SSD removal Surface Laptop Model 1769

Question

hi all

I have an old surface laptop model 1769 not sure if it's gen 1 or 2...

the computer won't restart properly and I have done a lot of things including the forced shutdown 3 times to access the boot menu.

Question: can the SSD be removed ? is it soldered ? and even if soldered, can it be safely removed to access the data via an adapter ?

I won't need to replace it by a new one; I just don't want to damage the SSD (don't mind about the board)

thank you!!

Answer 1

Hello Matt,

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

1769 generally refers to the Surface Laptop 2.

Unfortunately, the SSD on the Surface Laptop 2 is not removable. For this model, the SSD is soldered to the motherboard:

The Laptop line of devices didn't support removable SSDS until the Surface Laptop 3, but even then, the hard drive is not user removable. The hard drive is only removable by a skilled technician following Microsoft provided instructions.

So I actually think that even if you had the ability to remove it from the motherboard, you probably wouldn't be able to access the data in an efficient way because there aren't any available ports to connect to USB ports.

The biggest problem right now is that your Surface doesn't seem to get into the system properly. But when you press the power button, your computer responds, right? Then there may be a way to transfer the data from the SSD, but you may need to try booting the Surface from a USB device:

Boot Surface from a USB device - Microsoft Support

But before you do that, you need to create a bootable USB drive for your Surface:

Creating and using a USB recovery drive for Surface - Microsoft Support

You need to create the USB recovery u drive on another computer.

If you are able to boot up and get into the system with the help of a USB drive, don't hesitate to try to back up all your important data right away.

This is the best way I can think of to transfer data without removing the SSD.

Best Regards,

Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

hi Mitchel

First off, thank you so much for the time and the deep insights. Truly appreciate the effort.

Just to clarify the issue I'm facing:

My surface Laptop is stuck in the re-install process (I had performance issues so I decided to re-install; after the fact, that was a really bad idea :-(

When I push the power button, the message is always the same:

"The computer restarted unexpectedly. Windows installation cannot proceed.

To install windows, click ok to restart the computer and then restart the installation"

I'll try the option you've offered, but my goal is really to be able to back up my data, as opposed to do a clean install

Thank you in advance for confirming it's possible in this scenario as I really cannot access the boot menu even when forcing the shutdown 3 times

Matt

Answer 3

Hi Matt,

Yes, I understand your need to back up data on your hard drive, so I would recommend you try the solution of booting Surface from a USB device.

At the end of the process, you will see pages to select the language and keyboard layout:

But the most important is the last page:

Please select Continue. Sorry if the screenshots are blurry, but they are from the video in the link.

If you still can't get your Surface started with this step, I'll share a more complicated solution. Please click "Troubleshoot" on the "Choose an option" page, you should see "Advanced Options", there is a way to back up the SSD data from the command prompt on this page:

Rescue Files when Windows Won't Start - Microsoft Community

See Greg's thread for the steps to open Notepad from a command prompt. Hopefully this works.

Best Regards,

Mitchell | Microsoft Community Support Specialist