As an author of a PDF library this is hilarious, because the number of bugs I have received over the years where this is unintentionally happening is quite high.
I think that tape-like piece that you removed from the SSD compartment is actually the thermal pad that makes contact between the SSD and the MSI heat sink cover so you may actually want that!
Kind of plugging my own project here, but I too am a software developer that found great joy from breaking away from all the layers of abstraction and working directly with the hardware. I created a portable game system with the 6502: