M.2 SSD Adapters & Enclosures

Explaining M.2 PCIe adapter cards, and USB enclosures, that can be used to access an M.2 SSD when it cannot be plugged into a motherboard slot.

The products I purchased and tested in the video were as follows:

I have also added these items to my Amazon US storefronts:

Please note that as an Amazon Associate I earn a commission from any qualifying purchases that you may make.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:52 M.2, SATA & PCIe
07:19 PCIe Card Tests
11:20 USB Enclosure
15:17 Cloning Tools

#SSD #M2 #PCIe #NVMe #Adapter #Enclosure #explainingcomputers

[ExplainingComputers]

Greetings! Just a point of correction that, as some have commented below, there are now a few motherboards with PCIe 5.0 slots. My mistake. But it makes no difference to the content of this video.

[wasimking]

Most honest youtuber, nothing flashy and glittery, just explaining computer.

[Trevor]

Thanks for this video. You're one of the best, clearest and most comprehensible presenters on the web. Keep up the good work, Chris.

[johnnyduplantis]

This video ts a lifesaver for me. I purchased an M.2 SSD with hopes for expansion, only to find the slot occupied. I knew I had an open slot, but I didn't know enough about the nuances of modern SSD drives. With such a thorough and understandable tutorial, my task should be far easier than the complex solutions I have found from others. Video bookmarked as my 'operations manual.'

[unorthodox]

A lot more information in 1 video than dozens of videos from other so called techtubers.

[justinkendall]

This video couldn't have come at a better time for me. I was just looking into getting one and confused by the variety available. Thank you for yet another helpful and educational video!

[cowantom]

I was just looking into adding an M.2 card to my PCso this was timed perfectly. Many thanks Chris for a first class explanation

[kevinshumaker]

Thanks, Chris. Bought a low-end laptop with a 128GB nvme drive & 4GB RAM recently. Bought a Vantek internal card and a USB non name brand USB 3 adapter, 2 1TB nvme drives to upgrade the laptop and a home lab server. They (the card and adapter) were well worth the cost, and made the laptop well worth the money, too. Your info followed my steps exactly for determining the speed improvements...
This is another video I will put in my reference library to help others understand the what and how of hardware, and examples of speed improvements that can be had for little investment of time and effort.

[michaelbishton]

I like and appreciate the way you went through all of the variable permutations. Very informative. Thank you.

[PrincipalAudio]

Just thought I'd add some "on topic" info:

For people who bought an ASUS HyperX PCI-e x16 card (for running multiple NVMe drives via PCI-e), I found out something about it recently. For running a RAID-0 of four NVMe drives, you can use Intel RST (designed for consumers with high end desktops - "HEDTs"). There's no real need for consumers with HEDTs to use Intel VROC (originally called Intel RST Enterprise), as we'll likely not need its special features. So you won't need to buy an Intel VROC key to make a RAID array on the PCI-e card. However, since the RAID is run from the CPU, it'll put a small overhead on your system. Something to take into consideration.

Hope this information helps anyone with this card and who is trying to figure out how to make a RAID array using it. Thanks for the video Chris. :)

[markwiehenstroer]

Very well done and complete as usual Chris. There's one thing I'd like to add. If you have an old computer and would like to add an NVME drive to your system via a PCIe slot, check the BIOS if you hope that drive will be a boot drive. However, I don't believe there would be any problem using the USB external enclosure you showed in this video. It all requires a deep dive and close examination of the computer system at hand.

[StephenC]

On holiday in Cyprus. YouTube notification.

Sunshine, Pool, beer & the new EC video. A perfect Sunday

[FlyboyHelosim]

I actually recently bought an NVMe to PCIe adapter board as I wanted to use it with an NVMe SSD as a boot drive in an older SFF desktop PC. However, after going down a bit of a rabbit hole, it appears that not all motherboards, generations of PCIe, or versions of UEFI (I didn't even know there were different versions of UEFI) support NVMe drives installed via PCIe to be bootable. Therefore, my drive showed up as a generic storage device only and couldn't be booted from. Also note that Microsoft did used to host a Windows 7 NVMe hotfix on their website, but has since been taken down. You can now find it on the support section of Lenovo's website, and should work on any system and not just a Lenovo one, so you can retroactively inject NVMe support in a Windows 7 computer.

[ReinBelmont]

This must be the most comprehensive guide that I've seen in a while.




It's almost like you do be Explaining about Computers, I know.

[marcfaur]

One of my favorite computer related channels! Simple and straight forward.

[tonybkent]

My son needed more SSD storage to run Starfield so we quickly bought the same X4 board in your video and a 2TB Nvme drive. All worked perfectly, first time! We put the heatsink on just in case. We took a chance as it was just before this video was published. Learned a lot from this and will check my performance this afternoon. Feels very fast and Starfield works perfectly now.

[zebop]

Very useful to come back to this video again as I’m thinking to add an M.2 adapter to my SFF Optiplex to have 2 NVMe drives available for a dual-drive dual-boot setup.

[RoboNuggie]

Excellent as always Chris, I haven't yet got into the M.2 world, but with this info, I know how to approach upgrading my elderly machines 🙂

[tubegor]

Another lovely Sunday with EC☀and million subscribers is so close.
Some time ago I tried to give my beloved RPI 4 even more speed using M.2 NVMe with a USB 3 adapter. That didn't help at all, because the bottleneck is with the USB 3 port itself. In addition, M.2 get extremely hot compared to SSD (SATA).

[makouille]

as always, water clear video, amazing spelling and voice, i wish we had all this content or at least similar quality content in schools to teach kids the basics and more advanced topics around computers... sadly here we didnt when i was in school... thanks for sharing your knowledge with us !