ORICO M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) PCIe External Adapter NVMe Case for 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 SSD up to 8TB, UASP Supported - M2PV

I purchased this NVMe SSD enclosure because it had a decent price, in addition to using a design that provides a heatspreader for the SSD. While it supports NVMe SSDs with no problem, it is important to understand that this does not act as a HBA, instead when a drive is installed, it will show up as a “Realtek RTL9210 NVME SCSI Disk Device”. This means that you will not be able to update the firmware of the SSD in the enclosure or access any other low level functions. Instead all you will get is the SMART data, and the ability to initialize and format the drive in addition to normal reading and writing of user data. This means that if you need to update the firmware of your SSD, you will need to take it out of the enclosure and then connect it to the m.2 slot of a PC. (((Performance))) While the RTL9210 chipset supports NVMe and SATA, the enclosure is only wired for NVMe, thus you must use an NVMe SSD. The chipset also runs at PCIe 3.0 X2, but provides a USB interface of USB 3.1 Gen 2, for a speed of 10Gbps. In terms of real world performance, when using it with a Western Digital SN770 1TB drive, on a 10Gbps USB port (USB 3.2 gen 2), the enclosure reached a real world read speed of 1016.12 MB/s, and a real world write speed of 973.39MB/s. In repeating the tests on a 5Gbps USB port (USB 3.2 gen 1), the performance dropped significantly across the board, even in areas where the interface does not seem to be saturating, for example, performance drops in Q32T16 4K random reads and writes, even though the drive cannot offer 4K random at speeds fast enough to saturate either a 5Gbps or 10Gbps interface. Under a 5Gbps port, the read speeds dropped to 442.36MB/s and the writes dropped to 414.54MB/s. This overall indicates some additional overhead is taking place when the enclosure is operating in the 5Gbps mode. (((Installation and Setup))) The enclosure is quite easy to set up and install. Simply unscrew the single torx screw holding the cover that doubles as a heatsink/ heatspreader. Then lift the heatspreader up at the area you just unscrewed (The heatsink hinges out rather than slides). The bottom half of the case is made out of plastic, but has a metal threaded insert for the screw mount of the heatspreader. The top heatspreader is made out of aluminum. The thermal pad is a standard 1mm thermal pad, though the protective film is a bit thick, thus be sure to remove both pieces of protective film before closing the lid. The gap between the SSD and heatsink is about 0.99mm when closed. To install the SSD into the enclosure, first remove the PCB of the enclosure (there are no screws or clips holding it in place). Then insert the rubber retainer for the SSD in the hole that corresponds to the length of your SSD. A standard 2280 SSD would require the use of the 4th hole (hole farthest from the USB-C port on the PCB). It will take some effort to get the rubber peg through the hole as it relies on a friction fit to stay in place. Next, insert your SSD, and while pressing it down, also bent the rubber retainer out of the way enough for the SSD into position, then allow the rubber groove to grip onto the end of the SSD. Next, take the thermal pad, and notice the protective film on both sides of it. Peel off one side of the protective film and place the thermal pad onto the SSD (make sure to fully cover the controller and DRAM IC of the SSD (if available), covering the NAND package is not really needed as they do not get very warm, though it is not an issue if it is covered since the heat spreader does not have much thermal mass and does not dissipate a large amount of heat, this it will not overly cool the NAND package. After the thermal pad has been placed on the drive, peel off the remaining protective film slowly. Once that is done, install the heatspreader by first placing the lip of the heat spreader into the groove at the front of the case where the USB-C port is located, then bring the other end of the heatspreader own, closing the case like a clamshell. This will ensure no sliding motion that can cause the thermal pad to shift or rip. In my testing with a WD black SN770, the controller reaches a temperature of 71C under a sustained write intensive load, while the NAND reaches a temperature of 46C. The setup process is simple and straight forward. On the first power up of the enclosure with the SSD installed, let the enclosure run for a little while to give windows time to install any needed generic drivers. After that, head to your disk management utility, and then initialize the SSD (I recommend using the GPT partition table). After that, you can create a new NTFS volume for the SSD, and then begin using it as you would any other flash drive. (((Closing Thoughts))) If you need a lot of storage (especially in the 1TB+ range), an NVMe enclosure is a far better value and also allows for far better quality. Many standard flash drives that are 1TB+ often use very low binned NAND which will not consistently saturate a 10Gbps connection during extended writes, while many decent TLC NAND based NVME SSDs, will easily offer over 1GB/s even when the pSLC cache has run out, thus in the vast majority of cases, the enclosure will perform exactly the same from 0-100% fill. Update: So far the enclosure continues to work very, well with consistent performance, even for demanding workloads. The controller does not get very warm, and using it for recording higher bit rate footage with a camera for an extended period of time yielded great results. So far I have used a second one with a 2TB SSD, and I eventually plan to purchase a 4TB SSD to use with it.

Great SSD adapter enclosure with built in heat sink. Very fast. Speed almost to limit of my USB C/Thunderbolt port on my 2025 Mac Air M3. Great value for the money. Great design. Installation quick and easy. Directions (albeit print very small all as is all Chinese printed material) were easy to follow although I had to use magnifying glass to read. Very high quality design and build. Very good heat dissipation. I transferred an 850 GB file and although it got very warm, it did not get hot as many such devices do. Great value for money. Highly recommended. I used a 4 TB SSD which worked fine. No problems. Just formatted ExFAT and it ran perfectly.

So I am giving this 4 stars and will explain why, and also give instructions to do this without seeing, since i am blind and I hope this even helps sighted people assemble this right. Isn't it great when you figure things on your own? took me a while but here i am. I confess I almost asked for sighted assistance out of desperation. so 4 stars: it works. Does not really heat up too much but still worth it to feel on it from time to time and carefully consider what software you use to copy and so on, I did not need the pieces of paper or whatever things.. I think they are thermal pads or something. it also does not come with instructions and online they are hard or impossible to find. Cables it comes with are helpful, but more the USB C to USB a type and its good to have them, but I ended up using other more reliable cables that have served me for years when I used the unit. I tried scanning the piece of paper that came with it but nothing. I also tried to assemble it for about half an hour last night, and just gave up, too tired to even figure out a simple thing. Then I tried another half an hour today, I felt progress in the first 10 minutes, then intuition and creativity did their thing and well so I will explain how to put this together. Inside the box you will find the enclosure, which is about the size, length and thickness of a energy bar, or a cereal bar, really not too big. It is plastic and aluminum. ON one side of the stick there is the usb C port and on the other side, on top of the aliminum cover is a small hole. You will also find a bag with a replacement screw and two rubber caps and also a bag with a very small screwdriver you can use to manipulate the only center screw of the enclosure. So, to install a drive into this go ahead and take that screw off and place it in a cup or some place that is easy to retrieve. Like with all screws, the tip of the driver should snugly fit into the screw and you unscrew to the right. When you take the lid off, which should hinge open to be able to slide off the plastic you will find a card similar to a drive also made of plastic. You will see and feel (using your fingernail at first if you'd like) some tiny holes, a bit bigger than a braille dot. These correspond to 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 drives. The further away they are from the usb C por the bigger or longer the drive is. Take the pcb out of the case, it should slide easily but if it does not then put your fingers on the sides and try to pry it out. Not much effort is needed as there is really nothing holding it in, you could also use something to act as a small lever to get it out. There are grooves on this pcb which feel like soldered on chips, and they should be facing down. You can retrieve your ssd now and also the rubber cap. A word on that infamous kinda cone shaped rubber cap: this one is used to secure the drive once you insert it. You should practice putting it on without the drive first. The direction it should go is the thinnest tip facing down. You do need to apply some pressure and align it some, but the small tip should protrude on the other side and that is enough. You can also turn it upside down on a table and push it firmly so that the tip protrudes some more. There is actually no need to insert it really all of the way in which I guess is what many people here are doing somehow and that is really an impressive feat, because that has been kind of impossible for me. Take it out for the next steps though as its much easier to put the drive, then put the retainer. To install the drive: If you look or feel at the short side edges of the rectangular drive, and also using your fingernail carefully, you will notice it as a tiny dent. This actually is the PCIE port or the connector that makes anything recognize the drive. On the opposite side there is a bigger dent at the very center which is the edge of the drive. If you feel past the USB port on the pcb, you will also notice that there is a small rectangular groove where this tiny dent part of the sd should be fitted on. Assuming you have placed the USB c on to your left, the port where this tiny dent goes should be facing away from you, you can actually feel it if you run your fingernail across the groove. Grab the ssd with two or three fingers, only touching the long front and back edges, almost as if your hand is a clamp. With the other hand, hold the pcb in a straight line, and line up the edge of the drive with the port or groove of the pcb, and the drive should be diagonally pointed (downwards) towards the port. Then, carefully but firmly push to slide the drive into the port of the pcb. If done correctly, the drive will cling to the pcb and if you stop touching it or release it, it should stick upwards a bit. you can carefully and slowly push it down until it touches the pcb. It should go back up if you release it. To stop this from happening and to secure the drive, is time to use the rubber cap you practiced putting on earlier. You will notice that the bigger horseshoe shaped dent on the other side of the drive (or the edge of the drive) lines with the almost brailled sized hole of the pcb for the drive length, so the rubber should fit right in without applying too much pressure or too much effort. And once you have this assembled, then put the pcb bach in, similarly to how you put the drive on the pcb, aligning it with the USB C port facing diagonally and down towards the USB opening on the plastic base. Then put the aluminum cover back in, put the screw back in, and you are done. I really hope this helps someone.

I bought this enclosure because I had an old M.2 NVMe drive that was on its last legs (literally about 1% life left according to the diagnostics). I needed a quick, reliable way to clone and archive the data before the drive gave up the ghost. This did the trick! The enclosure itself is well-built, with a nice aluminum shell that feels premium and helps with heat dissipation. Assembly was incredibly simple; it's a tool-free design—you just slide the cover off, pop the M.2 stick in, and secure it with the included plug. It took less than two minutes. Once connected via the USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) interface, the speed was exactly as advertised. I was able to transfer hundreds of gigs of data off the failing drive quickly and safely. If you have a spare NVMe drive sitting around or need to close out an old one like I did, this is a fantastic, reliable enclosure. It’s simple, fast, and turned my near-dead drive into a useful external backup. Highly recommended.

The package arrived quickly and undamaged. This is my second purchase of this particular enclosure. I use one for large video files and this one to do system backups to as a working recovery solution. The feature set at this price point is quite nice and great for those of us on a budget. The enclosure will handle a 2TB SSD, stays relatively cool during large file transfers and comes with a USB 3.0 to USB-C as well as USB-C to USB-C connectors. Changing out Drives is relatively simple with the provided T5-30mm star drive. The one that shipped with this enclosure was labeled incorrectly and was not a true T5x30mm driver. Fortunately, the one I had from the previous purchase works just fine, but this is an easily avoidable mistake when Quality & Control personnel perform a better inspection before packaging and shipping these out the door. You can't open or close the enclosure if you don't have the correct tool for the job. I can still easily recommend this enclosure for its Durability, small form factor making it very portable, Mountability on various operating systems depending on partitioning and formatting. (FAT, FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS.) I've used these enclosures on Linux, Windows 11, Mac OS without any problems. Like so many of us on a budget, retirees, students, field techs, etc... it's nice to find an economical solution that works dependably.

I bought 2 of these and I installed a 4tb m2 in one to test it out. The enclosure seemed to work great. I put this one aside and forgot about it for several months. I just got around to where I needed the extra drive space so I pulled this out of the protective box I had it in and plugged it into my computer. I waited and about 90 seconds to 2 minutes after plugging in the enclosure containing the 4tb m2 drive I received a notification that the device I had plugged into the usb port had malfunctioned and was not recognized. I unplugged it and tried again several times with different ports only to get the same results. I decided to try various tests to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I tested another m2 in an enclosure I had and it worked fine. I used an m2 dock to test another m2 and it worked fine. I took the 4tb m2 out of this enclosure and placed it in my m2 dock and it worked fine. I placed a 2tb m2 that I had just tested and found to be fine into this enclosure and received the same bad results saying the device was not recognized and had malfunctioned. I took the original 4tb m2 that had just worked in my dock and placed it back in the enclosure and used the usb cord from my dock to connect the enclosure to my computer only to get the same bad results saying it was not recognized. I do not know what happened to the enclosure, but it wasn't a bad cord, it wasn't a bad m2 drive, and the light was on showing power to the enclosure plus I triple checked the connection between the m2 and the enclosure. I know the m2 worked in the enclosure the first time I placed it inside as I formatted it with the enclosure, but after sitting in a protective box for several months without being touched and not being in extreme temperatures or any harsh conditions at all it was non functional. It is almost like the control board just died after the second use. I am very disappointed as I thought this was a very nice enclosure until I tried to use it for only the second time. Unfortunately since the second use was several months after purchase I cannot return it for a replacement. The second enclosure I bought with this one has been misplaced and never used at all. Considering the outcome with this one I don't plan on buying this enclosure again.

I've owned/gifted at least a dozen M.2 NVMe enclosures. None were perfect but this one comes close: 1) TRIM works. That's a MUST HAVE for me. 2) It's interface is USB 3.2 Gen 2. 3) The heatsink clamshells on - it doesn't tear up the thermal pad with a sliding case top like many of the other enclosures I've come across do. 4) The heatsink portion is reasonably sized and does a perfect press-fit against the thermal pad. (Many others don't. Why? ... I don't know! Even a small air gap between the thermal pad and the outer case KILLS heat transfer.) 5) It comes with two cables - Type C to Type C. Type C to Type A. (They're short, about 10 inches from connector end to connector end.) 6) The cables actually work at Gen 2 speeds. (Some other included cables do not.) 7) The enclosure is quite plain but looks to be well made and durable. The bottom section of the enclosure is plastic but the only parts of an SSD that need any degree of cooling are the controller and, to a lesser extent, the NAND flash chipstack(s). 8) Installation of the M.2 drive is both straightforward and easy. 9) The NVME to USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface is via an RTL 9210. Most give that chip and its younger sibling, the RTL 9210B high ratings. 10) I personally like the fact that the back of the drive is flat and textureless because I stick labels on my portable drives. 11) The enclosure can pass SMART data to my Windows 10 PC via CrystalDiskInfo. Shortcomings are minor and few. 1) There's no indication that this will work with M.2 SATA drives. (I didn't test it but the literature indicates that the RTL 9210B bridge chip supports M.2 SATA drives in addition to M.2 PCIe drives. This enclosure used the RTL 9210 bridge chip which doesn't officially support SATA.) 2) The enclosure is available in your favorite color - if your favorite color is black. 3) The loose end of the SSD is secured using a rubber "press to fit" plug. Installing it takes a bit of pushing and twisting and nudging. It's probably good for about half a dozen to a dozen installations. There is a spare in the box. 4) The base of the enclosure is a hard plastic. It MIGHT not fare well if dropped from a substantial height onto a hard surface. Then again, it might "take it."

One of my M.2 drives was acting up; if I unplugged it and jiggled the M.2 drive, it worked for a while. Poorly designed enclosure, it happens. So I purchased this enclosure, which is very well designed. Here are the mistakes I made because of a lack of good instructions. 1. Yes, there is a screw when it arrives. Use the very nice screwdriver that comes with it to unscrew, then the top comes right off 2. After you insert the M.2 you can use a screw if you have one, or use the PUSH IN rubber screw to hold the M.2 in place 3. Locate the heat pad that fell to the floor when I unpacked it. This heat pad is very crumbly, so be careful when taking the plastic off both sides. This heat paste is not sticky, so place it on the cover so that the maximum amount of it covers the M.2 4. Scew the cover back on with the tiny screw, which is easy to lose. The nice thing is that the vendor provides extra screws, so you don't have to crawl around the floor to find the lost one. So far this is much more reliable enclosure, updates after a few months of use