@JordanLund absolutely! This is a huge miss from TAPO to stick with 2.5". Part of it might have been to keep the unit small, but from a consumer budget perspective, looking at the compatibility list, that 8TB Samsung is hovering around $750. Also, these SSDs are not built for constant read/write. That is why you hardly find any surveillance-grade SSDs in 2.5.

I can get a 16TB Seagate Skyhawk, built for surveillance, for under $400. I hope they upgrade this unit, or its replacement includes 3.5" form factor.

  @JordanLund I cheated. I used a male to female sata data cable and taped it to a stick to reach in and connect it to inside of unit. then plugged other end into the sata drive and used a sata drive enclosure to power it separate from the unit since power draw was higher.. made use of my old 1.5 TB drive. they do have 2.5 drive adapters for the newer M2 drives but I currently dont have a spare laying around to test it out.

JordanLund wrote

Got my new setup 11/11/25 and imagine my surprise that the H500 supports up to 16 TB of storage, but only has a 2.5" drive slot.

 

This might come as a shock, but right now the largest 2.5" drive you can get is an 8TB Samsung SSD and that's not cheap.

 

2.5" hard drives are inexpensive, but realistically max out at 5TB.

 

If the H500 allowed for standard 3.5" drives, hitting the 16TB maximum would be easy!