FIDECO M.2 NVME and SATA External SSD Enclosure, USB 3.2, Gen 2 Adapter with Transfer Speeds up to 10Gbps, Hard Drive Case for M-Key and B+M Key NVME or SATA SSD of 2242/2260/2280

Product Information

Installing an SSD is pretty easy as you just need to unscrew the cover, attach the M.2 drive along with the optional cooling pad, screw in the mounting screw and reattach the cover. Unfortunately, both the cover and the mounting screw are 5-point star shaped screws, which are not very common. However, there’s a screwdriver in the box. Which form factor? You have to get an SSD enclosure that matches the physical size of your drive. If you have a 2.5-inch hard drive or SSD, get a 2.5-inch SATA enclosure. For a 3.5-inch hard drive, you’ll need a 3.5-inch SATA enclosure. M.2 SSDs require M.2 enclosures, but be careful if your SSD is shorter than the standard 2280 (80mm size); most but not all enclosures have mounting screws for the shorter sizes. Also, if you plan to use an M.2 SATA SSD, as opposed to an NVMe one, make sure that the enclosure supports that standard instead (or in addition), because most M.2 enclosures are NVMe only. ASUS ROG Strix Arion enclosure (USB3.2 Gen 2 capable of 10Gbps) and a 2TB PNY XLR8 CS3030 formatted to AFP The fastest enclosure we've tested, the ZikeDrive uses an ASMedia ASM2464 controller to deliver USB 4 read speeds that are 20 percent faster than we've seen on the competition. Write speeds were less impressive, but still strong in most scenarios. However, the ZikeDrive doesn't make the best list yet, because it's part of an IndieGoGo campaign and not available for general sale.

This is one of the most performant 10 Gbps enclosures and one of the most convenient, thanks to a tool-free design that allows you to slip the cover off by pressing a spring-loaded switch. It's a few dollars more than the Sabrent EC-SNVE at present and we prefer that enclosure's flip-up lid to the Plugble's slide-out one.

In all instances the enclosure runs quite cool, slightly warm in the hand. The only thing annoying is the enclosure RGB lighting which stays on all the time. In all instances the enclosure is attached to the thunderbolt port of all devices. The all-aluminum chassis has ridges to help with heat dissipation and it comes with both a thermal pad you can put on top of your SSD to keep it cool under prolonged loads. It’s a rather attractive silver enclosure that has a small cutout / handle area you can use for threading through a carabiner. it´s for both RTL9210 and RTL9210B Chipsets dumped the current fw info with MPTool, made sure to change all parameters in *.cfg file RTL9210B_CG_Lite.cfg to match the original fw dumped info and finally commented the DISK_IPS_THRES entry.

To install our drive in this enclosure, we first had to remove the aluminum panel, which is attached with a tiny, 5-point star screw rather than a normal Philips head type. The enclosure comes with a small star-shaped screwdriver, but we lost it and had to go digging through our iFixit kit to find an appropriate head. It might be that to conserve power, the ports on the M1's are indeed underpowered, dunno. Also, I cannot plug 2 TB3 drives in my M1 Air at tha same time. doesn't mount whatever I do. I also have a couple Orico drives with fans, but those are just overkill and mostly for show. They do work, just big and require tools to swap drives. It could be the SX8200 that's the issue, as it doesn't work with the Envoy Express. I just want a consistent TB3 drive, that's faster than the Envoy TB3 Express with the Intel P660, which is super stable (had it for 6 months with no issues). The Envoy Express might actually be the best bet, as it only uses 2 lanes, and doesn't get as hot as the Orico (and many other 40 Gb/s TB3 drives). On a few M.2 enclosures, including the SSK SHE-C325, we found that our test Kingston Rage Fury SSD’s built-in graphene heat spreader, which adds 3.5mm of z height to the drive, didn’t leave much vertical clearance. However, the SHE-C325 could close anyway, without scraping the drive’s surface. Considering that many M.2 SSDs have built-in, non-removable heat spreaders, every enclosure should accommodate them.The SHE-C325 isn’t the most attractive enclosure on the market, but it does use mostly aluminum casing (the left part near the USB port is plastic) and at 4.5 x 1.5 x 0.4 inches, it’s pretty portable. SSK’s enclosure also comes with a thermal pad to help send heat to the aluminum casing, but you’ll only want to use it if your SSD doesn’t have a built-in heat spreader. The Sabrent EC-USASP has an on / off switch, something you won’t find on most SSD enclosures but a nice convenience if you want to leave it plugged in but only power it on when you need it. Most 2.5-inch SATA enclosures have USB 3.0 micro B as their output port and come with USB Type-A to micro B cables. However, the EC-USASP has a USB 3 Type-A port (5 Gbps) and comes with a Type-A to Type-A cable. So, if you are planning to connect the enclosure to a laptop that has only Type-C ports, you can use a USB Type-A to Type-C cable (something many people have lying around the house) to do so.

If you want an SSD enclosure with some RGB bling and a swanky sci-fi design, Asus’s ROG Strix Arion is for you. The M.2 NVMe enclosure has two RGB lights, an illuminated ROG logo on the top and a small plastic fin on the side. These show a pleasing pink and purplish light show which Asus markets as being part of its “Aura Sync” RGB ecosystem. However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually control the lights as the Asus Armoury Crate software we tested with did not recognize the drive. Compact aluminium housing, compatible with a variety of sizes of M.2 PCIe/NGFF SSD (30mm / 42mm / 60mm / 80mm). To see how each SSD and hard drive enclosure performs, we installed an SSD, connected the enclosure to our testbed laptop (a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 10th Gen) and then ran a series of benchmark tests, using three different apps: PCMark 10’s Storage Benchmark, DiskBench and CrystalDiskMark 8. To maintain consistency, we used the same M.2 NVMe SSD, a Kingston Rage Fury PCIe 4.0 SSD (2TB), in all of our M.2 enclosures and the same 2.5-inch SATA SSD (a 1.9TB Toshiba model) in all of our 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA enclosures. There’s also a small, built-in battery that provides 5-10 seconds (depending on which model you get) of service time in the event of a power failure. That brief window of time might be enough to allow the drive to finish writing some data and avoid corrupting your drive in the event of an ill-timed unplugging. How fast? Enclosures can only handle as much speed as their USB ports and the USB ports on your computer allow. Most 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drive / SSD enclosures operate under standard 5 Gbps USB (USB 3 / 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 1). Most M.2 SSD enclosures operate at 10 Gbps (aka USB 3.1 or USB 3.2 Gen 2).How often will you open it? Most of the M.2 SSD enclosures we tested were made to be opened once, have a drive installed inside and then screwed closed for the long haul. While you can reopen all of them and change drives at any time, you should consider an enclosure with a tool-less design if you think you’ll be changing the drive frequently. The Orico’s M2PV-C3’s design is less polarizing than that of the SSK SHE-C325, but it actually uses cheaper materials, as the top panel is ridged aluminum but the sides and bottom are ABS plastic.