armory Crate. Not doing this step is 1 of 2 ways your reinstall might (high chance) get stuck on the dreaded "Checking" screen after downloading Win 11. Installation is a breeze. Unscrew the 6 phillips screws with a size 00 bit and the bottom middle is a captive screw and will stay on the backplate. You can use a pry tool or if your like me with fingernails, it separates easy. (See pics) Peel back the black sticker and unscrew the single screw holding the original 512mb in place and pull it straight out. Replace with the WD Black and replace the mounting screw, backplate and the 5 long screws. Now here is where the SECOND issue can occur. When you turn on the ALLY, it will automatically boot into the UEFI BIOS. MAKE SURE TO CHECK THE DATE AND TIME ON THE TOP OF THE SCREEN. I can't say this enough because for some reason, this cost me like 2 hours of troubleshooting for something so simple. Make sure it shows the current date and time as mine showed July 7, 2020 (which made no sense). Once I corrected the date/time, installing of Win11 and all the apps went on without a hitch. I hope no one has to go through what I did, but as I said earlier, this is all ASUS' fault, not WD. If you need more space for on the go gaming, do yourself a favor and upgrade. WD delivers.

I've been gaming with this Western Digital 2TB drive installed into my Asus ROG Ally for the past 4 or 5 days and I am pretty impressed with its performance. I haven't run any benchmarks but My ROG Ally boots up pretty much instantly, and majority of the games I have installed onto it, load up rather quickly as well. There is not many options out there for upgrading the ROG Ally's internal storage yet but this is a great option. 2TB is a lot of space for starters. I recently installed Starfield and about 10 other games on it and I still have about 1.3 TB of space available.I've been playing Starfield quite a bit on my Ally and it keeps its speeds constant. It doesn't seem to suffer from any throttling or overheating when loading the different sections of the game. It was really quick and easy to install in my Asus Ally. There is no OS or software on the drive, so you'll have to have a way to clone or reinstall windows onto your device. The Asus ROG Ally has a cloud backup built into the motherboard, that will boot up automatically after installing this drive in it. It made reinstalling the OS and Windows the quickest and easiest experience I've ever had with a windows device. Would I recommend this drive? Most definitely. Especially if you are looking to expand the internal storage of the Asus Ally. Im not 100% certain, but I think it is compatible with the Steam Deck as well.

Immediately after installing OS, started getting BSOD multiple times. Eventually SMART errors during boot up and died in just 2 days.

I am a big fan of the 2280 SN770 and now it’s sibling has come along the SN770M. It comes in 1 or 2 TB sizes and is a 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen4x4 SSD compared to the typical 2280 which means it is a lot smaller. But this allows it to not only be used in the devices that support 2280 drives (mostly, check before you try) but also smaller devices such as the ROG Ally. Which is what I used it in. And it made that device so much better! I had Windows installed along with 21 games and had only filled out ~700 GB. Leaving me all kinds of room for whatever else I want. Turning on the device took 14 seconds, things load quickly, and everything feels snappy and fast. It has an excellent 5-year warranty and supports 1200 TBW (which is a good thing if you don’t know what that is). Also, I find the speeds on this device to be right in line with the competition. Higher end (read/write speeds), higher capacity (2TB) 2230 drives are rare, expensive (as you are paying more for the small size, but again similar to the competition), but totally worth it if you use a mobile device regularly and don’t want to constantly worry about memory management. And I’m happy to report this one does everything well. I have no complaints. INSTALL PROCESS: I’d check YouTube as that would be easiest. As the process is very easy and anyone can do it. To get it installed and in process it takes about 5 minutes. For the ROG Ally: Before install, make sure you have the most up to date BIOS. As it will make this process easier. Remove the six screws on the back (Phillips)(the middle bottom screw doesn’t come fully out), take off the plastic cover (I used my nails and it popped off easy), in the middle of the device under some black covering you’ll see the 512 GB SSD, you unscrew one last Phillips, take out the old 512 GB drive (which fills up FAST for gaming), and then slip in the new one. Then reverse to seal it back up. Turn on the device and it will automatically boot into the UEFI BIOS. Make sure you set the correct time and date while in BIOS (otherwise you’ll run into issues later with it stuck in an infinite loading screen). Then go to the “Advanced Tab” and “Asus Cloud Recovery” and then go through those steps. It does take some time to download Windows along with everything else. I want to say mine took like 30 – 60 minutes. But then I was up and running (outside of redownloading games and stuff). But it was totally worth it! SPEEDS: In comparison to the included ROG Ally Micron 512 GB SSD these are noticeably faster. They report Maximum Read Speed of 5150 megabytes per second and Maximum Write Speed of 4850 (compared to 4308/1623). From my testing on CrystalDiskMark (See Attached Photos) those were right on! Included Micron: Seq1m Q8TF1 Read/Write: 4308/1623 SEQ1M Q1T1 Read/Write: 4307/1692 RND4K Q32T1 Read/Write 1446/1150 RND4K Q1T1 Read/Write: 25/122 Fresh Install (57 GB written): Seq1m Q8TF1 Read/Write: 5206/4880 SEQ1M Q1T1 Read/Write: 3463/3338 RND4K Q32T1 Read/Write: 552/414 RND4K Q1T1 Read/Write: 48/100 Downloaded 21 games (649 GB written): Seq1m Q8TF1 Read/Write: 5259/4782 SEQ1M Q1T1 Read/Write: 3515/2845 RND4K Q32T1 Read/Write 539/403 RND4K Q1T1 Read/Write: 53/126 OTHER NERDY STUFF: - TLC 3D NAND - 500 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB. - 5150/4850 Speeds. - 2230 size (compared to 2280) - 5-year limited warranty - Operating Temp: 32F – 185F - Endurance TBW: (500TB:300, 1TB:600, 2TB: 1200) - Backwards compatible with previous gen - Does not have DRAM but still performs well due to TLC 3D NAND

This tiny Nvme SSD drive has tons of fast storage. I'm surprised on how much storage they can cram into such a little form factor these days. The drive is a tiny bit larger than my thumb and holds so much storage, 2TB is plenty enough for a large catalog of modern games. Being a true PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD drive, its super fast, with read speeds around 5Gbps and write speeds around 4.8Gbps. The form factor is 2230 (it should fit in most PC, laptops, handled gaming devices that fit these size). These is mostly designed for handheld/mobile gaming devices like the Asus Rog Ally. I used it to replace and increase the storage on mine. I will highly recommend before doing so, you read Asus's guide how to update it and make sure your Ally's bios is up to date. You have to options, either install the drive from scratch (involves a few more steps, like entering recovery etc.) or the simpler option, which is the one I chose since my device had already plenty of games installed, which is cloning your original drive. This involves getting a external PCIe NVMe to USB enclosure (plenty cheap ones out there) and a cloning software (plenty free out there) and a laptop or desktop PC. Once I had these I cloned the original drive to this little guy and from then I just installed it back up to the Ally and booted it up as normal. Now I have tons of space for more games, this is a must, specially with AAA games these days weighting about 50 GB at the minimum each!!!

Never in my adult life did I think I would be able to install my own memory upgrade... So if you are like me and you have this idea that you can't upgrade your own memory card, think again because you can (if I can). Set up was simple and it is such a game changer (pun intended) for my ROG Ally! I recently started Starfield and the game has amazing graphics, it's a bit of a slow burn to get into but the graphics make it hard to put down. The speed and the images being clear and amazing, I attribute to the WD Black upgrade. The install took about 15 minutes from taking out the first screw to turning on the ROG and letting it do it's thing. Be advised the after it turns on it takes about an hour for it to optimize itself and it guides you through the process. I travel for work annually and I am always bummed when I fly internationally and I can't play my games via the Cloud. That is changing now, I can't wait for my trip to South Korea next month. I like to wind down in my hotel room and play something to just vibe. My final thoughts, this upgrade makes you feel like you've got the greatest gaming set up of all time. Thinking back to earlier consoles the trouble was always two things: 1.) How do I take all my cartridges with me on trips 2.) Why can't I save all of my hard work in all of my games (then having to compromise and delete old pinnacles of my youth). I am positive this ends now! I hope that you are having as much satisfaction with your upgrade as I am.

Got this for my LegionGo to expand the storage so I can install more games and it works the best. I notice faster boot times, as well as games load much faster. For 2TB the value is pretty great.

I installed this 2TB SSD into my ROG ALLY and was able to nearly quadruple its storage capacity - which is a fantastic improvement. Games run much noticeably better when stored on the internal SSD compared to a Micro SD card. Because the default 512 GB fills up incredibly quickly, swapping to a larger SSD is absolutely worth the money. I have only seen marginal loading improvement with the larger SSD, but I still feel as though the upgrade is a worth while investment. The physical task of swapping the SSD cards is incredibly quick and easy - taking less than two minutes. But, using the ASUS Cloud Recovery can be an absolute hellish nightmare. Before you start the process of swapping the SSD cards, make sure that you have completed ALL of the available Windows and ASUS software updates. As long as all of the software is up to date, you should have no issues recovering the software and restarting the ALLY. ...Be aware that the recovery process can be quite slow and depends on the speed of your WiFi network. If you want to speed up the process, you can connect the ROG to a docking station that has a physical connection to your network. To add the new card: Simply remove the screws on the back of the Ally and lift off the back of the device. Unplug the battery connector ribbon. Then lift the black plastic cover to see the default SSD. Remove the screw that holds the card in place and you can unplug the old SSD and insert the new larger card. Then reverse the process to put the Ally back together. See the attached pictures for examples of the screw and SSD locations.

I feel that the memory that comes with the Asus Rog Ally is not really enough to be able to enjoy the wide variety of games that we have access to with such a device. Increasing the internal memory by almost 4 times (from 512GB to 2TB) is a very convenient and if I may say so, necessary upgrade. Installing the WD 2TB NVMe SSD memory takes its process and time, if you are a person who does not know much about the subject or it is the first time you do it, I consider that on the internet there are many guides and very useful help to carry out this process. While it is not as simple as changing an SD memory (despite having practically the same size) of a camera or phone, the system of the device (to be exact the BIOS) helps to configure the memory once the replacement is done and the device is turned on. I recommend that after installing Windows, you update the necessary drivers to be able to continue to enjoy the console, this is possible in the myAsus app. It is also possible to clone the memory already installed in the new memory so that everything is exactly as this, but I consider that process requires a little more knowledge and skill as it requires software and hardware that are not included in this memory. Once the memory is installed, everything runs a little more smoothly, and personally it takes away the worry of running out of memory every time I want to buy a new game. The data transfer speeds that it promises, and that it reaches in ideal conditions, is 5150 MB/s read and 4850 MB/s write. This allows games to run more smoothly, as well as downloading data and installing files to the system. In conclusion I can say that this WD 2TB NVMe SSD memory is a very important upgrade for the Asus Rog Ally, if you want to install more games but do not want to delete any already installed and want to have some extra space, this is an excellent choice. A product I can highly recommend.

Guys this works great. A must have with a lot of storage.

If you need the space for your ROG Ally, Steam deck, Legion go or any other handheld based PC, this drive outperforms the stock ssd’s on those devices. Installation took under a minute. It’s literally plug and play after removing the plastic casing of your device of choice. Go buy it, it’s an easy yes for under $200

Runs great and fast. Transfers gigs in a matter of seconds.

So far so good suoer easy to install in the rog ally works with no issues crazy good speeds if u find a game to utilizes the speeds or when ur downloading. Good temps. Only con is price but u get what u pay for.

I bought this for a ROG Ally. It works great. Gets same read/writes as original WD PCIE 4.0 drive. Fast and runs cool. Was hard to find over the holidays but Best Buy always had them in stock. Windows 11 cloning/ manager won't allow the adjustment of C: drive size if the restore partitions are adjacent to the C: partitions. Best Buy has cloning software too, fortunately. I clones the software using a free cloner and it turned the 2TB into a 0.5TB drive. I thought I could just use Windows drive management to enlarge the drive, but the old drive has the C: partition between two other Windows partitions that prevented size changing. I did customize the partition sizes but the smaller partitions weren't recognized, preventing the C: not to boot. Hence the cloning software.