Orico Thunderbolt/USB4 NVMe Enclosure 40Gbps

Today I will cover the Orico M.2 SSD external enclosure, which is the fastest I have used to date and is the perfect add-on for your MAC or Windows laptop equipt with USB 4 or Thunderbolt3/4 but is backward compatible with USB 3/3.1/3.2. Check out the video to see the performance I achieved.
Below are the amazon affiliate links to the products should you want to buy one or find out more information. As an affiliate, I earn a small commission that does not impact your price.
Thunderbolt 3/4 USB4 Enclosure: amzn.to/3FKa6Rd
Low-Cost USB SATA Version: amzn.to/3UaiopI
Sabrent nVME: amzn.to/3PevcJY
Other Items I used in my home network:
WD RED Drives
WD RED 8T: amzn.to/38IbNuD
WD RED 6T: amzn.to/2U2yAgt
WD RED 4T: amzn.to/2t7CA4u
WD Red Pro: amzn.to/2BO6COq
Seagate Ironwolf 10T: amzn.to/2RvkKBN
Seagate Ironwolf 8T: amzn.to/2O2XpFk
Seagate Ironwolf 6T: amzn.to/2U2IJKn
QNAP 12 Port Managed 10GbE switch: amzn.to/3td6XiV
Qnap 12 Port unmanaged 10GbE switch: amzn.to/2QhsDYF

[@BobbyG3.14]

new subscriber alert -- love the video, love the support and help growth of a smaller youtube channels

[@MikeFaucher]

Awesome, thank you for the sub and the feedback. Good to have you on board.

[@mdanger6026]

Exactly what I needed to know to finally pull the trigger on a new PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD and find a good fast TB4 enclosure to match. Thanks for this helpful post!

[@MikeFaucher]

Awesome. Glad it was helpful. Appreciate the feedback.

[@AlSiguenza]

@@MikeFaucher question, what would be the best external drive and/or enclosure you would recommend for a late 2013 macMini?

[@MikeFaucher]

@@AlSiguenza I like the Acasis and the Orico. I did a video (kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3eblIdubLuAr6M) if you need more detail. Any Thunderbolt or USB 4 enclosure will work well on the MAC Mini.

[@g0th1cazn]

Thanks for posting and it was really helpful. It seems that Orico is a reliable company.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback it is appreciated.

[@GaryHenson53]

I had the same problem with the Samsung 990 Pro SSD with slow write speeds. The problem is because the write operation is not being cached by default. This is a USB connected drive so by default Samsung turns off caching for the write operation. Just go into the Device Manager in Windows and under the Disk Storage select the Samsung Drive and turn on the writing caching. The write operation will increase dramatically.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the input. Good to know.

[@Greg-fs8np]

How would you do that on a Mac OS Ventura?

[@MikeFaucher]

@@Greg-fs8np Most every MAC supports thunderbolt so you use it as a second drive.

[@alexfischer9493]

I think the best and fastest drive for these enclosures is the WD Black SN850X. I tried a samsung 970 EVO, but their website states that this drive has compatibility issues. Like they claim, the 970 EVO Plus got only 400 mbps writes, while the SN850X gets 2700 mbps writes and 2800 mbps reads. These enclosures are very picky with drive selection for some reason, so don't expect full speed or compatibility at all with any random drives you already own.

[@MikeFaucher]

A great suggestion to check first. I did test that drive and the performance was excellent. I have heard that format may play a role but the 970 EVO did perform very poorly. I had better luck with the 980 but still prefer the Sabrent, WD, or the 980 Pro. The 980 Pro has been excellent and that is the one I am currently using. Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it.

[@thomasfwilkinson]

Thanks for the video, it was very helpful.

[@MikeFaucher]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the feedback.

[@mihai_chindris]

I got a similar ORICO enclosure and I also got a Samsung 990 Pro SSD w/ 2TB & I will be using them to offload some Parallels VMs to the ext. encl. Even though I've got the M1 Max MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM, the Windows 11 VM is taking a toll on the RAM and therefore creating a lot of GBs of SWAP. Hope to see great read and write speeds as I do with the internal SSD of the laptop!

[@MikeFaucher]

I doubt you will see the real life difference but the benchmarks are faster in the internal drive. Look forward to hearing some feedback.

[@frazerweb]

Great article, I have a 2tb samsung 980 pro in an older orico enclosure and its very fast on my 13mbp M1. Now I want a 4tb nvme solution and getting the right nvme for the enclosuer requires some research.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback and good luck with your decision.

[@donross7820]

My 2 Acasis enclosures with Samsung 980 PRO 2 TB and Samsung 990 PRO 2 TB each get 2800 both read and write. I love them.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great to hear and thanks for the feedback.

[@donross7820]

That I do not know but I just bought 4 of the Samsung 990 PRO 4 TB (for $299 each!!) and even they are single sided. My 16 TB RAID level 0 in an OWC 4M2 Express enclosure is a joy.

[@AinzOoalG0wn]

hm i have an orico too but mine seems to be an older model than yours. i use it to connect to QNAP TS-253D to boot truenas instead of QTS (which i removed from the bios boot sequence to achieve this). Installed m.2 nvme ssd into my orico enclosure. The thing i found is that, sometimes these enclosures don't work well for this kind of purpose, probably due to some sort of incompatibility issue. but for this brand (not necessarily your model, but most likely) and the model i'm using it worked fine :} the most important for these enclosures is the i/o speeds supported (usb 2, usb 3, type c? and so on. faster is better though the speed u get relies on both ends being the best speed possible without bottlenecking the other end), and cooling (best check reviews that cover the heatsink cooling for the enclosure, because these m.2 nvmes run hot, in some tests some of these m.2 performance get throttled when the thing over heats, hence why it's important to find out it can handle this before committing to a purchase)

[@MikeFaucher]

Great point. I did witness some heat but not evidence of throttling that I can detect so far.

[@qzorn4440]

Very interesting, I have a Thunderbolt-4 USB4 port on my Windows laptop and wonder what it would be good for at these very fast speeds? 😎 Thank you.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the input. Really helps on external drives depending on what you do.

[@mmablock]

@@MikeFaucher Can it handle double sided ssd like wd 850x?

[@thesonicsolution1976]

This enclosure paired with a Samsung 970 Evo Plus gave me 2800 both read and write consistently on a M1 Max machine with a 5g speed test. I formatted it as AFPS/Extended Journaled as I plan to use it strictly for storage on the mac exclusively. Previously I had used a WD Blue SN570 and the write speeds were less than impressive. Starting off at around 2600 write, but by the 3rd pass in Black Magic Speed Test it had slowed down to less than 400. Read speeds stayed solid at 2600. But the 970 Evo Plus still ran 2800 even after many speed tests. It would seem that the bottleneck on the WD Blue sn570 is in the cache as the EVO Plus didn't show the same issues. It is as fast as my internal SSD.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the info.

[@JerryWinter]

Just bought the Samsung 980 Pro with an enclosure for my Mac. Lots of folks claim the 980 is pretty messed up unless you have the latest firmware. Unfortunately, the software Samsung provides to check/update the firmware (Magician Software) is PC only. Doesn't that pretty much take Samsung drives off the table for Mac folks?

[@thesonicsolution1976]

@@JerryWinter I really didn't have a problem with the 980 Evo Plus. I might remember hearing that the pro didn't play as nice, but I got lucky either way. Formatted it on my mac and instantly got 2800 read and write. I might back it up, and then update on PC to see if ti makes a difference with firmware, but even if it doesn't I'm more than happy with 2800

[@ghost-user559]

@@thesonicsolution1976 Keep it backed up. They destroy themselves, the issue isn’t speed, the firmware is buggy and causes a self destruction eventually.

[@donross7820]

I have not had the slightest problem with 4 of the 990 PRO 4tb, 5 of the 980 PRO 2 TB, nor with my 1 of the 990 PRO 2 TB using my M1 Mac Studio Ultra 48 core machine.

[@laurentw.261]

I use this enclosure with a crucial M.2 SSD and I am getting 2200-2300 MB/s EDIT: Crucial P3 4TB CT4000P3SSD8 PCIe 3.0 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD

[@MikeFaucher]

Awesome, thanks for sharing the experience and speed test.

[@anthonynowlan9765]

I was expecting the thermal pad to touch the external case. Would still cook inside sealed box?

[@MikeFaucher]

I had the same thought and tried it both ways and couldn’t see any significant change. It might be a better way for extreme use though. Great point. Thanks.

[@hubert303]

What is the exact Orico model number for the Thunderbolt 3/4 USB4 version you tested? The Amazon link seems to redirect to a model that isn't USB4

[@MikeFaucher]

That is the right link but they describe it as 40gb instead. Look further into the product description. Good catch.

[@netoeli]

I have used the orico sata enclosure and could not get it to stop disconnecting while doing sustained writes on the sata ssd. I tried using 3 different sata ssds and all of them had the same issue. After about 20 minutes of writing to the ssd it would disconnect as if the user disconnected and re-connected the drive. This was obviously cause by heat building up on the sata to usb controller to the point of being too hot to touch. The plastic molding acted more as an insulator rather than a heatsink. I can't imagine anyone at orico tested this sata to usb adapters before pushing out the door. Could have being a fluke? Sure so i bought a second one and it had the exact same issue. Also the 3 sata ssds are still working just fine on a different enclosure. Even though i came here for the pcie to usb enclosure i could not help but to notice that you probably tested the sata to usb adapter for no longer than 5 minutes.

[@MikeFaucher]

I have seen this issue many times before and in my case it was not the SSD or the enclosure, but the power output of the USB controller on the laptop I was using. SATA draws more power than NVMe so you would most likely not see that using an NVMe. Thanks for the feedback.

[@Peter-df1br]

Thanks! However, you didn't mention the WD SN770 performance the video.

[@MikeFaucher]

You are right, I neglected to mention that it was the same as the Sabrent. Good catch.

[@Peter-df1br]

@@MikeFaucher Thx!

[@RTDon]

Did you use Thunderbolt 3 connection or Thunderbolt 4 connection for your fastest speeds seen in this video? Thank you.

[@MikeFaucher]

I used T3 on windows and USB4 on the MAC. Hope that helps.

[@ahmadaltarazi9582]

Thanks for this video! I am using Macbook Air M1 so should I buy this product? ( Low-Cost USB SATA Version ) + ( SSD + Heatsink ) or SSD is enough without a heatsink? What about the temperature if I use SSD without Heatsink especially I need to work on Video Editing through it? Thanks a lot!

[@MikeFaucher]

This device will not support SSDs with a built-in heatsink, so you have to use an SSD without the heatsink. This enclosure is the heatsink, so editing should not be an issue, as I am using mine for that. I hope that helps you.

[@ahmadaltarazi9582]

@@MikeFaucher Thanks for your kind reply! I meant if I used ( Thunderbolt 3/4 USB4 Enclosure ) would help me to keep ( Sabrent nVME ) safe cause of temperature or no need? Also, I need to ask you about the comparison between ( Sabrent nVME and SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD ), which is better for Mac Air M1, please? Thanks again for your help!

[@MikeFaucher]

@@ahmadaltarazi9582 Using the enclosure helps with quite a bit with heat. For the M1 i would use the Sabrent.

[@stevenwaldstein2249]

I bought a different Orico drive on Amazon described as “ ORICO M.2 Enclosure for NVMe SSD, USB4.0 40Gbps Type-C to M Key B+M Key 2280 Aluminum External SSD Case Compatible with Thunderbolt 3/4 USB3.2/3.1/3.0/ Type-C-M2V01 “ that seems the same but they fail to have straight forward model numbers to refer to them to differentiate them. Links aren’t useful because they change things all the time on Amazon. How do we know we are buying the right model? I’m using it with a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro drive and getting ~2800 r/w on a M1 MacBook Air and M1 Mac Mini. Both have 1 TB internal SSD to compare to.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great question. Any enclosure that is rated at 40Gbs is either thunderbolt 3 or USB 4, which is thunderbolt compatible (Intel licensing thing), so both should perform the same. I agree that Orico has way too many model numbers and variations, but if you get that speed, you should be good to go.

[@Joedisney]

I was getting 2000 read speeds and the write speeds was slower then my wd hard drive . When i changed to a 3.1 cable my read speeds slowedd back to 800 however the write speeds went up to 800 5x of the thunderbolt cable. Makes no sense, company has no service no way to call I wrote them no English skills I. Exchange it same thing with the replacement. I am better off slowing it down with a 3.1 cable. Any help would be wonderful . I used the USB 3.1 enclosure from the same com a 5th of the price and it has 5x faster write speeds.

[@MikeFaucher]

Can you clarify what nVME drive and what system you are testing this on?

[@rgraz4929]

Every time the interface speed is doubled, the actual real world speed gets progressively worse than double. 10gbps=1100 MB/s 20gbps=1800 MB/s and 40gbps= 2700 MB/s. Why is that?

[@MikeFaucher]

In a network you can get close to the max speed of all these but but the stars have to line up. The device overhead, MTU has to be increased, computer speed, and all the peripherals. In these external devices, you start getting limited by the drive itself an bus overhead. Good observation.

[@rgraz4929]

@@MikeFaucher Ahh. Thank you.

[@NorthernWhisper]

What were the results with the WD Black drive?

[@MikeFaucher]

It was about the same so I did not post it as it was within the margin or error on the test. Thanks for the questions.

[@teddym2808]

My heatsink would not snap on. I put so much pressure I heard the drive crunching, brand new 990, and it was still lob sided. It just wasn't wide enough. Same Orico enclosure so I am warning anyone who reads this to test it as soon as they open the product.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. Very unusual.

[@tomski2671]

How was the performance of this enclosure with WD SN 770? If you can still remember.

[@MikeFaucher]

It was the same as the Sabrent. I neglected to mention it in the video. Thanks for the feedback.

[@DavidM2002]

Mike, when you got those poor write speeds, could it be the way the SSD was formatted ? Spacerex did a sort of fun video using an SSD attached to a Synology router to create a mini-NAS and found that by formatting the SSD with EXT4 the resulting improvement was quite remarkable. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXmxipqvf5t-gbs at the 5:50 mark.

[@MikeFaucher]

I can certainly try it but both were formatted the same. Will give it a shot. Thanks for the info.

[@OmgLikeSam]

EXT4 is Linux file system format. EXT4 isn't officially supported on Windows or Mac so you won't see it in file Explorer/ finder/ This PC .. anywhere! Unless of course you find 3rd party tools.

[@OmgLikeSam]

NTFS/exfat for Windows exfat or apfs for Mac. Run some tests for your scenario and that's it :)

[@didiertc]

Hello, thx a lot for the test. Will ssd TRIM will be possible connected to a tb3 of a M1?

[@MikeFaucher]

Yes, it should be enabled by default. Thanks for the feedback?

[@didiertc]

@@MikeFaucher Thx Mike, I ordered one with one Crucial 4Tb P (PCIe 3) and it work like a charme, 2600Mb R/W.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@didiertc Awesome. Good luck.

[@cajuudoido]

Can't snap the heat shield snap on the ssd at all. It is a m2 2280 ssd. Always at angle 😩. This is such annoying design 😤. Why not just put a heatsynk directly on the metal lid?

[@MikeFaucher]

What model of SSD do you have? Have not seen this condition before.

[@KhaHa]

WD is the best ssd for Orico combine Macbook M1

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the input.

[@KTamas27]

Hy . What would you say, on pc , is there a speed difference if i only have usb 3.2 gen 2 20gb /s vs thunderbolt 4 or just 3.2 gen wirh 10gb/s, if i have this exact 2.6 and 2.8 read and right threw thunderbolt?

[@MikeFaucher]

Their probably is not much difference between 3.2 20G and thunderbolt but very few devices support the 20G. Sounds like you already have Thunderbolt so I would use that.

[@Eternalduoae]

This seems weird... 40 Gbps should be theoretically able to reach around 5 GB/s. 2.5 GB/s is pretty bad - even by NVMe gen 3 ssd standards.... If the 960/980 are also getting such low/strange results, seems like a problem with the enclosure to me. Very disappointing for the price.

[@MikeFaucher]

This is more of drive and controller limitation rather than the thunderbolt.

[@Eternalduoae]

​@@MikeFaucher I'm sorry but this cannot be the case. It is either a limitation of the enclosure/cable or of the test systems host controllers themselves. 40 Gbps equates to a theoretical throughput of 5 GB/s but the 2.7 GB/s reads (per your test) for the gen 4 sabrent which has listed speeds of 5 GB/s reads means that you're getting just over half what should be possible. Given that you also observed lower than expected speeds for the gen 3 drives, too, there is something not working well (protocol overhead or firmware) somewhere in the chain and it has nothing to do with the cobtroller on the SSD since ALL SSDs you tested came out beneath what they would if slotted into an NVMe x4 interface.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@Eternalduoae So the enclosure is not a Gen 4, that is just what I bought. With this enclosure this is a fast as gets. Maybe the version will support gen 4.

[@Skikongen]

What is the difference between Orico M224 and M234 ?

[@MikeFaucher]

Great question. Spec wise they are the same so if there is a difference it internal or mechanical. Good catch

[@BruskiDev]

I have the Orico 40gbps enclosure with a Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB, but i always get around 800mb/s in crystalDiskMark. if anybody knows what might be the issue please tell me

[@MikeFaucher]

Is it plugged in to thunderbolt or USB?

[@BruskiDev]

@@MikeFaucher I have it plugged in a USB-C port which should support thunderbolt, Its either 3.1 gen 2 or 3.2 gen 2, i wouldnt know how to check which one it is specificaly but either way the speed should be atleast above 800mb/s

[@PaulTrautwein]

Tell me: Netac nv7000t 4Tb in an Orico m243c3-u4 box with a native cable on a MacBook Pro M1 Max produces 2300/2800 write/read. Did you expect more, is there a bottleneck somewhere, or do I want a lot from Thunderbolt 4? Thank you.

[@MikeFaucher]

The speed your are getting is the same as my MAC Studio. If we look at the Thunderbolt 4 specs, it states there is maximum 40 Gb/s of throughput, however what is not obvious is that built in to the spec is a dedicated 8 gigabits that can only be used for video, really leaving you only 32 Gb/s for data. That said, additional bandwidth could be allocated if you are running a 4K display further reducing the 40 Gbs capacity. To further complicate things, there is also some overhead from the controller so the best case is that it will leave you with approximately 22-28 Gb/s for dedicated data throughput depending on the controller in your system as well as the video load. When I convert that into MB/s, you end up with a range of around 2750 - 3500 MB/s that you should expect from any external storage regardless of what the SSD or enclosure is capable of when using a thunderbolt 4 controller such as the ones equipped on all newer MAC units. Hope that helps.

[@PaulTrautwein]

@@MikeFaucher Thank you! Interestingly, speed results are highly dependent on the file system NTFS 900/1500 MacOS Extended 2000/2800 APFS 2300/2800

[@djrightonbeat]

Where is sabrent link ?

[@MikeFaucher]

Good catch, I just added it to the notes section.

[@EAGauss]

Can you use Samsung Magician to update the SSD's firmware with this enclosure on your Mac?

[@MikeFaucher]

Sorry but I have never tried as I do not use the Samsung software.

[@EAGauss]

@@MikeFaucher about a year and a half ago there were drive health and failures of Samsung 990 Pro and 980 Pro SSDs because of the particular firmware. Later Samsung released an official response and a firmware update to fix that. However, not every enclosure user was able to update the firmware on their Mac because only ones connected via thunderbolt appeared as proper disks in the Samsung Magician app and were able to be updated. Not sure about the USB4 enclosure you mentioned. That's why I asked because you own them and might have tried that.

[@acevanzandt3179]

Today's price on Amazon is $140 !!! This is about $130 more than what I'd spend for an external enclosure. I stopped watching the video when I saw the exorbitant price...

[@MikeFaucher]

Thunderbolt is still very expensive but very fast. Thanks for your feedback.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@jason4130 Thanks for your input.

[@laurentw.261]

This isn't only an enclosure - it has Thunderbolt built in and this is the only way to get such speed for what I know.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@laurentw.261 Very true, but with a single port, it is basically for SSDs. Great point.

[@littlerichsbigbits2259]

Will applications stored on the SSD, still get updates via the App Store?

[@MikeFaucher]

The App Store will update as long as they were installed there originally. Should not be a problem.

[@littlerichsbigbits2259]

@@MikeFaucher I can’t seem to get it to work 🙈

[@MikeFaucher]

@@littlerichsbigbits2259 What host system are you plugging this into?

[@littlerichsbigbits2259]

@@MikeFaucher ACASIS 40Gbps NVMe Enclosure, M.2 Enclosure with a WD_BLACK SN850X 4TB M.2 2280 Game Drive PCIe Gen4 NVMe up to 7300 MB/s. I use it with an M2 MacBook Air running macOS Sonoma 14.3

[@MikeFaucher]

@@littlerichsbigbits2259 it might be a bad drive. That setup should be plug and play and is almost identical to mine

[@ashrafulalam1734]

Acasis would be faster

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback, I plan on testing one for myself.