Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot for ALL Surface Pro 8s; even with described tweaks mine won't sleep
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2023
I bought this very excited to finally upgrade my Surface Pro 8 to 1tb. I had read all of the reports of issues with the Surface Pro 8 but I was under the impression that as long as you made the tweaks as described, you would be fine. Sadly, for my specific SP8, that is not the case and when I did some more digging online it appears others seem to have issues where some Surface Pro 8 units just refuse to peacefully coexist with this drive.
I made the tweaks to Windows, copied over the contents of my current SSD using Macrium Reflect, installed the new drive, and was blown away by how incredibly fast this drive is! It made my Surface FLY like a brand new machine. It was an absolute joy to use, and I had no issues with blue screens or reboots *while using the computer* on either AC or battery. It just flew and I was thrilled.
I did notice my battery seemed to be dropping a little faster than usual, and it seemed to warm up the SP8 (although temps reported by the drive were fine, in the 40-50C range). I was going to keep an eye on it, until I discovered a bigger problem...
Sadly, the one problem I was unable to solve, was the fact my Surface refused to fully go to sleep, or hibernate, with the Sabrent drive in. Every time I either pushed the power button, or closed the lid, the SP8 would go to sleep, for about 5-10 minutes. Then out of nowhere I'd hear it wake up and reboot itself, without any interaction on my part. The fans would go full blast, and the computer didn't go back to sleep-- so if it was in a bag, it just got hotter and hotter and kept running. And it was a full reboot, so any programs/documents/etc I left up when I put the machine to sleep were gone. I tried every possible combination of the recommended registry tweaks and a few others, and this behavior persisted. I also wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows from scratch (using the Surface Recovery Image, and then letting it fully update back to Windows 11 22H2+latest updates) and had the same problem, so I know it wasn't just an issue with my current Windows installation.
If you use your SP8 in a different way, or ALWAYS have it plugged in, and/or ALWAYS do a full shutdown when you're done, you're probably safe. But I need the ability to just put it to sleep and have it reliably wake up where I left it, and sadly I can't do that with this drive.
I really, really hope Sabrent and/or Microsoft can get a firmware update or something that can resolve this issue, but for me it was a deal breaker, and I had to take the drive out and put my original, slow, boring OEM drive back.
For reference, my SP8 was an early model, bought in late November 2021, so perhaps SP8s built later have a better experience. It sounds fine for SP9s.
It's a great drive, it's incredibly fast, but just make sure you're either using a *fully compatible* PC (which definitely doesn't include every Surface Pro 8) or you're ready for the possibility of going a bit nuts troubleshooting. My biggest problem now is now that I've seen how much faster it made my SP8 I'm desperate to find a way to somehow get that level of performance back!!