ElecGear USB Mini Enclosure for 2230/2242 NVMe and SATA M.2 SSD, PCIe and Serial ATA Aluminum Housing Case with Magnet Cap, 10Gbps Flash Drive Internal Memory Stick Card Reader (NV-2242A)

I got the enclosure to repurpose an old NVMe SSD I had lying around, and it’s been great! I used a 2242 NVMe SSD, and it turned it into a superfast flash drive with transfer speeds up to 10Gbps. Seriously faster than any regular USB stick! The magnetic cap is a nice touch, and the aluminum housing feels sturdy but lightweight. It even comes with a thermal pad to help with heat, and the blue LED indicator looks cool when it’s plugged in. Note: This is just the case, so you’ll need to have your own SSD. But once you pop one in and you format it, you’re good to go, it is just plug and play.

Bought this after I bought a Sabrent 512GB Rocket 2242 NVMe SSD for a laptop but later on ended up not needing it. This enclosure makes for a great little portable SSD that ends up being quite a bit smaller than most other portable SSDs out there currently. Construction quality is fantastic being all metal. The SSD installation is straight-forward enough and so far it's been working great! Speeds will obviously differ depending on the SSD you use, but for me I got close-enough to the speeds the Sabrent drive is advertised for so I suspect the controller could handle much higher speeds with a more high-end SSD installed. Only word of warning is to make sure to install the included heat pad as at least in my case when transferring large files the enclosure can get a little hot. It's nothing you would end up burning yourself on, but it's clear the enclosure is also acting as a heatsink for the SSD. If you ended up using it as a portable bootable Linux or Windows drive I would imagine it could get a litter hotter with constant I/O. In any case it's a great inclosure if you have any extra 2242 SSDs laying around or if you really want to build your own portable USB SSD!

This adapter greatly exceeded my expectations. Installation of the NVME drive is simple, build quality is excellent, and performance is exactly as you would expect from an NVME drive over USB3. Windows recognizes it as a SCSI device (mine is the ElecGear NV-2242A) which supports TRIM commands. The all-aluminum case combined with the included heat pads makes for excellent heat spreading and dissipation. The design allows for a heat pad on both sides of the NVME drive which provides more area to dissipate heat. The aluminum case spreads the heat very evenly across the entire body of the adapter which cools the drive better than its normal environment inside a PC (with no heatsink on the typical 2230 NVME drive). With the prices of NVME drives continually dropping, this will be my go-to whenever I need a high-performance pocket drive. There's no reason to buy an expensive high-capacity "thumb drive" unless you absolutely require the small size. This adapter with a cheap NVME blows them all out of the water. EDIT: I had to reduce my rating by one star due to heat. The case, itself, works exceptionally well to spread and dissipate heat from the NVME drive. Unfortunately the drive, itself, produces much more heat in this adapter than it does in a proper NVME slot on a motherboard. I suspect voltage regulation is to blame, though I haven't found a way to directly measure the voltage. It could be my particular NVME drives (I bought multiple) but the heat issue isn't isolated to a single adapter or a single NVME drive.

I put a 1TB M.2 2230 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQG6JCRP) in the enclosure. I had to press down a bit on the cover which would indicate a snug fit for the M.2 drive + thermal pad + cover. NOTE: Another reviewer said this enclosure would not (securely) hold a M.2 2230. Based on that review I bought a 2230-to-2242 extension (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLH4WHS3). I didn't need the extension because the enclosure does (securely) hold a M.2 2230 (I just had to move the offset post from the 2242 hole to the 2230 hole). Perhaps this product has been updated since that previous preview? The drive was formatted with two partitions ... 1x ext4 (linux; 0.9TB), 1x ntfs (windows; 100GB). I mounted the ext4 partition in my Ubuntu 22.04 environment and copied 370 GB of data files (mp3 files, ISO files, software installation packages, virtual machine directories, an 80 GB TrueCrypt partition). The music archive (*lots* of small files) copied at a sustained speed of ~400 MB/second. The larger files copied at a sustained speed of 900-925 MB/second. The enclosure managed to get a little warm throughout the test ... nowhere near as warm as I had expected ... and definitely nowhere near 'hot'. The enclosure is a couple mm longer than my Corsair 512GB GTX 'premium' flash drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079NFKVRB). The Corsair is the typical 'high speed' flash drive that's rated at 440 MB (writes) that drops down to ~80-90 MB/sec after the first 20 GB of copy activity. NOTE: The Corsair originally cost ~210 USD; this homemade flash drive (with twice the space) cost ~120 USD. This homemade flash drive runs circles around the various collection of (USB 3.1 Gen 2) thumb/flash drives in my desk drawer. (Yeah, the aforementioned Corsair is old tech but I've got newer thumb/flash drives that are also incapable of maintaining a high write rate.) Hey, commercial thumb drive makers!!!! While this homemade 1TB flash drive cost me ~120 USD, you could surely reduce the cost by 30-50%, put it in a smaller form factor, and sell a million of these as a new breed of *actually* fast thumb drives.

It's work great

I got one of these to replace an aging Corsair GTX USB flash drive. This enclosure is actually slightly smaller than one of those drives. This is a really nice enclosure. I like the magnetic cap, it has a precise fit on the USB plug, and a good magnetic force. The enclosure has easy screw access on the bottom, and it comes with an included thermal pad (the pad is oversize and does need to be trimmed). I like that the fit on the component parts is nice and precise. There is nothing loose once it is assembled. I paired this with a Transcend 256GB S400 drive (TS256GMTS400S). On a USB3 port I was able to get sustained ~330+MB/s write and close to 400MB/s read on a large transfer (~160GB). This definitely faster than my old USB flash drives. The enclosure and pad do a good job of transferring heat out. Of course the thermals on this enclosure will vary with what you put into it. I used an IR thermometer gun to measure the external temps. On my S400 I was getting around 55C on the sustained write, and around 45C on the sustained read (which at these speeds the read/write only lasts a few minutes to fill the drive to capacity). In general, hot enough that you don't want to touch it during heavy activity. However idle temps on mine were around 35C (slightly warm to touch). One thing I noticed during assembly are the small holes in the left/right sides of the case. Initially I didn't know why those holes were there, but it is obvious after plugging in. There are power/activity LEDs on the board, and those holes are so you can see the lights.

I purchased both versions of these enclosures and I was very happy with the build quality and sturdiness of the drives. It would be near impossible to break them. The only drawback of the Type A enclosure is the width. It will need room on either side of the USB port in order to fit, but you can only do so much with the m.2 dimensions. Aside from this drawback I haven't had an issue. Great speed that is only limited by your choice of SSD. My Transcend TS256GMTS430S writes at 400MB/s, and drops to 100MB/s once it's cache is full, not the enclosure's fault. The USB Type-C enclosure however, has an issue that will hamper some use cases. The Type-C port is offset inside the enclosure leaving very little to plug into a device. I have a fairly slim phone case and it prevents the drive from connecting. The Type-C port on my motherboard's rear O/I just barely works with it. It doesn't go in far enough to snap in so it precariously sits in the port. If they offset it just a few millimeters it would make the drive drastically more versatile. The length of the Type-C plug meets the minimum specification so I wont take any stars off for it, but I highly suggest ElecGear give that additional wiggle room.

Got a 2TB 2230 drive for my Steamdeck and put my old 512GB in here and it has been working great for a boot drive with Ventoy and also for backing up PCs. It has a heat transfer pad included to protect the drive. Gets a little hot to touch during big transfers but keeps the drive from thermal resetting like some other enclosures. Just give it a minute to cool off after the transfer before you unplug it. Drive write speed was about 300-380 MB/s.

キャップと本体を固定するために磁石が入っています． キャップをした状態で鉄を近付けても，くっつかないので，素材で防磁していると思われます． 2243,2230用なので，とてもコンパクトです．長さだけはなく幅も2280用と比べると小さいです． 持った感じ冷っとしますので，素材の放熱性能が良いのでここまでコンパクトにできるのだと思います． 固定は，全て金属ネジなので，SSDの入れ替え時に部品破損リスクも少ない． SATA,PCIeの両方に対応しているので，サイズ以外は，気にせず入れ替えられる点も良いです． 直挿しタイプなので，PCによっては，スペースの関係や形状違いでケーブルが必要になります． 個人的には，Type-A->Type-Cのショートケーブルを一緒に持ち歩こうと思います．

Easy assembly with NVMe and works very well

I bought this to build my own ssd Usb stick. 2242 drives fits perfectly. But only supports sata drives not the nvme or both. All metal case seems sturdy. Magnetted lid closing really satisfying. Comes with thermal pads to help your drive cool down

USB 3.1 NVMe 2242用としては相当コンパクトだと思う。Sabrentの1TBを入れてるけど使用に問題なし。安っぽくないし品質は良いと感じた。キャップ式じゃなかったら申し分なかった。

Compré 3, porque estaba reemplazando discos duros de unos equipos por mayor capacidad; y pensé en usar los sobrantes como memorias externas con éste encloser. Cuando lo conectas funciona bien y es muy rápido. Desafortunadamente se calienta demasiado, al punto de dejar de funcionar. Tienes que esperar 10 minutos a que se enfríe y volver a conectarlo a la computadora. Esto pasa casi cada hora con un uso moderado, incluso usando los pads térmicos que incluye. Con los 3 que compré pasa lo mismo, así que no es un caso aislado; debí haber probado uno por uno. Mala compra.