M.2 SSD Adapters & Enclosures

[@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.

[@adamarmfield1069]

I think there are more pci 5 mobo's than there are pcie 5 ssd's

[@pikkuraami]

@@adamarmfield1069 Yes, and there are practically no PCIe Gen5 expansion cards at all on the markets, yet. Support for PCIe Gen5 must start somewhere and motherboards are logical place to start. It gives some future proofing of a system aswell, like full datatransfer support for next gen GPUs.

[@Darkk6969]

@@adamarmfield1069 Well it's been said that there's no real world difference between gen 4 and gen 5 in terms what we can tell other than running benchmarks which is why gen 5 is slow to be accepted out there and another reason is high cost. Later down the road gen 5 will be standard and prices will be reasonable to skip the gen 4.

[@ExplainingComputers]

@@Darkk6969 I suspect that PCIe 5.0 will only become common for M.2 slots, not PCIe slots. Still today a lot of new motherboards have PCIe 3.0 slots only. :)

[@TAP7a]

​@@Darkk6969gen 5 will have much higher bandwidth (twice as much) but when do you personally ever run a task that will tell the difference between running at 15,800Mbps and 7,900Mbps? We all noticed the difference between HDDs, SATA SSDs and NVMe SSDs because the decrease in *latency* was noticeable *and* the bandwidth of *random* read/write was therefore massively increased. This largely manifested in shorter boot times and quicker application loading (assuming they weren't being cached anyway), and now we're seeing some secondary benefits like streaming data directly to peripherals rather than via the CPU in situations like gaming. In the real world, latency for random IP is now sufficiently low relative to the size of applications and common bootloaders that we consumers won't notice the difference, because the perceivable difference between 10ms and 5ms is so much smaller than that between 20ms and 10ms, even though both are halving the latency. And that's being generous to the smaller values, as the latency decrease from PCIE 4.0 to 5.0 random IO is more like 20%

[@wasimking1]

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

[@Trevor4364]

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

[@CreamPolo]

100% agreed, pure info no nonsense

[@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 🙂

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for your support. I hope that everything is well with you.

[@marcfaur]

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

[@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

[@justinkendall8341]

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!

[@kevinshumaker3753]

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.

[@markwiehenstroer2831]

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.

[@devincurrie4145]

Yeah I was wondering about that too as this reminded me of the extra steps we needed to ensure that drivers are installed in order for the old main board to recognize the SATA HDD when it first came out.

[@bitelaserkhalif]

Theoretically, Sandy and Ivy bridge can use them as boot drive, but you need BIOS modding or clover boot. Haswell, introduced nvme boot (even with PCIE adapter)

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

2:33 STANLEY, MY BELOVED 🥺 Anyway, another good explanation!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings!

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

@@ExplainingComputers CHRIS, MY BELOVED 🥺❤️ ....okay, I'll stop. Hi. 😂

[@TheOleHermit]

@@Praxibetel-Ix "Don't get me started." (I promised I wouldn't) 🙄 Hope you found a good solution for your eternal drive. 🖐😎

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

@@TheOleHermit Hello! Alas, not yet. I'm broke. 😭😂

[@TheOleHermit]

@@Praxibetel-Ix Alas, I'm a hermit. So your words are priceless. 🙏

[@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.

[@ExplainingComputers]

A great result. :)

[@StephenC050]

On holiday in Cyprus. KZbin notification. Sunshine, Pool, beer & the new EC video. A perfect Sunday

[@ExplainingComputers]

Enjoy your holiday! :)

[@michaelbishton9439]

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

[@act.13.41]

The Orico works very well. I will admit that the grommet will allow the drive to move a bit if it gets handled roughly and you have to open it up and push the drive deeper into the M.2 slot. So, if it stops working, that is where you should look first.

[@largepimping]

I wondered if having the heatsink and sil-pad installed would help avoid this - IOW, are those designed to help hold the drive in place, etc.

[@act.13.41]

@@largepimping That could hinder getting the outer case off and on.

[@cwt114]

That happened to me, I have an exact blue enclosure, I ended up cutting a drinking straw at the same length of enclosure internal width and put it to keep the rubber thing and drive stay in place.

[@itstheweirdguy]

Is the Orico detected in clonezilla, and is it bootable? I have a off brand one and it is neither. Works fine if you are already booted into an OS, it defeats the purpose for me.

[@act.13.41]

@@itstheweirdguy I have not tried it with clonezilla, so I have no answer for you. Maybe someone else will speak up.

[@MicrobyteAlan]

I’m late because of a 8:47 morning launch of an Atlas V from the cape. Anyway, good comparative analysis of the different interfaces. Even on usb it’s fast. Thanks as always.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Now that has to be one of the best ever reasons for being late! :)

[@hugmenow.]

Fantastic!

[@MicrobyteAlan]

@@hugmenow. hi, 🤗

[@hugmenow.]

@@MicrobyteAlan ☺

[@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. :)

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for sharing. :)

[@nutsnproud6932]

I learned something new today. Difference between SATA and MVME support. I might get a low height card and drive for my old DELL Optiplex running Linux.

[@walley2637]

I just installed an m.2 PCIE adapter yesterday and was pleasantly surprised that i got the full speed out of my Gen3 nvme. the drive claims to run at 3500MB/s and it tested at 3450MB/s in the adapter. awesome!

[@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.

[@bjre.wa.8681]

Yes, Yes, I went down all the same "Rabbit Holes" you did. Days of investigating. I found to be incredibly frustrating. I was working with older computer systems (Dell office grade - not true work stations). It was the final straw. Update hardware so I got the newer - NOW -- UEFI AND motherboards with internal M.2/NVME slots. I'm still on WIN10. I've recently been migrating to Linux/Ubuntu/Mint/Cinnamon. I to the point I JUST want SOMETHING to work consistently. I've work to do and just don't have time to constantly diddle with hardware issues. I know Chris "mentioned Heat issues with the external drive enclosure and wished he had spent a little more time exploring that as I've read that people are experiencing enormous slowdowns (throttling) in real world use. Again with the rabbit holes!

[@Darkk6969]

@@bjre.wa.8681 Chris did mention in his video that it's only a quick test so didn't need to use the heatsink. Under normal use I'd definitely use them in my Linux setups.

[@devincurrie4145]

I have an old Lenovo m93p SSF desktop PC. Is it worth going down the rabbit hole to see if this PC is able to boot from NVMe?

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@devincurrie4145 That's entirely up to you and depends on your proposed use-case.

[@subhashsehgal2278]

I have Asus H110M-CS Motherboard for Intel 6th generation which don't have NVME M.2 slot on board and on Asus website 4210 is the last BIOS available which I already have installed there is no Nvme configuration settings available so i have only PCie x 16 slot free to attach Nvme adapter but I want to use Nvme SSD for Boot drive so is there any chance to use it as boot drive if yes then please make a installation of windows 10 on Nvme using adaptor Card and please reply my question asap if anyone is sure about it because on the KZbin no one has done this experiment so it will be very helpful for many people in the world thanks.

[@unorthodox5171]

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

[@billywallace1360]

I dug-out one of the x4 PCIe NVMe cards when you previewed this in a members-only message a couple of weeks back. I had previously tried this on a Windows 7 PC, which didn't work. That machine has since been "upgraded" to Windows 10 and can now see the drive, but the machine can't boot from it as the BIOS is presumably too old to cope with such drives. I'm now off to the Amazon locker to collect the toy hovercraft you previewed this week!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good luck with the hovercraft!

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

I am having the same problem with my non-UEFI bios motherboard from 2011.

[@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.

[@giggidy2920]

i love how my google algorithm is, this was the first to show up when i searched pcie 4 m.2, solved both my question, and got affordable solutions

[@ollyalme]

Oh come on people, give Christopher the additional 49k subs he needs to reach that magic 1 million! Another interesting video. I plan on putting my daily computer from 2014 on steroids. It looks like an adapter card like this can take care of that.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I would, but you can't subscribe more than once!

[@edwardaudet8367]

I have 3 usb drive cases I use them on my Raspberries to load the OS.They work excellent. I didn't know they made cards I think I wil pick up one for my HP computer. Always a pleasure to learn something new. Love your videos, they teach me new stuff and are really enjoyable. You make my Sunday a great starter to the week

[@xrafter]

PCIe card SSDs are better.

[@edwardaudet8367]

@@xrafter I use the USB deices on my raspberry pi, I'd like to get a pcie card for my HP computer, and see how work

[@xrafter]

@@edwardaudet8367 make sure to watch this video to make sure it is worth it. because raspbarry pi won't benefit from a high speed m.2 drive. it will run like the USB drive but slightly faster .

[@AK-vx4dy]

Indeed explaining. You work is invaluable ❤

[@RothmanHarv]

14:46 "Otherwise known, at least this week" Haha! I don't have any M.2 storage yet, but your videos have me prepared for when I do. Thank you for the clear and concise videos!

[@acemasterx2514]

Some days ago, I used that same adapter to add a NVMe drive to my old system. First my idea was to get a SATA SSD, but then I saw the adapter online and realized it would be faster than the SATA ones, even using a cheap NVMe M.2 SSD and taking onto account the PCIe 2.0 instead of 3.0. The only downside is it can not boot directly from it (cause of the old motherboard), so I would still need to use the GRUB loader on the HDD. That way I installed the new Linux Mint 20.2 on it (when you install, remember to tell the installer to put GRUB on the HDD, and not the NVMe). I also had the idea of using a USB stick drive to boot with the GRUB on it, then redirect the boot to the NVMe, I'll test that later.

[@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).

[@alanthornton3530]

Thanks Chris for another informative & timely video. I was going to fit a PCIe NVMe adaptor to my old motherboard, from your information I'll hold fire until I can upgrade my system :)

[@makouille495]

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 !

[@perrymcclusky4695]

Useful information indeed! Looking forward to seeing your “Free Cloning Applications “video. As I understand it, these were applications that the Empire used for the Clone Wars. I could be mistaken.

[@ExplainingComputers]

You are correct. They were first developed on Kamino.

[@perrymcclusky4695]

@@ExplainingComputers Awesome!

[@modrribaz1691]

I had a PC with a motherboard that doesn't even support UEFI let alone booting from an NVME SSD, I got it to work through clover bootloader instead. At 4 lanes of PCI-e gen 2, my SSD had reads and writes of more than 800 megabytes/sec, and it brought life back to this old PC.

[@mgb0791]

Brilliant, I just increased my drive Read speeds by 6 times and Write speeds by 10 times on my 6 year old PC using this simple upgrade. Looking forward to the cloning video.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Now that is a result! :)

[@mgb0791]

Just on the subject of cloning, I tried the Samsung cloning tool "Data Migration" that came with my SSD NVMe and despite several attempts it would just freeze almost straight away. Found Macrium Reflect which was free and worked flawlessly to copy OS and data to the NVMe which is now my C drive.

[@nerdyneighbor]

This is without a doubt the clearest explanation of this technology I've ever seen. Thanks, mate!

[@jinty83]

I use both of these device types and they are so useful. My linux pc doesn't have a spare pcie slot due to an added wifi card, but using the 10gbps usb nvme enclosure I can run my extra game drive that way instead with no speed issues. It's also amazing adding the 4x pcie card to my old i7 4770 system and watching the 4x speed, especially as I run that system from a 2.5" sata ssd. Pity you can't boot from the nvme drive instead but it is 9 years old now. Even 1x speed is excellent if that's the only slot available. Thanks for another informative and entertaining video Chris. 😁

[@br.linux.superuser]

There are a few está to boot from nvme.

[@loginregional]

Always the best explainer on the block, CB talks about TWO of the craziest concepts in computing: M.2 and PCIe. Confused? Watch the video.

[@randy-johnkostapapas9944]

@explainingcomputers most mother boards have the back of the pcie slot open. If you put in a 4x card in the 1x slot. It will run at 1x speed and not use the other traces not connected.

[@ExplainingComputers]

"Most" motherboards certainly don't have the back of the slot open. A few, older boards do. You are correct that a higher line card will run in a lower lane slot if the slot if open ended.

[@kalensus]

Oh my! Thank you, Christopher. I was wracking my brain trying to think of a way of expanding my PC's storage as cleanly as possible. It never even occured to me to use a PCI Express slot to put an extra NVMe drive in. I order the glotrends one from your Amazon shop and now I'm a happy chappy with 2TB of DirectStorage-ready space! I believe I can already see an improvement loading some of my games on Steam.

[@songsan807]

Thanks for this informational video. Up to mid 2022 I was hesitant on getting an SSD drive. Maybe I was too lazy to open up my case or didn't want to pay about $100 for a 1TB when I can get a 5TB HDD for it. Once I see the big difference between an HDD and SSD in terms of how fast it boot up to Windows and load the apps, I did not mind paying the difference. Then I started upgrading to NVME, which at most computer stores are about the same prices as SSD but about 7 times faster. I leaped for the NVME and so far very impressed. I did not know much still about NVME until I watched your video. So it definitely helped me understand the differences between the different versions. So now I know what to look for on my next PC. Many thanks.

[@johnr8856]

Outstanding video as always. Thank you for the graphics and tables showing the differences between technologies.

[@TheEulerID]

In practice, I find by far the most important factor in speeding up my PC is in the reduced latency on random access, not the ultimate in sequential throughput. As such, I note that there is relatively little difference between the performance on the x1 and the x4 PCIe interfaces, whilst the USB one is substantially worse on the relevant CrystalDiskMark result (the RND4K Q1T1 run). It's less than 60% of the speed on reads, and 40% on writes. Whilst there are applications where the sequential throughput is a very important factor such as, maybe, video-editing, it's that random access capability that seems to dominate, especially on system access. It's a factor that I think tends to get over shadowed by those sequential access headlines.

[@milescarter7803]

For this reason if x2 bifurcation was available I'd love to see a PCIe x16 to 8 drives adapter. I think some older LGA 2011 systems or SuperMicro offer this. Would be good for a NVMe based NAS

[@bradw256]

Very interesting. Looking forward to your “Free Cloning Tools” video.

[@ceuser3555]

I love the pace and clarity of the explanation. Thank you for this.

[@zebop917]

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.

[@johncundiff7075]

Had to work this weekend, so I'm late on the reply.. I enjoyed this one very much.. I just bought one of the PCIe-NVMe adapter cards and wasn't sure which slot was best.. Guess I am NOW!!! Thanks for much for all you do Mr. Barnatt!!!

[@that_duck_over_there]

9:20 I would install the heatsink/heat plate in all cases

[@neilphilip2320]

The usual terrific clarity on all things computing...

[@montecorbit8280]

At 7:40 Missed opportunity.... Great video so far, I am enjoying it....I usually enjoy your videos, so this isn't a surprise. However I noted when you were showing a close-up of the PCI e 1x slot card that there was markings for 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280. I think it was a missed opportunity dimension that. I didn't know about the 2260 drives existed, but I did know about the 22110 drives this card doesn't seem to have.... Thank you for making your videos.... Monte

[@whyjay9959]

Apparently, there are two hotfix files adding NVMe support to windows 7(not sure if that's needed with company-specific NVMe drivers), but Microsoft seem to have removed them from their website. However you can find them in some utilities by motherboard manufacturers(like ASUS EZ Installer), even with a tool to integrate them into an installer.

[@readmelast]

Both HP and Dell slipstreamed NVMe support in their last Windows 7 media. This makes it very easy to install onto a NVMe boot device assuming the respective vendor's hardware actually supports W7.

[@oldfatbastad6053]

win-raid have them.

[@33lex55]

It seems my response to a comment some weeks ago inspired you, lol. It's a good video, and very practical; a lot of users will benefit from it. I had also tried another Orico USB enclosure with a 2TB NVMe-drive, but it was excruciatingly slow (may have been due to my case-front connectors) so eventually, I decided to use the adapter, instead. It's now cheerfully running MS bootmanager and Windows 11Pro. Looking forward to the cloning software video! Cheers.

[@kevinhanley6462]

Very clear explanation! You can't always tell if something will work the way it should do unless you test it. For instance, a PCIe NVME 4x adapter is only recognised on the system sometimes until you restart it, where the mSATA drive works every time but causing the hard disk drive light to constantly stay on instead of showing when it's being accessed. The solution could be to connect it to the remaining SATA 3 socket, which could work faster as so it's not connected to SATA 2 by default. NVME drives use the same technology as a GPU via PCIe, thereby communicating directly with the CPU as opposed to a hard disk drive interface. Everyday use would appear the same in speed, unless booting into the operating system.

[@lastinline1958]

More great information. I eagerly look forward to your cloning video. It will be very useful to me, because cloning is something I want to be able to do, but it is an impenetrable wilderness to me so far.

[@zacmitchell_1984]

Thanks, i never understood all these m.2 shenanigans until now!

[@johnglielmi6428]

I'm currently using An NVMe 6Tb external drive for a backup drive. I remember my first PC was a 386 and the snail speeds back then were considered quite fast but they weren't always reliable. amazing how technology advances so rapidly. Yes I was in my early twenties when I got my first PC. Always thanks for the great info Chris.

[@wuuurmm758]

I spent hours untangling my options for M.2 extension. This video would have saved me so much time.

[@Andrei1396]

Can't wait for USB 3.3 Gen 3.3 to come out next week!

[@annihilatorg]

Great video. That slide at 1:30 needs to be plastered everywhere as so many people get it wrong.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Agreed! It comes up a lot . . .

[@daveduback7974]

Great video. As I have upgraded my laptop twice, there are two M.2 cards sitting around. Soon, that will change!

[@martinwilkinson2344]

This is great stuff, haven't explored the wonderful world of M.2 yet, but I feel much better prepared now!

[@andrewkinzie9564]

You must be a teacher. This was the most informative video I have found covering the functions of these devices (I have watched many.) You have covered all the bases that I was looking for. Thank you. Subscribed

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for the sub -- and welcome aboard! :)

[@ApexPredatorWithSungGlasses]

I re-watched your "Explaining PCIe Slots" before this video. And things are much more clearer now. Thanks!

[@jeffbutterfield3158]

Perfect timing--I just ordered a large M.2 SSD and an enclosure so I could could clone my smaller, rapidly-running-out-of-space onboard M.2 SSD onto it. Thanks, man!

[@yellowskrub]

Wow. I knew about nigh all of this before watching, but this is by far the best video on the internet for explaining such a matter. Keep it up!

[@NicolasGirls]

These videos are so much like my childhood school educational videos from the 80s.. Superb!

[@waynerobarge8543]

Thank you for the clear explanation of these enclosures. I would add that external cases like you demonstrated should be metal since there are some that are plastic. I fried an NVME doing s disk backup in such a plastic case even with a heat sink. I also have an external adapter connected via thunderbolt to my laptop and the case is always warm to the touch, even when not under load. May I ask you to possibly consider reviewing external PCIE adapter cases sometime in the future. These are a bit more expensive but work well via a dock for your laptop. However, it is often unclear about number of lanes available and actual speeds that can be realized without using a RAID configuration.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

I purchased this enclosure from Amazon. SABRENT USB 3.2 10Gbps Type C Tool Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE) Takes both SATA & NVMe drives, and the top is clam-shell rather than slider, so swapping drives is easy, and it works a treat for cloning M.2 drives. USB-C connector. (I use it to play around with M.2 drives on my RPi Argon cases, plugged into the RPi’s second USB3 connector, or on an OptiPlex running Linux)

[@ExplainingComputers]

That's a nice enclosure. Good find. Thanks for sharing here. :)

[@theofficialrafff]

Dude I love your channel so much, my favorite computer channel on KZbin, you've saved me so many times already with purchases and new tech

[@beltanewalk8797]

This weeks USB classification names 😀 I love a touch of dry humour.

[@fhm3762]

This is the kind of video you always look for but never find .. Thanks for the informative upload.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for watching!

[@jyvben1520]

sadly my memory also needs upgrading, luckily these videos can be found when needed.

[@RandonBrown]

Thanks for a great comparison. Explanation of how different PCIe slots affects the performance of the same drive was a very well described. Good work!

[@wamy7619]

As usual your video was a great enlightenment about these devices. The fact they look so similar to ram always confused me so, but now it all makes sense. Thanks again!

[@garrytuohy9267]

A nice review. I ran into the limitations of some M.2 sockets about a year ago when tring to insert an NVMe into a standard PCIe M.2 socket.

[@DylanWilsonYT]

Another very informative video Chris! I'm planning to purchase an NVMe enclosure to basically use as a USB drive and hopefully I can get Veracrypt up and running on it and have some really fast, portable storage! :)

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good luck! Veracrypt should work fine on an NVMe drive in a USB enclosure -- fast, portable and secure!

[@fpham8004]

Two thumbs up - basically everything you ever wanted to know about M.2 in one video.

[@GCMCTORONTO]

I got so confused with this topic, so thanks for the clarification. Now, I know what I need to add an MVME drive to my system.

[@PS_Tube]

Fantastic tutorial, as always, Chris B. 👏👏

[@waynestewart1919]

Thank you for that great introduction to M.2 SSD adapters. I learned how to identify an SSD as SATA or NVMe interfaces. And both the adapter recommendations were good to keep in mind. However, my PC is rather old to try this as I don't think my motherboard can benefit from the performance due the older chipsets it uses.

[@amjpais]

Congratulations on the educational video. It clears up a lot of doubts. The next step with this type of adapter card would be to run tests with cards that enable the use of Raid. Thank you.

[@33lex55]

I have seen adapters like this, that support TWO drives. Careful, though; some will take ONE PCIe-drive AND ONE Sata-drive.

[@horusfalcon]

This topic is on time for me, sir. I recently acquired a Dell Precision 7520 in which the primary drive is a 500 GB Hynix NVMe SSD. It has a heat spreader mounted, and moves along quite nicely. I use a 1TB SATA hard drive I had at hand already as my second (data) drive, which keeps the primary drive reasonably free.

[@emmittthompson4266]

Can't wait to see the free cloning video. I just had to clone a hard drive, and so many companies seemed to offer free cloning until you tried to use it, and then they required a subscription, or an upgrade to their premium version.

[@devincurrie4145]

Look for freeware cloning solution or buy an inexpensive Sabrent adapter with clone functionality.

[@ldm6015]

Great video, thanks for good explanation of USB3+ standards and the good demonstration with a speed tests. It keeps me updated.

[@rv6amark]

Great video to keep handy. Sometimes I think of your videos as wonderful explanations that I will need later...like a book kept on the shelf...and then one day I will run into something I don't understand, and will then then remember, "Oh, I think Christopher did a video on this!" Then, I easily find it on your channel or website and I have the solution! What a wonderful resource.

[@sheldonkupa9120]

Very good video. 👍👏 The subject matter is confusing for the novice, and your structured approach is of great help when trying to understand. Confusing also are the keys. And even more confusing the "wifi" pcie slots😄

[@johnanderson1955]

Thank you, Chris, as ever a very helpful video. You menioned that you can buy a PCIe card that supports multiple SSDs. The Glotrends card requires "PCIe Bifurcation Motherboard". An explanation of what that is and how you can find it on a typical motherboard would be helpful.

[@LesNewell]

I was about to add a comment about bifurcation. Some motherboards and BIOSes allow you to split a x16 slot into what is effectively 4 x4 slots in one connector. An adapter board can route those lanes to up to 4 drives. This is generally only available on newer motherboards and is set in the BIOS. You can get cards that don't need bifurcation but they are generally quite a bit more expensive. They have a multiplexer chip on board (the PCIE equivalent of a USB hub) to distribute the traffic to the drives. For instance I have one that connects 4 NVME drives to an x8 slot. This limits the total bandwidth to the capacity of an x8 slot so you cannot simultaneously access all 4 drives at full speed. You also need to be careful to check what PCIE generation they are rated for. For instance a gen2 card will only work at up to gen2 speeds. It would work fine in a gen3 or gen4 motherboard but you'd still only get gen2 speed.

[@johnanderson1955]

@@LesNewell Thank you. AS I can't find any reference to bifurcation in my ASUS Prime A320M-A motherboard BIOS I suspect that I may have to reference another of Chris's videos and upgrade my motherboard! I've had a Glotrends PCIe X1 card installed for some time but have found, inspired by Chris' tests, that it only runs at PCIe 2.0 speeds, which was confirmed by CrystalDiskInfo.

[@awesomearizona-dino]

Excellent Demonstration with clear info. Thanks Chris.

[@joeg3950]

Just replaced a m.2 NVME on an old thinkpad t480s. Very timely video with good information. Thanks!

[@jordantheman25]

I already knew a good amount on M.2 NVMe drives but I learned some things! I was curious on these Adapters & Enclosures but now I am ready to foray into the world of M.2s.

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

Balena Etcher is a really good drive clone tool. I've used it twice to move Linux installs from spinning rust drives to SSD drives on old laptops.

[@WalterPetrovic]

You always seem to post a video on a topic that I absolutley need at the moment. I bought an M.2 enclosure, similar to the one you showed, but it doesn't appear to want to read the ssd. I think I am putting it in correctly.... at an angle then securing it with the rubber do-hickies. I wanted to clone one of my laptop drives to that M.2, so I could put it into that newer laptop. I managed a clone but i had to so it with a burned cd of Rescuilla's iso. I was running Zorin 16.3 on a 15-year-old Toshiba, and wanted to clone it then clone again it onto a new GeoBook. It was running fast on the Toshiba. Now it flies. The only issue is I can't seem to get the audio or bluetooth working on the GeoBook. At any rate, thanks for all your posts. If I was a mutant freak, I would give this video four thumbs up.

[@dingolovethrob]

Brilliant video! I shall be buying one of these through your link. - If you haven't shot the cloning video yet , please address the issue of whether it's possible to 'clone' your nVME drive onto a larger one. nVME drives are getting cheaper now, so as the old vNME drive gets towards its end-of-life and we wish to clone it (before it gets write-disabled) , it's often desirable to replace it with a larger capacity unit as they ofetn cost less than you paid for the old unit.... You really have chosen to make these videos at exactly the right time for me , thank you.😃

[@ExplainingComputers]

It is shot, but you can indeed clone an NVMe SSD to a larger one -- which the video demonstrates. :) It will post next Sunday.

[@dingolovethrob]

@@ExplainingComputers I should have known that you'd be WAAAY ahead of me ! 😃 Best Regards and thanks. Loooking forward to next weeks vid.

[@confusedbeard69]

A note about Orico USB Enclosures, if you intend to use them with Linux you might have some issues due to different controllers in them, some use Jmicron JMS578 that doesn't work really well in Linux (TRIM support for example), while others use ASMedia ASM1051E/ASM1053E/ASM1153 controllers that works without problem. The thing is you don't really know what controller your enclosure will have until you get it and can check it.

[@ExplainingComputers]

The Orico I bought works fine with Linux. The controller in it is a Realtek RTL9210B-CG (1.00).

[@mattb7406]

Suburb video. All around. Detail, cadence. Everything

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks. :)

[@alexlandherr]

Not that related but your M-Disc video from a few years back helped me in archiving some data like old photos and videos, schoolwork and a TV show that isn’t available for download anymore. Also found how to rip a Blu-Ray with MakeMKV and then burn the resulting directory to an M-Disc (might not be playable for the 100 GB ones but data is still available).

[@Krithalith]

5:25 I'm pretty sure there are x670e motherboards now that do have regular PCIe 5.0 slots (even x16). They are still pretty uncommon though.

[@ExplainingComputers]

All of the x670(e) boards I checked have PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, but PCIe 4.0 PCIe slots -- eg www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X670E-AORUS-XTREME-rev-1x/sp#sp

[@Phambleton]

Most new gen Intel motherboards have a full PCIe 5.0 slot. I've got a B660 with one.

[@ExplainingComputers]

@@Phambleton Thanks for this, my bad. I stand corrected, and will add a pinned comment to this effect.

[@Phambleton]

@@ExplainingComputers No worries!

[@leskaighin8903]

A most useful and timely video. As ever very clearly explained. Thanks.

[@MyOliver64]

Another excellent video with an exceptional graphic animation to understand how the whole thing works. Bravo! Maybe you could also make an animation of how a CPU works inside?

[@icf1221]

luv your vids very informative and none of the eccentricities of its hosts. oooh closer to one million subscribers now.

[@deniswauchope3788]

Nice video, great explanation! One thing you didn't cover though was the heatsink installation on those M.2 drives, some of them get really hot. Older computers don't have heatsinks for them on the motherboard (though newer motherboards do) so a heatsink is really necessary. The only problem I see is that right on the label of the NVME drive it says, "Warranty Void If Removed," but to get good heat transfer the label _must_ be removed. This is a dilemma; I don't want to void the warranty on my new M.2 NVME SSD, but I don't want it to turn into a toaster either!