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M.2 SSDs offer superior performance to traditional hard drives. External enclosures are being used to replace traditional portable storage. These best M.2 enclosures offer huge performance enhancements and thermal solutions that deliver uncompressed performance speed.
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. As evidenced by the CrystalDiskMark sequential performance chart, any decent M.2 enclosure will max out its interface bandwidth when connected to a sufficiently fast USB port. This also means that an external PCIe/NVMe SSD in a 10 Gbps enclosure is about twice as fast even when compared to high-end internal SATA drives. I am all for tool-free installations, and this enclosure does not disappoint in this regard. The setup is a breeze, involving just plugging the SSD into the M.2 NVMe USB adapter and securing it with a rubber plug. This is why it’s in the third position in our list of best M.2 SSD enclosures.
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An RGB M.2 gaming enclosure that is compatible with many devices. This exceptional enclosure is compatible with most PCIe M.2 SSD SSDs up to 80mm in length. This enclosure is compatible with many gaming platforms, including PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. It also has a USB Type-C Gen 2 port that can be used at high speed. TDBT M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Heat Sink, 10Gbps USB-C to PCIe NVMe M.2 Hard Drive Enclosure with Thermal Cooling Pad, NVMe M.2 Drive to USB-C External Storage Enclosure, Fits M-Key B+M Key NVMe SSDby TDBT It’s worth mentioning that Apple’s M1 Mac range has an underlying issue due to which, your external SSD will not receive it’s maximum speed. The Sabrent (EC-SNVE) is cheap and support both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe SSDs. It comes with 100% tool-free installation so that you can easily install or remove your SSD on the go. One option is the Orico 20 Gbps M.2 enclosure, which actually costs slightly less than the RGB-equipped Asus Strix Arion. This well-rounded aluminum enclosure is a bit heavier than its 10 Gbps counterparts, but still fairly compact. You only have to bother with a single screw and it includes a heatsink as well as a 20 Gbps-rated Type-C to Type-C cable.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A1 enclosure is another premium option for those looking for the toughest enclosure out there. The good thing about this enclosure is that it supports both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe drives. This one is the best M.2 SSD Enclosure for everybody who wants ASUS’s reliability but at a little higher price point. 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.
Throw Your Computer In The Ocean.
M.2 drive length isn't always an indicator of drive capacity, but therearelimits to NAND-chip density and how many memory modules engineers can stuff onto a PCB of a given size. As a result, most of the M.2 drives we've seen to date have topped out at 2TB, though you can find a few 4TB and 8TB models at lofty prices. The typical capacity waypoints are as follows: Don't forget that having ultimate external drive performance won't help the source drive be any faster than whatever its interface is limited to. However, from an engineering point of view, SSDs didn't needto be that big. The enclosure an SSD comes in has a lot of dead space inside. It's designed in that 2.5-inch size and shape to make the drive fit into those existing bays. So when mobile-device designers, challenged with slimming down laptops and tablets, reassessed this issue, the consensus was clear: The bulky 2.5-inch form factor, eventually, would have to go. 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.
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