Get ready to download more games to your gaming platform with up to 1TB of storage on M.2 2230 with the WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD. Bring your whole game library anywhere, any place you go. Turbo charge and increase the storage in your ultrathin laptop with WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD with PCIe Gen 4.0.
Get ready to download more games to your gaming platform with up to 1TB of storage on M.2 2230 with the WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD. Bring your whole game library anywhere, any place you go. Turbo charge and increase the storage in your ultrathin laptop with WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD with PCIe Gen 4.0.
in 3 offers
The lowest price for WD_ Black SN770M M.2 1TB SSD Storage right now is $425.80 at Amazon.com.au, compared across 3 retailers.
The all-time low was $137.67 on 25 Nov 2024 — today's price is 209% above the lowest ever. It has been notably cheaper before — worth setting a price alert.
Prices last updated 5 June 2026.
WD_ Black SN770M M.2 1TB SSD Storage
Get ready to download more games to your gaming platform with up to 1TB of storage on M.2 2230 with the WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD. Bring your whole game library anywhere, any place you go. Turbo charge and increase the storage in your ultrathin laptop with WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD with PCIe Gen 4.0.
Get ready to download more games to your gaming platform with up to 1TB of storage on M.2 2230 with the WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD. Bring your whole game library anywhere, any place you go. Turbo charge and increase the storage in your ultrathin laptop with WD_BLACK SN770M Mobile NVMe SSD with PCIe Gen 4.0.
Last updated at 05/06/2026 06:52:53
WD_Black 1TB SN770M M.2 2230 NVMe SSD for Handheld Gaming Devices, Speeds up to 5,150MB/s, TLC 3D NAND, Great for Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface -
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Western Digital Hard Drive Black SN770M 1TB SSD
Delivery $11.29
Western Digital Hard Drive Black Sn770m 1tb Ssd
Free delivery
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
originally posted on bestbuy.com
To start off, it will be much easier if you clone your existing ROG Ally with an external USB SSD enclosure. This is what I did, otherwise you will have to start from scratch with the ROG ally setup reinstalling the OS to the new SSD, and this will take you much longer. I wish the SSD would have included an external enclosure with the SSD. I am however glad that WD includes their own software to clone directly inside of Windows, and it is pretty easy to do so once you install it from the WD website. If you just swap out the SSDs, when you first start the ROG Ally, it will dump you into the ROG Ally BIOS and do an Asus Cloud Recovery on the OS, but you will have to reinstall all of your games and any other apps you may have previously installed. I highly recommend ... MoreTo start off, it will be much easier if you clone your existing ROG Ally with an external USB SSD enclosure. This is what I did, otherwise you will have to start from scratch with the ROG ally setup reinstalling the OS to the new SSD, and this will take you much longer. I wish the SSD would have included an external enclosure with the SSD. I am however glad that WD includes their own software to clone directly inside of Windows, and it is pretty easy to do so once you install it from the WD website. If you just swap out the SSDs, when you first start the ROG Ally, it will dump you into the ROG Ally BIOS and do an Asus Cloud Recovery on the OS, but you will have to reinstall all of your games and any other apps you may have previously installed. I highly recommend just cloning the original SSD, it is much easier and faster if you have already customized your ROG ally with Steam games. SSD enclosures are not very expensive, and after the cloning, you can always keep the original ROG Ally SSD inside the enclosure and use it as a portable external drive.It is very easy to upgrade any ROG Ally - Make sure the console is actually turned totally off, not just asleep. There are 6 screws on the back of the ROG ALly, the bottom middle screw doesn’t actually fully come out - it just screws out but stays in place to the housing, carefully removing the back housing. Now, you just need to pull out the battery connector you will now see exposed. This is to prevent it from frying the parts inside while performing the upgrade. Now, there is a black plastic cover / sticker that you can pull up, and it will expose the SSD card. There is a single m.2 SSD screw holding the SSD in place, remove it, and you will see a shiny black thing to help lift the SSD out of the socket, and slide it towards you and out. Make sure to not lose the m.2 screw you just pulled out that held the existing SSD in place. Next, pull out the existing SSD, insert your new one, use that m.2 screw to hold down the SSD, and make sure to reinsert the battery cable back like it was, and finally put back the cover and close up with those screws again. That is essentially it. Just replace everything in reverse, close it up, and you are good to go.In my testing, the 1tb SSD seems to be a bit faster than the original Asus ROG Ally SSD. In my opinion upgrading the internal SSD with this WD model is much better than using micro SD cards in the ROG Ally. There are currently many issues causing microSD cards to be damaged in the ROG Ally. While there have been firmware updates, they have not fixed the issues damaging microSD cards. The internal SSD storage will also always be much faster than microSD cards.One thing about this SSD card vs other m2 2230 cards you can buy is that this one is made from a very trusted company, and isn’t a used device just pulled out of old laptops. WD also backs this up with a 5 year warranty. This card will also work on other handheld gaming devices, and not just the ROG Ally. As long as that device uses a m2 2230 sized SSD you can use it.Overall, this is a great card, and I highly recommend anyone with a ROG Ally to get this over using microSD cards to install games to.
originally posted on bestbuy.com
When I first got my ROG Ally, I was worried about hard drive space. I had loaded up Starfield, and the install was over 100GB. Since the stock Ally only has a 512GB Hard drive, it was taking up almost a quarter of the available space (after the windows install, all the game stores, and all the other necessary programs. What's the point of a powerful portable PC if you can only have 3 or 4 games on it at a time? It's not like a console where you can swap out a disk or cartridge (though, the Ally does have a SD slot, using it is not recommended until ASUS can figure out what is zapping them). This is where WD comes in to save the day.Installing the WD_BLACK SN770M couldn't be easier. 6 screws hold the backing of the case on, and one screw for the SSD slot. A quick ... MoreWhen I first got my ROG Ally, I was worried about hard drive space. I had loaded up Starfield, and the install was over 100GB. Since the stock Ally only has a 512GB Hard drive, it was taking up almost a quarter of the available space (after the windows install, all the game stores, and all the other necessary programs. What's the point of a powerful portable PC if you can only have 3 or 4 games on it at a time? It's not like a console where you can swap out a disk or cartridge (though, the Ally does have a SD slot, using it is not recommended until ASUS can figure out what is zapping them). This is where WD comes in to save the day.Installing the WD_BLACK SN770M couldn't be easier. 6 screws hold the backing of the case on, and one screw for the SSD slot. A quick swap, then booting to BIOS allows you to do a cloud reinstall of Windows, no disk cloning necessary. There's videos on Youtube, and an official walkthrough with screenshots on the ROG site, in case you absolutely need a step by step. It's recommended to update the BIOS and firmware before attempting the swap, especially the clock in the BIOS so you don't have issues with the cloud reinstall.Since the WD_BLACK SN770M is the same form factor as the stock SSD, there's no modding or anything required to get it to fit in, unlike many of the hacks you see online with larger sized SSDs using right angle adapters (which take a slight performance hit) that require extra heat shielding and possible case alterations to get them to fit. It slots right in, the holes line up, and you just put everything right back together without worrying if your custom shim or heat spreader is touching the RAM.Now that my hard drive size doubled, I'm absolutely loving my Ally! Much more room for both the huge AAA games, plus a bunch of indy games and emulators. There's even room to install some programs that I consider necessary for any PC (text editors, python IDE, entertainment apps), that I was previously leaving off because I already had them installed everywhere else.As for the old, stock SSD, I read that there are USB-C enclosures that will let me use it as an external hard drive. I could have used the enclosure to clone the old SSD to the new, larger one, but I wanted to get started right away and didn't mind reloading everything.The only thing I that could have made this better is getting the 2TB instead of the 1TB, but otherwise this has definitely been a worthwhile upgrade to my ROG Ally.
originally posted on bestbuy.com
Enjoying this WD Black SN770M (MINI) PCIe Gen4 drive.Performance: The SN770M has PCIe Gen4 technology, which allows for much faster read and write speeds compared to the previous Gen3 SSDs. Rated for sequential read speeds of up to 5,150 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4,900 MB/s. This means instantaneous response and full throttle for quick system boots and blazing fast game loading times. This drive can also tear through large files and data transfers making it ideal for anyone who desiring high-speed storage. Paired in my system with another similar M2 I am seeing consistent 4GB/s!!!! transfer speeds when moving large – INSANE!Endurance: This drive is built with excellent components, no moving parts, and will essentially never fail. Trusted with the ... MoreEnjoying this WD Black SN770M (MINI) PCIe Gen4 drive.Performance: The SN770M has PCIe Gen4 technology, which allows for much faster read and write speeds compared to the previous Gen3 SSDs. Rated for sequential read speeds of up to 5,150 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4,900 MB/s. This means instantaneous response and full throttle for quick system boots and blazing fast game loading times. This drive can also tear through large files and data transfers making it ideal for anyone who desiring high-speed storage. Paired in my system with another similar M2 I am seeing consistent 4GB/s!!!! transfer speeds when moving large – INSANE!Endurance: This drive is built with excellent components, no moving parts, and will essentially never fail. Trusted with the Western Digital name and history of making quality products that last.Compatibility: I slapped this drive into the ROG Ally (simple 5 minute upgrade) and works immediately and flawlessly when incorporated. But this drive will also work in any system that supports PCIe Gen4 technology and a mini M2 slot. This is intended for and ideal for a handheld such as the ROG Ally but can technically go in any M2 slot. If it’s your intention to put in a laptop or desktop be sure to check if your motherboard has mounting screw at this “mini” length – this drive is about ½ the length of a typical M2 and I know not all motherboards will have the proper length mount for it so just double check. Important to note that this is also backward compatible with PCIe Gen3 interfaces but you won't be able to fully utilize its maximum performance potential without a Gen4.Price: Current pricing is beautiful! I can’t believe storage like this has become so affordable even with the highest end extreme performance and capacity it has.In conclusion, this drive has been super impressive at delivering exceptional performance, trusted reliability, and in such a small “mini” size format. With its PCIe Gen4 interface, it offers incredibly fast speeds and is a great choice for demanding handhelds to power through all your gaming sessions. I have thoroughly enjoyed having this drive as part of my setup. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to add more storage space and desiring incredible speed as well.
| Capacity | 1TB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2230 |
| Warranty | 5-Year Limited Warranty |
WD_Black 1TB SN770M M.2 2230 NVMe SSD for Handheld Gaming Devices, Speeds up to 5,150MB/s, TLC 3D NAND, Great for Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface -
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
Western Digital Hard Drive Black SN770M 1TB SSD
Delivery $11.29
Western Digital Hard Drive Black Sn770m 1tb Ssd
Free delivery
Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a small commission for purchases made through this link at no extra cost to you. This helps support our site. Thank you!
To start off, it will be much easier if you clone your existing ROG Ally with an external USB SSD enclosure. This is what I did, otherwise you will have to start from scratch with the ROG ally setup reinstalling the OS to the new SSD, and this will take you much longer. I wish the SSD would have included an external enclosure with the SSD. I am however glad that WD includes their own software to clone directly inside of Windows, and it is pretty easy to do so once you install it from the WD website. If you just swap out the SSDs, when you first start the ROG Ally, it will dump you into the ROG Ally BIOS and do an Asus Cloud Recovery on the OS, but you will have to reinstall all of your games and any other apps you may have previously installed. I highly recommend ... MoreTo start off, it will be much easier if you clone your existing ROG Ally with an external USB SSD enclosure. This is what I did, otherwise you will have to start from scratch with the ROG ally setup reinstalling the OS to the new SSD, and this will take you much longer. I wish the SSD would have included an external enclosure with the SSD. I am however glad that WD includes their own software to clone directly inside of Windows, and it is pretty easy to do so once you install it from the WD website. If you just swap out the SSDs, when you first start the ROG Ally, it will dump you into the ROG Ally BIOS and do an Asus Cloud Recovery on the OS, but you will have to reinstall all of your games and any other apps you may have previously installed. I highly recommend just cloning the original SSD, it is much easier and faster if you have already customized your ROG ally with Steam games. SSD enclosures are not very expensive, and after the cloning, you can always keep the original ROG Ally SSD inside the enclosure and use it as a portable external drive.It is very easy to upgrade any ROG Ally - Make sure the console is actually turned totally off, not just asleep. There are 6 screws on the back of the ROG ALly, the bottom middle screw doesn’t actually fully come out - it just screws out but stays in place to the housing, carefully removing the back housing. Now, you just need to pull out the battery connector you will now see exposed. This is to prevent it from frying the parts inside while performing the upgrade. Now, there is a black plastic cover / sticker that you can pull up, and it will expose the SSD card. There is a single m.2 SSD screw holding the SSD in place, remove it, and you will see a shiny black thing to help lift the SSD out of the socket, and slide it towards you and out. Make sure to not lose the m.2 screw you just pulled out that held the existing SSD in place. Next, pull out the existing SSD, insert your new one, use that m.2 screw to hold down the SSD, and make sure to reinsert the battery cable back like it was, and finally put back the cover and close up with those screws again. That is essentially it. Just replace everything in reverse, close it up, and you are good to go.In my testing, the 1tb SSD seems to be a bit faster than the original Asus ROG Ally SSD. In my opinion upgrading the internal SSD with this WD model is much better than using micro SD cards in the ROG Ally. There are currently many issues causing microSD cards to be damaged in the ROG Ally. While there have been firmware updates, they have not fixed the issues damaging microSD cards. The internal SSD storage will also always be much faster than microSD cards.One thing about this SSD card vs other m2 2230 cards you can buy is that this one is made from a very trusted company, and isn’t a used device just pulled out of old laptops. WD also backs this up with a 5 year warranty. This card will also work on other handheld gaming devices, and not just the ROG Ally. As long as that device uses a m2 2230 sized SSD you can use it.Overall, this is a great card, and I highly recommend anyone with a ROG Ally to get this over using microSD cards to install games to.
When I first got my ROG Ally, I was worried about hard drive space. I had loaded up Starfield, and the install was over 100GB. Since the stock Ally only has a 512GB Hard drive, it was taking up almost a quarter of the available space (after the windows install, all the game stores, and all the other necessary programs. What's the point of a powerful portable PC if you can only have 3 or 4 games on it at a time? It's not like a console where you can swap out a disk or cartridge (though, the Ally does have a SD slot, using it is not recommended until ASUS can figure out what is zapping them). This is where WD comes in to save the day.Installing the WD_BLACK SN770M couldn't be easier. 6 screws hold the backing of the case on, and one screw for the SSD slot. A quick ... MoreWhen I first got my ROG Ally, I was worried about hard drive space. I had loaded up Starfield, and the install was over 100GB. Since the stock Ally only has a 512GB Hard drive, it was taking up almost a quarter of the available space (after the windows install, all the game stores, and all the other necessary programs. What's the point of a powerful portable PC if you can only have 3 or 4 games on it at a time? It's not like a console where you can swap out a disk or cartridge (though, the Ally does have a SD slot, using it is not recommended until ASUS can figure out what is zapping them). This is where WD comes in to save the day.Installing the WD_BLACK SN770M couldn't be easier. 6 screws hold the backing of the case on, and one screw for the SSD slot. A quick swap, then booting to BIOS allows you to do a cloud reinstall of Windows, no disk cloning necessary. There's videos on Youtube, and an official walkthrough with screenshots on the ROG site, in case you absolutely need a step by step. It's recommended to update the BIOS and firmware before attempting the swap, especially the clock in the BIOS so you don't have issues with the cloud reinstall.Since the WD_BLACK SN770M is the same form factor as the stock SSD, there's no modding or anything required to get it to fit in, unlike many of the hacks you see online with larger sized SSDs using right angle adapters (which take a slight performance hit) that require extra heat shielding and possible case alterations to get them to fit. It slots right in, the holes line up, and you just put everything right back together without worrying if your custom shim or heat spreader is touching the RAM.Now that my hard drive size doubled, I'm absolutely loving my Ally! Much more room for both the huge AAA games, plus a bunch of indy games and emulators. There's even room to install some programs that I consider necessary for any PC (text editors, python IDE, entertainment apps), that I was previously leaving off because I already had them installed everywhere else.As for the old, stock SSD, I read that there are USB-C enclosures that will let me use it as an external hard drive. I could have used the enclosure to clone the old SSD to the new, larger one, but I wanted to get started right away and didn't mind reloading everything.The only thing I that could have made this better is getting the 2TB instead of the 1TB, but otherwise this has definitely been a worthwhile upgrade to my ROG Ally.
Enjoying this WD Black SN770M (MINI) PCIe Gen4 drive.Performance: The SN770M has PCIe Gen4 technology, which allows for much faster read and write speeds compared to the previous Gen3 SSDs. Rated for sequential read speeds of up to 5,150 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4,900 MB/s. This means instantaneous response and full throttle for quick system boots and blazing fast game loading times. This drive can also tear through large files and data transfers making it ideal for anyone who desiring high-speed storage. Paired in my system with another similar M2 I am seeing consistent 4GB/s!!!! transfer speeds when moving large – INSANE!Endurance: This drive is built with excellent components, no moving parts, and will essentially never fail. Trusted with the ... MoreEnjoying this WD Black SN770M (MINI) PCIe Gen4 drive.Performance: The SN770M has PCIe Gen4 technology, which allows for much faster read and write speeds compared to the previous Gen3 SSDs. Rated for sequential read speeds of up to 5,150 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4,900 MB/s. This means instantaneous response and full throttle for quick system boots and blazing fast game loading times. This drive can also tear through large files and data transfers making it ideal for anyone who desiring high-speed storage. Paired in my system with another similar M2 I am seeing consistent 4GB/s!!!! transfer speeds when moving large – INSANE!Endurance: This drive is built with excellent components, no moving parts, and will essentially never fail. Trusted with the Western Digital name and history of making quality products that last.Compatibility: I slapped this drive into the ROG Ally (simple 5 minute upgrade) and works immediately and flawlessly when incorporated. But this drive will also work in any system that supports PCIe Gen4 technology and a mini M2 slot. This is intended for and ideal for a handheld such as the ROG Ally but can technically go in any M2 slot. If it’s your intention to put in a laptop or desktop be sure to check if your motherboard has mounting screw at this “mini” length – this drive is about ½ the length of a typical M2 and I know not all motherboards will have the proper length mount for it so just double check. Important to note that this is also backward compatible with PCIe Gen3 interfaces but you won't be able to fully utilize its maximum performance potential without a Gen4.Price: Current pricing is beautiful! I can’t believe storage like this has become so affordable even with the highest end extreme performance and capacity it has.In conclusion, this drive has been super impressive at delivering exceptional performance, trusted reliability, and in such a small “mini” size format. With its PCIe Gen4 interface, it offers incredibly fast speeds and is a great choice for demanding handhelds to power through all your gaming sessions. I have thoroughly enjoyed having this drive as part of my setup. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to add more storage space and desiring incredible speed as well.
I got this for my ROG Ally handheld. With the SD card issues the ROG Ally currently has (that I have unfortunately experienced), upgrading the SSD is the only viable way to increase storage right now. I’ve used a fair amount of Western Digital SSD’s over the years including the larger SN770 version of this hard drive, as well as the SN850x. I’ve generally been very happy with their performance and the SN770M delivers on that again with improved performance on top of the additional storage. It’s not top of the line performance for a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it is much better than what comes installed in the Ally and in this form factor I’m not even sure it’s possible to get better performance.The SN770M is an M.2230 SSD, meaning it’s about half the length of a normal ... MoreI got this for my ROG Ally handheld. With the SD card issues the ROG Ally currently has (that I have unfortunately experienced), upgrading the SSD is the only viable way to increase storage right now. I’ve used a fair amount of Western Digital SSD’s over the years including the larger SN770 version of this hard drive, as well as the SN850x. I’ve generally been very happy with their performance and the SN770M delivers on that again with improved performance on top of the additional storage. It’s not top of the line performance for a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it is much better than what comes installed in the Ally and in this form factor I’m not even sure it’s possible to get better performance.The SN770M is an M.2230 SSD, meaning it’s about half the length of a normal M.2280 and made to fit in smaller devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Microsoft Surface, among others. Getting it installed in the ROG Ally was the normal process and I followed along with ASUS’ guide for installation, though handling the smaller drive in that smaller space makes installation a little more challenging than standard M.2280 SSD’s.I opted not to clone my existing drive as I didn’t have ability to do it and ended up doing a clean install of Windows via the Ally’s Cloud Recovery. That process took a little while and I ended up leaving it for a couple of hours and coming back. Once the OS and all the latest Windows/ASUS updates installed I was left with about 864GB of open space. My before and after tests on the old drive vs. the 770M showed about a 22.5% improvement in read speeds and a 3x improvement on write speeds. I wasn’t sure how this would play out in terms of what I noticed in gaming, but only using Forza as a point of reference I noticed that the initial game load is consistently A LOT faster than before. I did not time the loading on the previous SSD, but it’s maybe twice as fast if not more using the new SN770M. Now, this could be down to other factors as well; maybe there was something wrong with my previous install that was holding it back or the fact that I don’t have as much stuff loaded up on my new install yet. My main takeaway is that the extra storage is nice and the performance is excellent.Overall I’m glad I went with the SSD upgrade over microSD. Even if the Ally didn’t have any problems with its microSD reader, upgrading to this SSD drive isn’t too much more costly than one of the better microSD cards you can buy in the same size and the performance is a lot better. 512GB for a handheld sounds like a lot, but when games are regularly well over 100GB (Forza Horizon 5 is 168GB) that gets eaten up pretty quickly if you aren’t constantly managing your installs.
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 ... MoreWith 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 & InstallationUnfortunately, 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.- PerformanceAs 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 LinePerformance 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.
The Asus Ally is amazing as a portable handheld PC Gaming system, but the main drawback out of the gate is the relatively low capacity onboard storage without an option to buy a configuration with more SSD space.Luckily, Asus understood heavy users would want to upgrade their storage and made it relatively easy to access the inside of the Ally to upgrade the storage. No major surprise here, as Asus became a household name in the PC industry on the strength of their PC mainboards and later, expanded across virtually every component you'd want in a high-end PC.Only a few minor complaints here, which are both understandable due to size constraints within the chassis of the very compact Ally.1. There isn't a 2nd m.2 SSD 2230 slot. If you're familiar with PCs, the ... MoreThe Asus Ally is amazing as a portable handheld PC Gaming system, but the main drawback out of the gate is the relatively low capacity onboard storage without an option to buy a configuration with more SSD space.Luckily, Asus understood heavy users would want to upgrade their storage and made it relatively easy to access the inside of the Ally to upgrade the storage. No major surprise here, as Asus became a household name in the PC industry on the strength of their PC mainboards and later, expanded across virtually every component you'd want in a high-end PC.Only a few minor complaints here, which are both understandable due to size constraints within the chassis of the very compact Ally.1. There isn't a 2nd m.2 SSD 2230 slot. If you're familiar with PCs, the 2280 form factor (the last two digit stand for mm) is probably what you are used to, so from 80mm to 30mm, you can see that's less than half the size. Still, even with it being so small, everything is so tight inside they couldn't fit a 2nd m.2 slot like you would find on a laptop.2. Compared to 2280 drives, the 2230 slot m.2 drive options are more expensive, have inferior cooling and are generally slower too.Enter WD and their excellent Black drives to help address these problems. While the SN770M (they have a SN770 2280 too) isn't as fast and impressive as their SN850 or updated SN850X, this was most likely due to thermal constraints in that chassis.Still, the performance on the SN770M is a big improvement from the included SSD and even more impressively, they've managed to get 1TB and even 2TB capacities on a much smaller m.2 SSD. I have multiple 2280 drives but didn't have any loose and not installed to show in a picture comparison, but the SN770M looks and feels more like a laptop WiFi card than an SSD, its that small.You can see the difference in speeds is significant, especially the Write speeds which are more than double. R/W on OEM drive is 4261/1818 MB/s compared to the SN770M which is 5275/4964 MB/s.In terms of installing the SN770M, it was very easy especially if you have any experience working with laptops and that kind of thing. Unscrew the screws, doing the bottom screws last. Use a spudger (plastic pry tool) to work between the front and back of the chassi and work your way around the edges gently. Unplug the battery cable from the mainboard to avoid any electrical issues while swapping the drive. Remove the screw, remove the old drive, replace with new drive. Do the steps in reverse and power the Ally back on.I used the Cloud Recovery method just to see if it worked but had a usb-c to m.2 external adapter ready with a backup image of my original drive just in case. One key thing to note about Cloud recovery, make SURE to set the date/time correctly in the BIOS after reconnecting the battery and powering on, if you don't, the Cloud Recovery won't work due to system time mismatch. I also had to connect to WiFi 2x and overall the recover failed a few times but finally worked after that. Pretty cool that it worked, but I would definitely make a backup image of the original image and also be ready to clone with software like Macrium Reflect, Acronis True Image, Partition Magic. Also you may need to disable Bitlocker if you go this route within Windows OS, so keep that in mind as well before you remove the drive.Price on these is also very reasonable but as I mentioned, they are more expensive than 2280 drives, probably because they don't produce as many, and the SSD chip densities are much higher since they have to fit 1 and 2TB on 1 chip instead of 2.If you are a HEAVY user and rotate multiple games on your Ally, say 15 or so new AAA games, I'd say get the 2TB drive. If you are OK with rotating 5-8 games at a time, then 1TB should be enough. I personally think 2TB would be amazing especially if you are going somewhere you won't have high speed internet to download new games, but you will have internet to just play online games. This also assumes each game is roughly 100GB in size, some newer games can be larger but older ones are typically in the 50-80GB range (1-2 Blu-Ray discs).Definitely a great upgrade to the Ally and one I would highly recommend!
First thing first - This is a Western Digital internal SSD. I've been purchasing Western Digital products since my early college years, going back to 2002- both internal and external HDD and SSDs as well as flash drives. They have a solid foundation in manufacturing reliable computer parts and this product, specifically, comes with a 5-year manufacturing warranty, which is longer than most standard warranties. Keep in mind that this is a Western Digital BLACK drive so you have access to the WD Digital Dashboard, which helps you keep checks your drive and offers a user-friendly user interface to monitor drive health, capacity, speed, temperatures, performance, firmware updates, etc. It is a solid tool for ensuring this SSD is performing the way it should to offer you ... MoreFirst thing first - This is a Western Digital internal SSD. I've been purchasing Western Digital products since my early college years, going back to 2002- both internal and external HDD and SSDs as well as flash drives. They have a solid foundation in manufacturing reliable computer parts and this product, specifically, comes with a 5-year manufacturing warranty, which is longer than most standard warranties. Keep in mind that this is a Western Digital BLACK drive so you have access to the WD Digital Dashboard, which helps you keep checks your drive and offers a user-friendly user interface to monitor drive health, capacity, speed, temperatures, performance, firmware updates, etc. It is a solid tool for ensuring this SSD is performing the way it should to offer you a good gaming experience. Let's be honest here, the overall concept of a mobile Windows gaming device is REALLY pushing the limits of what can be done on a small scale, so making the most of critical components like the internal SSD is, I'd say, crucial.Unfortunately, due to how large PC games have gotten over the years (necessary evil for gaming evolution and quality), upgrading the storage capacity on the ROG Ally is probably a worthwhile investment- it's a handheld gaming device so it's easier to have games installed locally instead of deleting and downloading large 1GB+ size files while on the go.I'd liken the installation process of SN770M SSD to be comparable (on a difficulty basis) as following instructions for putting together a large LEGO set - it's not intuitively obvious how to piece everything together but once you have the instructions available to you, you're good to go- the physical installation takes <10 minutes. That being said, there are SO many resources online, particularly YouTube, that will walk you through how to manage both software and the hardware - the easiest one is the one from "iFixit", which quickly runs through the installation process, particularly hardware component. There are somePREPARE your ROG Ally before installation!!!- Remove the microSD card that you may have installed into the system;- Make sure all the firmware through the MyAsus app is updated;- Backup into ASUS Cloud, and/or...- Backup to Acronis True Image for Western Digital (BETTER METHOD) to clone your drive and reinstall--> note that the Cloud Recovery approach requires double checking the BIOS settings to ensure time/dates are correct; otherwise, you WILL come across some recovery issues. I'd opt for the Acronis cloning method, which is my default approach based on failed experiences with ASUS Cloud in the past.I fully expect that anyone that owns a ROG Ally will have the basic knowledge of playing around the computer hardware (at a basic level) so this isn't going to be a science project. Even if you're absolutely new to this, as mentioned before, there are so many resources to be able to install and reap the benefits of a simple upgrade like this and plenty of help online if troubleshooting is necessary. Preparation is key!PERFORMANCE - overall, the SN770M works VERY well and is a speedy little monster compared to the OEM drive. Read speeds are a small bump from 4k MB/s to 5k MB/s and write speeds jump significantly from 1800 to 5000 MB/s (all rough numbers). It's a noticeable difference. For the 1TB SSD, I'd say you could probably get away with having 4-8 games available to you at any given time... if you like to carry a lot of games with you, you MAY want to opt for the larger 2TB version.
We’re a two-Ally family. I bought mine at launch while my daughter got hers a few weeks later after coveting dad’s shiny new toy. I had already upgraded my Ally with a 2TB Western Digital SN740 2230 SSD, but it took a while before my daughter started bumping up against the limits of the stock 512GB SSD. However, her Steam library is nowhere near as extensive as mine so 2TB seemed a bit overkill for her. Enter the 1TB WD Black SN770M, Western Digital’s gamer-oriented “Black” series of 2230 M.2 NVMe drives specifically aimed serving at the tiny-footprint, lower-temperatures, less-battery draining, but still high-speed-demanding gaming market that is clamoring for more storage on the go thanks to recent successes of handhelds like the ROG Ally and Steam Deck. I admit I ... MoreWe’re a two-Ally family. I bought mine at launch while my daughter got hers a few weeks later after coveting dad’s shiny new toy. I had already upgraded my Ally with a 2TB Western Digital SN740 2230 SSD, but it took a while before my daughter started bumping up against the limits of the stock 512GB SSD. However, her Steam library is nowhere near as extensive as mine so 2TB seemed a bit overkill for her. Enter the 1TB WD Black SN770M, Western Digital’s gamer-oriented “Black” series of 2230 M.2 NVMe drives specifically aimed serving at the tiny-footprint, lower-temperatures, less-battery draining, but still high-speed-demanding gaming market that is clamoring for more storage on the go thanks to recent successes of handhelds like the ROG Ally and Steam Deck. I admit I was already pretty happy with the SN740’s performance in my own rig, but I was curious to see what WD could do to improve on performance commensurate with their vaunted Black line of high-speed, high-endurance SSDs while still fitting into a postage stamp-sized form factor.For starters, the SN770M is another in WD’s line of DRAM-less SSDs designed to bring down cost as well as reduce power/battery consumption. Basically, the SN770M uses a bit of the onboard system RAM (or host memory buffer - HMB) to act as a cache while writing data to the disk. That sounds onerous for something like the ROG Ally which already has to split its limited RAM between system memory and video memory, but the SN770M doesn’t use a lot of memory for these purposes anyway (only up to ~64MB), so it’s not really taxing system RAM in terms of overall capacity.On paper, this kind of architecture isn’t supposed to be *quite* as fast as an SSD with dedicated DRAM because the available disk cache isn’t directly connected to the SSD’s controller, and the data being written has to move across all the various silicon associated with the PCIe bus as well. However, in practice, most newer DRAM-less drives like this one are approaching speeds and performance so near to that of drives with dedicated DRAM that there’s virtually no way you’re ever going to notice the difference in real-world use. This is especially true for something like the ROG Ally where the use case is primary gaming (which is a read-heavy rather than write-heavy activity). Now, if you plan to render massive video files or copy 20GB ISO images to the drive, sure, things will slow down on long sustained writes once you chew through the cache; but using something like the ROG Ally or Steam Deck primarily as a gaming device (imagine that!), you get all the speedy goodness that WD Black SSDs are known for. The SN770M also offers Microsoft DirectStorage Support for new/forthcoming game titles that will make use of it.In addition to WD’s generous 5-year warranty, the SN770M also gives you the added benefit of using TLC 3D NAND over the more cost-effective but less durable and slightly lower-performing QLC variety that tends to be common in a lot of mid-tier and budget-oriented drives like these. And because it’s a WD Black drive, you also get the full benefit of the WD Digital Dashboard designed to support OCD-levels of performance status-seeking and drive feature-tweaking. Along with keeping you apprised of firmware updates (mine did not require one), WD Digital Dashboard gives you a one-stop shop to monitor drive health, temperature, capacity, performance, S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics, TRIM settings and scheduling, write-cache settings, app background behavior, and more. Sure, most of these features, readings, and settings are available elsewhere throughout Windows, but WD Dashboard puts it all in a user-friendly and clearly gamer-oriented location.As an added bonus, you also get access to the WD edition of Acronis True Image. Along with providing advanced backup, recovery, and system protection functions, another Acronis feature is "Clone Disk." Although I used the ASUS Cloud Recovery option in BIOS to start my daughter’s Ally off fresh, I did use Clone Disk a few months ago to move my gaming rig’s Windows installation to another high-performance WD Black NVMe—this is the same route you can take if you don’t want to reinstall any of your apps and games once you upgrade your Ally’s SSD. Using an NVMe enclosure for the SN770M attached to the Ally’s USB-C port (or hub), Acronis Clone Disk will intelligently copy and resize your partitions (including hidden and recovery partitions) to move the Ally’s existing OS and SSD contents to the new SN770M and make it ready to replace the stock SSD. I also found that you can use Clone Disk to clone any drive to any other drive, even if the source/destination isn’t the SN770M, so long as your WD drive is detected on your system at all.The review drive I was sent didn’t come with a M.2 screw; if that is true of the retail boxed drives as well, be careful that you don’t strip the M.2 screw in your Ally changing out SSDs as I have read this is a common problem. The drive itself is single-sided so it will easily work in the Ally, Steam Deck, or any of a number of ultra-portables using a 2230 sized SSD. The heat-spreader is a nice-shiny WD Black label, but other than that, there isn’t much more you’re going to get in the package.Bottom line, then…how does it perform? In a word, AMAZING! Like I mentioned at the start, I already had a 2TB WD SN740 in my own ROG Ally; and while this new 1TB SN770M also exceeded WD’s published read speeds of 5,150 MB/s in the same way the SN740 did, the SN770M trounced the SN740’s sequential 1MB and 128K write speeds by about 800MB/s. I have included CrystalDiskMark results for both drives with this review.WD Black has earned a well-deserved reputation as a top-notch, high-performance option for gaming-oriented NVMe SSDs. Although the small form factor and lower-power requirements of something like a ROG Ally or Steam Deck won’t yield quite the same eye-watering speeds as WD’s larger and more power-hungry 2280-sized cousins, you’re going to be VERY hard-pressed to find a better-performing 2230 drive that includes such a stellar warranty with actually quite useful software accompaniments…HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
It’s really incredible just how far storage has come in just the last decade, not to mention two decades. We have seen storage capacities go up, while size of drives have gone down, all while increasing the read/write speeds to huge amounts. The WD Blank SN770M is probably the best example of this phenomenon I have ever seen.Designed for mobile gaming in the age of portable PCs, this M.2 2230 NVMe SSD is small, like REALLY small. At just around 1.1”x0.85”, it is about the size of an SD Card and comes with a full 2TB of storage with quoted read speeds of 5150 MB/s and write speeds of 4850 MB/s; which is very fast for gaming use cases. I don’t tend to stress test SSDs too much in everyday use, but I re-download almost my entire game collection on my ASUS ROG Ally ... MoreIt’s really incredible just how far storage has come in just the last decade, not to mention two decades. We have seen storage capacities go up, while size of drives have gone down, all while increasing the read/write speeds to huge amounts. The WD Blank SN770M is probably the best example of this phenomenon I have ever seen.Designed for mobile gaming in the age of portable PCs, this M.2 2230 NVMe SSD is small, like REALLY small. At just around 1.1”x0.85”, it is about the size of an SD Card and comes with a full 2TB of storage with quoted read speeds of 5150 MB/s and write speeds of 4850 MB/s; which is very fast for gaming use cases. I don’t tend to stress test SSDs too much in everyday use, but I re-download almost my entire game collection on my ASUS ROG Ally (~1.5TB worth of games) and the speeds were incredibly fast. I was up and running in no time, and when actually jumping into games the speed uptick was very noticeable. Loading screens were often blink and you're ready to go, and actual running performance was great. I had no thermal issues, or hitching in any of the games I tested. World streaming in some of the open world games I enjoy, like Spider-Man, were seamless, with no stuttering or noticeable impacts on performance. With support for Microsofts DirectStorage, even some of the more memory intensive games, like Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, should perform quite well.Honestly, in my time using my ROG Ally with the SSD, I have had nothing but incredible performance from the drive. It fits all of my favorite games, loads, and runs them without issue, making the handheld feel even snappier and more performant than usual. My only real complaint, and it has nothing to do with the drive itself, is that the set-up process with the ROG Ally was unnecessarily difficult. The actual install of the drive was super simple, but needing to reload Windows was incredibly irritating, as it would often get hung up during the install process. Your mileage may vary, but it required some guides and searching to figure out that I needed to adjust the date/time in the ROG Ally BIOS to correct for an infinite checking issue I was getting. Again, this is not specific to this drive, and is an issue with the ROG Ally itself, but is something to just be aware of if you are using this drive with the ROG Ally; which is something I recommend, as it is a significant improvement in storage from the base storage!So, overall I highly recommend this drive if you are looking for faster and bigger storage in a class-leading form factor. Do your research before upgrading your handhelds internal storage, especially if like me you were upgrading your ROG Ally, but with some guides and how-tos, you should be up and running in no time.
This tiny solid-state drive is a perfect upgrade from the default 512BG SSD that comes with the ASUS ROG Ally.The SSD is 1TB, which gives you roughly 930GB of functional user space for apps and games. Whether 1TB is enough storage space for you is a relatively personal decision. If you’re only all about the latest and graphically greatest AAA games, you may find it’s not quite enough. However, for me, it’s plenty of space for my combination of some AAA games, like Baldur’s Gate, and then a lot of my favorite, smaller indie games.The actual drive is physically very small – specifically a form factor called M.2 2230. This is exactly the size of the one pre-installed on the ASUS ROG Ally, so you don’t need to worry about checking the fit at all.Installation is ... MoreThis tiny solid-state drive is a perfect upgrade from the default 512BG SSD that comes with the ASUS ROG Ally.The SSD is 1TB, which gives you roughly 930GB of functional user space for apps and games. Whether 1TB is enough storage space for you is a relatively personal decision. If you’re only all about the latest and graphically greatest AAA games, you may find it’s not quite enough. However, for me, it’s plenty of space for my combination of some AAA games, like Baldur’s Gate, and then a lot of my favorite, smaller indie games.The actual drive is physically very small – specifically a form factor called M.2 2230. This is exactly the size of the one pre-installed on the ASUS ROG Ally, so you don’t need to worry about checking the fit at all.Installation is very simple. You will need a small screwdriver to remove screws back on the case, along with a credit card, guitar pick, or other tiny plastic tool to snap the back of the Ally case off after removing the screws. From there, you unplug the battery for safety, unscrew the single screw holding the existing SSD, place in the new SSD, replace the screw, connect the battery again, snap the back of the case on, replace the screws, and turn it on.At this point you’ll be presented with the option for cloud recovery, which does take some time, and then you’re left at a fresh installation of Windows, as if you’ve turned on the ASUS ROG Ally for the first time.This whole process is very user friendly, even if you’re not super techy. The ASUS website even provides instructions with photographs of the entire process I described above.Alternatively, if you’re feeling a bit more technically inclined, you can do what I did and clone your current SSD to the new one and then after installation you boot right into windows exactly where you left off. There’s a few more steps to this, and it does require you purchase some sort of external SSD enclosure, but there are plenty of YouTube tutorials and with that SSD enclosure you can continue to use the stock SSD as secondary USB storage.The WD_BLACK line of storage drives are specifically designed with gaming in mind. I’ve used some of their external drives on my consoles and in my PCs and I’ve always been very satisfied with them. I do not have specific benchmarks, but I feel confident in saying this feels speedier at loading bigger games, such as Baldur’s Gate III, than the stock ROG Ally SSD.The bottom line is that if you own a ROG Ally or other similar device that fits a M.2 2230 SSD, you can’t go wrong with the WD_BLACK SSD – a solid choice from a known and trusted name in storage technology. In just a few hours after getting the SSD, I had it installed and was back to playing Baldur’s Gate III, with my bard singing songs of larger gaming capacity. After all, Starfield needs another 140GB and that’s comin’ up next!
| Capacity | 1TB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2230 |
| Warranty | 5-Year Limited Warranty |
