Why am I taking this Samsung T5 external SSD apart?

Regular readers will know that I dabble in photography and videography. I recently picked up an Atomos Ninja V field monitor (a screen that I can attach to a camera to give me a better view and it also allows me to record to it over HDMI rather than record to the camera itself) to act as a recorder. You can pop SSD drives into the Ninja V for access to faster and cheaper storage than buying high-capacity SD cards or the CF Express type A cards that my Sony A7IV takes.

Problem is, unless you buy the specific mini-SSDs for the Ninja V, they tend to hang out the side of the recorder and are sometimes knocked while in use. 

Oh, and because only one manufacturer currently makes them, they’re expensive. 

Really expensive compared to standard SSDs.

That’s when I came across a product called the Andycine Magnalium caddy for the Ninja V. It solves both problems — it’s cheaper than the mini-SSDs, and is smaller than regular SSDs.

The best of all worlds!

It’s a caddy into which you can pop an mSATA drive. The mSATA drive that’s recommended is the one inside the 1TB Samsung T5 external SSD.

So it’s time to strip apart a T5.

Opening the T5 is pretty simple — peel off a plastic label from each end and remove four tiny screws.

Slide the drive assembly out of the metal enclosure.

With the drive assembly out, removing the mSATA drive from the connector is a matter of moving a thermal pad and three more screws.

With the drive free, the rest is pretty straightforward. Slide the drive into the adapter, fit the two screws, apply the thermal pad to the top and bottom, and then pop it into the enclosure and screw it together.

And it’s done. Here it is fitted to my Atomos Ninja V field monitor.