Enclosure for the M.2 NVMe SSD

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

ace_rimmer

Distinguished
Oct 12, 2010
2
0
18,510
I have scoured the web, and an enclosure for M.2 NVMe drives (M key) such as the samsung pro 2TB don't seem to exist, which is hard to believe. I need to copy the contents of my old NVMe SSD to my new one, and my laptop only has one NVMe slot. Also, I want to still be able to pull files from the old SSD. Both of these use cases require an external enclosure. Sonnet make the Fusion Thunderbolt 3, but this is only available with a 512 drive already inside, not as a bare enclosure. Any ideas?

I just found this one. Its not usb, its a 2.5" drive format, but so far is the only thing I have found which explicitly says it supports NVMe. Anyone tried this?
 
Solution
A
1. First of all, I know nothing about that type of adapter card you mentioned so I can't comment on whether that's some sort of viable solution in your situation. Perhaps another responder to your query has some info on it relative to your objective.

2. One possibility occurs to me. Assuming you have or can get your hands on a USB external enclosure (or one of those SATA-to-USB adapters) and you have a HDD (or SSD) sufficient to contain the present data contents of your installed M.2 SSD...you could utilize a disk-cloning program to clone the contents of the M.2 drive to the USB's external drive.

(I'm not sure I quite understand your comment that you "want to still be able to pull files from the old SSD". If you're able to clone the...
Sort by date Sort by votes
A

ArtPog

Admirable
Sep 17, 2014
2,951
3
8,965
1. First of all, I know nothing about that type of adapter card you mentioned so I can't comment on whether that's some sort of viable solution in your situation. Perhaps another responder to your query has some info on it relative to your objective.

2. One possibility occurs to me. Assuming you have or can get your hands on a USB external enclosure (or one of those SATA-to-USB adapters) and you have a HDD (or SSD) sufficient to contain the present data contents of your installed M.2 SSD...you could utilize a disk-cloning program to clone the contents of the M.2 drive to the USB's external drive.

(I'm not sure I quite understand your comment that you "want to still be able to pull files from the old SSD". If you're able to clone the contents of that drive, *all* the data will be copied to the new drive. You understand that, right?).

3. Then install the new M.2 drive and using the above apparatus clone back the contents of the USB drive to the newly-installed M.2 drive.

4. Does that sound like it might be a viable solution? The disk-cloning program we generally use - Casper - does, however it's a commercial program costing $49.99. (It's the best d-c program we've ever used; we use it primarily for frequent/routine backups of our systems because of its speed, simplicity of use, and general effectiveness. And, of course, we also use it for "one-shot" type of disk-cloning operations such as the one in which you're interested.
Casper does have a 30-day Trial Edition available so you may want to give it a try if you think the disk-cloning approach is a practical one. See...
https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/

There are quite a few freely-available d-c programs. The Macrium Reflect program is quite good in our experience as well as the Easeus Todo and AOMEI Backupper programs that we've also experienced.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
M

marko55

Honorable
Nov 29, 2015
800
0
11,660
There's a slew of USB adapters for SATA m.2 drives, as you've probably found already, but I have yet to see one that will take PCIe m.2 drives and convert to USB for external connectivity. When I've needed to clone NVMe drives I put them in my desktop.

Your best bet is probably gonna be to just copy your data off to an external drive of some sort, put the new NVMe drive in and do a fresh OS install. You can export the Windows key using Belarc Advisor and download the Windows media for your version from microsoft if you need it. Then copy your data back.

As far as keeping the old NVMe drive around, I'd just get all the data off it and sell it man. There's zero point in having an external adapter with an NVMe drive attached UNLESS you can find maybe a thunderbolt or USB 3.1 adapter so you can actually benefit from some of the drive's performance when transferring to/from it. Sell it and pick up an external SATA SSD via USB and enjoy.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
N

neossoul

Mar 3, 2018
1
0
10


As for someone like who is looking to get data out of the NVMe M.2 drive it makes perfect sense. But you are also correct it is not for long term business, as it will die once proper UBS-C enclosures are sold.
There is a solution that I am contemplating: Nestor NA611TB3 http://www.netstor.com.tw/product_info.aspx?PID=PID_171026055872595 expensive for one-off use, but I can see its long term uses (if the price drops).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
T

the_roen

Honorable
Jan 4, 2018
11
0
10,510


This makes a ton more sense.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
D

dirkm

May 3, 2018
1
0
10
I have recently installed the Aplicata Quad M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe x8 Adapter in a OWC Mercury Helios 3 Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Expansion Chassis together with two Samsung 960 2TB NVMe SSDs and set up a RAID from macOS, not cheap but works great and leaves room to add two more drives. In RAID 0 I get 2900MB/s write and 2500MB/s read on my iMac Pro.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom