[Solved] Are m.2 enclosures worth it?

[Reaper]

I switched to a different am4 motherboard and I'm having troubles once again installing an m.2 drive. So I rather skip the hassle of doing it the hard way and spend money on an external. I have a sn850x with heatsink.

[󠀡󠀡]

Sure Why Not



Is m 2 storage worth it?
Yes, they're more expensive than traditional hard disk drives, but there's value in their much faster read/write speeds, and they're arguably more reliable depending on your use case in the long term.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

As long as the USB caddy, cable and port all supports USB 3.2 or better then it should be fine as far as performance goes.

As USB 3.0/3.1 are too slow for most NVME Drives and is better suited for doing an external where the drive is SATA based.

I would also make sure the USB NVME Caddy supports at least Gen4 NVME and supports at least 2-4 TB drives as some cheaper ones will be limited in some ways or another

[Electric Cupcake]

You never know when you might need to do an emergency backup data dump, so an enclosure or sata dock is good to have on hand.

Say, If you can't get a system to start, so you pull out the drive and mirror it for safe keeping.

[Andrius227]

What kind of troubles are you having exactly?

External enclosure would work but i would not recommend it. Someone could unplug it accidentally or move it and cause it to disconnect for a second and cause trouble, specially if it’s the os drive.

If you are having trouble installing it in the m.2 slot on the motherboard. You could get an m.2 pcie card.
Like this: https://sabrent.com/products/ec-pcie?srsltid=AfmBOooGNEOUcX8actg8v_QLV7o3YeCVZRvn75Re0esNN-Fhn-swXV_m

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well yea, never use an OS drive that way.

[Electric Cupcake]

Do PC cases still have eSATA front panel connections?

I prefer cases with tooless sliding caddies that you can swap internal disks instantly with, though with the rise of M.2 storage, they'll probably become less popular.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

eSATA died LONG ago.
However you can get a rear case bracket that has regular SATA data and power on it to extend internal sata connections to the outside of Case with ease. Since with a 2.5 inch SATA SSD, you wouldn't need any enclosure or added protection, just connect to SATA data and power and run it as-is externally.

[Reaper]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

What kind of troubles are you having exactly?

External enclosure would work but i would not recommend it. Someone could unplug it accidentally or move it and cause it to disconnect for a second and cause trouble, specially if it’s the os drive.

If you are having trouble installing it in the m.2 slot on the motherboard. You could get an m.2 pcie card.
Like this: https://sabrent.com/products/ec-pcie?srsltid=AfmBOooGNEOUcX8actg8v_QLV7o3YeCVZRvn75Re0esNN-Fhn-swXV_m

The screw head is messed up. I got an SSD for the os.

[Andrius227]

Originally posted by Reaper:

Originally posted by Andrius227:

What kind of troubles are you having exactly?

External enclosure would work but i would not recommend it. Someone could unplug it accidentally or move it and cause it to disconnect for a second and cause trouble, specially if it’s the os drive.

If you are having trouble installing it in the m.2 slot on the motherboard. You could get an m.2 pcie card.
Like this: https://sabrent.com/products/ec-pcie?srsltid=AfmBOooGNEOUcX8actg8v_QLV7o3YeCVZRvn75Re0esNN-Fhn-swXV_m

The screw head is messed up. I got an SSD for the os.

Then yeah get an m.2 pcie card, assuming you have a spare pcie slot.

The one i linked before actually has a heatsink so probably not the best since your ssd has a heatsink already. There are cards without heatsinks too. Some even fit multiple ssd’s. Although that requires the motherboard to have something called “pcie bifurcation”.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Most GPUs would not see any performance loss by having them run @ PCIE 3.0 X8

Keep in mind that if you do use a PCIE M2-NVME card, you most likely can not use that for a bootable OS drive.

Honestly if your plans are to use multiple NVME SSDs, your best bet is upgrading your Motherboard to something more modern. AMD boards that lack PCIE 5.0 are obsolete should you really want to make use of multiple PCIE 4.0 NVME SSDs (aka Gen4 NVME) as you need PCIE 5.0 Motherboard to run multiples of those without resorting to using a PCIE card, which really should be avoided unless you doing serious professional work and need MANY SSDs beyond what any decent consumer grade Motherboard can provide via onboard M2 slots.

For the X370 system I would just maybe have 1x NVME SSD and install the OS + Apps to that drive. Then use a SATA SSD (you can get 4TB SATA SSD under $200 now) and use that for a Games Drive.

Then look to build a newer machine using an AM5 Motherboard + CPU + DDR5-6000. The Ryzen 7xxx series should be coming down in pricing as we get closer to the end of 2024, as more and more Ryzen 9xxx series CPUs release over time.

[Reaper]

Looks for the suggestions I'll look into more into m.2 pcie card.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Originally posted by Electric Cupcake:

Do PC cases still have eSATA front panel connections?

I prefer cases with tooless sliding caddies that you can swap internal disks instantly with, though with the rise of M.2 storage, they'll probably become less popular.

Soon, they will have proper M.2 SSD hot swapping docks.

Originally posted by Reaper:

Looks for the suggestions I'll look into more into m.2 pcie card.

Just read the Motherboard Manual to see what happens when you utilize said PCIe.

[r.linder]

As external storage and not the OS, yes, but make sure it's the right slot key for the SSD you want to use as some are SATA only while others support PCI-e SSDs, and make sure it's at least USB 3.2 or Type C, an older version will have less bandwidth and less performance as a result, and you're already potentially being capped by using it through USB

[Electric Cupcake]

Originally posted by WinterSolstice:

Originally posted by Electric Cupcake:

Do PC cases still have eSATA front panel connections?

I prefer cases with tooless sliding caddies that you can swap internal disks instantly with, though with the rise of M.2 storage, they'll probably become less popular.

Soon, they will have proper M.2 SSD hot swapping docks. :csdsmile:

IcyDock makes expansions, but I'd prefer something built right into the case and connects to an extension from the motherboard's m.2 header instead of taking up a PCI-e slot.

https://www.amazon.com/ICY-DOCK-Removable-Bifurcation-ToughArmor/dp/B0BJ14JV7B?th=1
https://global.icydock.com/product_246.html

[Andrius227]

Originally posted by Electric Cupcake:

Originally posted by WinterSolstice:

Soon, they will have proper M.2 SSD hot swapping docks. :csdsmile:

IcyDock makes expansions, but I'd prefer something built right into the case and connects to an extension from the motherboard's m.2 header instead of taking up a PCI-e slot.

https://www.amazon.com/ICY-DOCK-Removable-Bifurcation-ToughArmor/dp/B0BJ14JV7B?th=1
https://global.icydock.com/product_246.html

Pcie slots exist to be used. No point leaving them empty.

Most people only have a gpu and maybe a wifi/network card and nothing else. Might as well use the rest for storage.

And its clean, dont need cables, unlike sata drives.