A critical flaw with a lot of these enclosures is they use something non-metal to secure the drive into place. If you use it enough times, the securing mechanism will fail much sooner than a metal one. Although this one is a bit slower, I'd recommend it anyway because it won't become e-waste anytime soon with a brass nut and screw being used to secure the drive down into place.
No there are two 10 Gbps links in a USB 3 Gen 2x2, for a total of 20 Gbps.
Enclosures with 10 Gbps have existed for many years from a lot of vendors, those with 20 Gbps are still rare.
However, also the computer connector must support 20 Gbps, otherwise the speed will fall back to the lowest supported speed, e.g. 10 Gbps or "5 Gbps" (the USB speed named "5 Gbps" is in reality 4 Gbps, so less than half of the speed of a 10 Gbps link).
The advantage of this enclosure over those with Thunderbolt is that the SSD can also be used with old computers, even if at a lower speed. Most Thunderbolt enclosures cannot work when plugged in USB connectors.
The these screw in type enclosures have a similar flaw. The self tapping steel screws are screwed into smooth aluminum grooves of the enclosure, but this is not designed to be reused, and the screws end up stripping the aluminum in the end.
It is coming slowly. You need the bridge chipset ready for USB4, and enclosure manufacturer ready to jump in. Current bridge chipset are few, you can count with 3 fingers, and they are expensive. Enclosures manufacturer is not ready to jump in yet.
Even Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are on a >~$75, ASM4242 (<=64Gb/s) and JHL8440/JHL8540 for TB4 seems being discussed (, with even TB5 data (80Gb/s) given to public 2021, ~one year ago). Are there (external consumer) Usb 3.2 hubs available?
My feeling is that in terms of ease of handling NVMe has just been an enormous stepback vs. SATA SSDs.
I love how I could just play around with them like in the good old floppy days, put them here, put them there, move them from system to system, have them be a boot drive here, back them up via another one there, join them into a JBOD/RAID0 a little later in life etc. I've always hated storage being tied to a system, something rather unnatural in early computers and something that IMHO Microsoft mostly pushed to fight pirating in pre-permanently-online times.
Tray-less hot-swap drive bay caddies for where the CD/DVD drives used to go in notebooks extended that enormous flexibility there, too. Sometimes I'd even move a complex long-running application setup (e.g. Ansible) to a different system for speed and then pop it back into the low-noise one where it was supposed to run after being all ready.
Far too often the ability to pop out every other drive when installing a newish OS was the only way to preserve a production environment from the newcomer thrashing man-years to bits.
U.2 caddies for M.2 almost deliver similar flexibility again, but come at quite a bit of a premium. But that would only really pay off, if Thunderbolt was universally available on notebooks and NUCs for external attachment.
Because it's not just speed that suffers from USB vs. PCIe, but also compatibility in the form of device naming.
If you move M.2 NVMe drives from an on-board slot or TB to something USB or vice versa, there is a good chance you'll loose the ability to boot the system.
And then there is all sorts of renumbering of partitions, automatic UEFI reconfiguration when disks are inserted temporarily, which have nothing to do with USB vs. NVMe but how ancient DOS (disk operating systems) have a hard time dealing with the dynamics enabled by hardware today.
The Silicon Motion SM2320 in the Data Traveler proves rather well, that near NVMe performance can be put into a size and power envelope that is no longer a compromise between size and performance: it's not quite µ-SDcard in terms of size, but it's a far step from the clunky 1st gen external TB drive enclosures while performance is getting nicely close to native NVMe.
What we lack is a physical form factor to go along with it. Yes, external fully plugable is nice. Until you boot or depend on it and move the hosting notebook around. Then you'd rather not have it sticking out, yet removable.
I never considered PCMCIA as being all too big, but these days SO-DIMM slots are getting killed on Ultrabooks for using much less space. Pretty sure you could fit 8TB of storage and 3 Watts of heat dissipation into that form factor today...
I'm also pretty sure something like the Data Traveller (0.25-1/2TB) could be fit into an Ultrabook compatbile Compact Flash form factor, which Apple would oppose for the obvious reason that their business model highly depends on extorting for non-expandability.
If NVMe performance and multiple terabytes could be fit into a µ-SDcard form factor already, none of the above would have been written. I'm not convinced that combination can be achieved very soon.
So as a consumer, I'd have a simple message to the vendors: please get your act together and offer us the highest level of performance and flexibility at the most reasonable price in a form factor that works across the majority of all personal computing devices!
But those guys just want to make money; more money by eliminating competition and customer choice.
Honestly what are you even talking about? I pull NVMe drives from machines and boot them from USB enclosures with absolutely no issues and vice versa up to a dozen times a day.
Your SODIMM comments are completely off base. LPDDR5 notebooks are competing in bandwidth with HEDT 4-channel systems from the simple fact that DIMM pins take space. Laptops with SODIMMs give up a lot for SODIMMs, not just space on the board. A laptop with a high-end LPDDR5 configuration can outcompete most consumer desktops in bandwidth.
I think your form factor comments demo that you're just spitballing. On the one hand, we've only recently got native USB SSD controllers. Those will enable other form factors. The space will ramp up soon enough and in small enough form to fit happily in a USB-C flash drive form factor. For insertion, CF has a PCIe-based version. You could've, you know, looked at the wikipedia page for CF before posting?
I have 3 nvme SSDs which I constantly swap in and out of this enclosure, one has Windows 11 to go, the other one has Linux mint, and the third one I have it with Windows 7, for when I feel nostalgic. I boot from all three of them with the same speed as I get from my internal gen 4 4x4 Samsung 980pro. The only difference is when I run CrystalDiskmark, and the transfer speeds show to be slower with the external SSDs, But that doesn't affect my usage, and it really doesn't get much easier than swapping these drives in and out. With a SATA 3 SSD, I had to connect the data, plus the power cable, my computer today doesn't even have a SATA power cable connected from the PSU. So, this comment of yours bashing NVME SSDs over SATA SSDs doesn't make much sense.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
15 Comments
Back to Article
sparkuss - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Any reason none of the Sabrent enclosures made the review?I would have enjoyed having them included before I make my next purchase for doing Macrium Backups for my relatives computers.
sparkuss - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Never mind, I see the that all are ASM bridge chips as wellDV8_MKD - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Second this5of9Borg - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Vantec have been selling this product for months, since early last year according to Amazon.https://www.amazon.com/NVMe-Gen2x2-Type-Enclosure-...
Golgatha777 - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
A critical flaw with a lot of these enclosures is they use something non-metal to secure the drive into place. If you use it enough times, the securing mechanism will fail much sooner than a metal one. Although this one is a bit slower, I'd recommend it anyway because it won't become e-waste anytime soon with a brass nut and screw being used to secure the drive down into place.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0892BK5L6
5of9Borg - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
This is a 10Gbps, not a 20Gbps.AdrianBc - Tuesday, August 2, 2022 - link
No there are two 10 Gbps links in a USB 3 Gen 2x2, for a total of 20 Gbps.Enclosures with 10 Gbps have existed for many years from a lot of vendors, those with 20 Gbps are still rare.
However, also the computer connector must support 20 Gbps, otherwise the speed will fall back to the lowest supported speed, e.g. 10 Gbps or "5 Gbps" (the USB speed named "5 Gbps" is in reality 4 Gbps, so less than half of the speed of a 10 Gbps link).
The advantage of this enclosure over those with Thunderbolt is that the SSD can also be used with old computers, even if at a lower speed. Most Thunderbolt enclosures cannot work when plugged in USB connectors.
meacupla - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
The these screw in type enclosures have a similar flaw. The self tapping steel screws are screwed into smooth aluminum grooves of the enclosure, but this is not designed to be reused, and the screws end up stripping the aluminum in the end.James5mith - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
I read this, and all I can think is: "Where are the USB4 enclosures?"5of9Borg - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
It is coming slowly. You need the bridge chipset ready for USB4, and enclosure manufacturer ready to jump in. Current bridge chipset are few, you can count with 3 fingers, and they are expensive. Enclosures manufacturer is not ready to jump in yet.back2future - Tuesday, August 2, 2022 - link
Even Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are on a >~$75, ASM4242 (<=64Gb/s) and JHL8440/JHL8540 for TB4 seems being discussed (, with even TB5 data (80Gb/s) given to public 2021, ~one year ago).Are there (external consumer) Usb 3.2 hubs available?
abufrejoval - Monday, August 8, 2022 - link
My feeling is that in terms of ease of handling NVMe has just been an enormous stepback vs. SATA SSDs.I love how I could just play around with them like in the good old floppy days, put them here, put them there, move them from system to system, have them be a boot drive here, back them up via another one there, join them into a JBOD/RAID0 a little later in life etc. I've always hated storage being tied to a system, something rather unnatural in early computers and something that IMHO Microsoft mostly pushed to fight pirating in pre-permanently-online times.
Tray-less hot-swap drive bay caddies for where the CD/DVD drives used to go in notebooks extended that enormous flexibility there, too. Sometimes I'd even move a complex long-running application setup (e.g. Ansible) to a different system for speed and then pop it back into the low-noise one where it was supposed to run after being all ready.
Far too often the ability to pop out every other drive when installing a newish OS was the only way to preserve a production environment from the newcomer thrashing man-years to bits.
U.2 caddies for M.2 almost deliver similar flexibility again, but come at quite a bit of a premium. But that would only really pay off, if Thunderbolt was universally available on notebooks and NUCs for external attachment.
Because it's not just speed that suffers from USB vs. PCIe, but also compatibility in the form of device naming.
If you move M.2 NVMe drives from an on-board slot or TB to something USB or vice versa, there is a good chance you'll loose the ability to boot the system.
And then there is all sorts of renumbering of partitions, automatic UEFI reconfiguration when disks are inserted temporarily, which have nothing to do with USB vs. NVMe but how ancient DOS (disk operating systems) have a hard time dealing with the dynamics enabled by hardware today.
The Silicon Motion SM2320 in the Data Traveler proves rather well, that near NVMe performance can be put into a size and power envelope that is no longer a compromise between size and performance: it's not quite µ-SDcard in terms of size, but it's a far step from the clunky 1st gen external TB drive enclosures while performance is getting nicely close to native NVMe.
What we lack is a physical form factor to go along with it. Yes, external fully plugable is nice. Until you boot or depend on it and move the hosting notebook around. Then you'd rather not have it sticking out, yet removable.
I never considered PCMCIA as being all too big, but these days SO-DIMM slots are getting killed on Ultrabooks for using much less space. Pretty sure you could fit 8TB of storage and 3 Watts of heat dissipation into that form factor today...
I'm also pretty sure something like the Data Traveller (0.25-1/2TB) could be fit into an Ultrabook compatbile Compact Flash form factor, which Apple would oppose for the obvious reason that their business model highly depends on extorting for non-expandability.
If NVMe performance and multiple terabytes could be fit into a µ-SDcard form factor already, none of the above would have been written. I'm not convinced that combination can be achieved very soon.
So as a consumer, I'd have a simple message to the vendors: please get your act together and offer us the highest level of performance and flexibility at the most reasonable price in a form factor that works across the majority of all personal computing devices!
But those guys just want to make money; more money by eliminating competition and customer choice.
lmcd - Thursday, August 18, 2022 - link
Honestly what are you even talking about? I pull NVMe drives from machines and boot them from USB enclosures with absolutely no issues and vice versa up to a dozen times a day.Your SODIMM comments are completely off base. LPDDR5 notebooks are competing in bandwidth with HEDT 4-channel systems from the simple fact that DIMM pins take space. Laptops with SODIMMs give up a lot for SODIMMs, not just space on the board. A laptop with a high-end LPDDR5 configuration can outcompete most consumer desktops in bandwidth.
I think your form factor comments demo that you're just spitballing. On the one hand, we've only recently got native USB SSD controllers. Those will enable other form factors. The space will ramp up soon enough and in small enough form to fit happily in a USB-C flash drive form factor. For insertion, CF has a PCIe-based version. You could've, you know, looked at the wikipedia page for CF before posting?
FGeorge - Tuesday, November 15, 2022 - link
I have 3 nvme SSDs which I constantly swap in and out of this enclosure, one has Windows 11 to go, the other one has Linux mint, and the third one I have it with Windows 7, for when I feel nostalgic. I boot from all three of them with the same speed as I get from my internal gen 4 4x4 Samsung 980pro. The only difference is when I run CrystalDiskmark, and the transfer speeds show to be slower with the external SSDs, But that doesn't affect my usage, and it really doesn't get much easier than swapping these drives in and out. With a SATA 3 SSD, I had to connect the data, plus the power cable, my computer today doesn't even have a SATA power cable connected from the PSU. So, this comment of yours bashing NVME SSDs over SATA SSDs doesn't make much sense.CalliopeAdrianna - Sunday, August 21, 2022 - link
hallo