UGREEN M.2 NVMe M-Key SSD Enclosure to USB Adapter EXPIRED

Can someone explain the difference between the 3 items?

Quote from Hawaiiana : Can someone explain the difference between the 3 items?

1. First one is the cheapest and most likely the one you are interested in. If you have a M.2 ssd this is likely for you.

2. I gotta be honest, I don't understand the second one. Its more expensive, says it supports SATA which were the 3.5" larger SSD drives but the landing page doesn't really show how. Sooo no idea.

3. The third one is just a little fancier with the cord permanently attached.

Sorry if this doesn't help.

Quote from lp4james : 1. First one is the cheapest and most likely the one you are interested in. If you have a M.2 ssd this is likely for you. 2. I gotta be honest, I don't understand the second one. Its more expensive, says it supports SATA which were the 3.5" larger SSD drives but the landing page doesn't really show how. Sooo no idea. 3. The third one is just a little fancier with the cord permanently attached. Sorry if this doesn't help.

Samsung - and others - started producing SATA M.2 SSDs a very long time ago. I've been using the 850 Evos since 2016 (and 2.5" drives for longer), so an enclosure that can take both PCIe and SATA is a great option, even if you don't have one today, you might come across it.

Oh, I've also had an SK Hynix Sata M.2 SSD for that long too...


Just saw the other question, so here's the deal. The first one is the basic PCIe support, the second one adds SATA support and PCIe, and the 3rd one supports "M key" drives, which are uncommon for most people at this point. All the same speed.

Samsung, Adata, SKH, WD, Seagate, all the chinese drives of the week, et. al. all use B+M keys, which accounts for about 95% (just a guess) of all PCIe drives these days.

Quote from lp4james : 1. First one is the cheapest and most likely the one you are interested in. If you have a M.2 ssd this is likely for you. 2. I gotta be honest, I don't understand the second one. Its more expensive, says it supports SATA which were the 3.5" larger SSD drives but the landing page doesn't really show how. Sooo no idea. 3. The third one is just a little fancier with the cord permanently attached. Sorry if this doesn't help.

Thanks for trying. I have multiple stuff that Ian trying to use this for.


1. First I ditch my PC and now have laptop. I also have 980Pro with heatsink, I need to update it before putting it in the PS5. Will any of this will work? I don't need to enclose it. I just need it to update with my laptop.

2. Then I have an m.2 SATA sdds laying around from my old laptops that I need to extract the data from. I think any of these will work right?

3. Is there a difference of speed on any of them?



Thank u for trying to answer😁👍

Quote from Hawaiiana : Can someone explain the difference between the 3 items?

The second one appears to support both NVME and the near-identical looking SATA based drives. One of the pics shows the different "keys" you will come across with this form factor SSD.

I had a gig where I ended up doing a lot of desktop work and an enclosure that could handle both drive types was extremely handy. Though I really like the design of Sabrent's enclosure [amazon.com] for this role. It's aluminum for passive cooling and strength. It's also toolless and comes with USB-C and USB-A cables. If you plan to swap drives frequently that feature is worth a few extra bucks. If you're going to put a drive in every couple of years the screwdriver isn't really that big a deal.

Quote from Hawaiiana : Thanks for trying. I have multiple stuff that Ian trying to use this for. 1. First I ditch my PC and now have laptop. I also have 980Pro with heatsink, I need to update it before putting it in the PS5. Will any of this will work? I don't need to enclose it. I just need it to update with my laptop. 2. Then I have an m.2 SATA sdds laying around from my old laptops that I need to extract the data from. I think any of these will work right? 3. Is there a difference of speed on any of them? Thank u for trying to answer😁👍

Get the second one or the Sabrent model I linked in the post above. Older laptops might well have SATA SSDs in them.

I,don't see the point of these devices. You can get similar priced (and MUCH SMALLER) usb flash drives

Quote from NowItsTime : I,don't see the point of these devices. You can get similar priced (and MUCH SMALLER) usb flash drives

People use it to transfer their old data to newer devices. Just like me.

Quote from Hawaiiana : People use it to transfer their old data to newer devices. Just like me.

Fair enough .

Quote from lp4james : 1. First one is the cheapest and most likely the one you are interested in. If you have a M.2 ssd this is likely for you. 2. I gotta be honest, I don't understand the second one. Its more expensive, says it supports SATA which were the 3.5" larger SSD drives but the landing page doesn't really show how. Sooo no idea. 3. The third one is just a little fancier with the cord permanently attached. Sorry if this doesn't help.

For the 2nd one, SATA doesn't refer to the connectors that you're used to but the SATA protocol/data lines. There are cheaper m.2 drives that do not take PCI Express/NVME, but SATA instead. They have an extra notch to differentiate between them and the PCI Express ones. Kingston has a quick writeup on it. https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/...-m2-vs-ssd

The first link is for these m.2 that are NVME only. It won't read any SATA ones that you plug in. The second one does both types.

Quote from NowItsTime : Fair enough .

They're also used as external drives. You can *somewhat* affordably, put a 2TB SSD in one of these and connect it to your laptop when you need to back something up, access more space for other files, etc.. I use these for a 1TB SATA drive, and others for a bunch of 512gb (SATA/PCIE) I have lying around.

The small (512gb) drives are $10-$20 throw away drives mfgs put in new computers these days. Of course they charge you real money for them and act like you're getting something special, but you're not. They've been putting them in computers for 6-7 years now it's kind of a joke IMO, but they still hold data in a small package.

The first (USB 3 GEN 2 10GB/s to NVME SSD) unit seems to possibly have some firmware problems with respect to UNMAP/DEALLOCATE being enabled / used / available under current LINUX when trying to do that e.g. fstrim, mount -o discard, etc. So basically it is the equivalent of TRIM not working on a SATA drive but for the UASP/NVME combination that is relevant for this one.

When you attach / mount it it reads and writes the drive but any attempt to use the discard mount / fstrim operations indicates that it is not supported on that unit, and when you try to force it to work it acts like it is discarding for the request but never indicates that it actually did anything effective when subsequently checked.

So basically if you write to the drive the NVME drive will "never" think that space is ever available / free again even after you delete the files from your file system the drive will think it is getting more and more full until it thinks it is 100% full with 0 blocks free and therefore can't do any life / data integrity / speed preservation optimizations utilizing free space because it will think there is none. Maybe you can get the available blocks reset to 100% if you do the right kind of whole drive format on the thing TBD.

But the enclosure firmware should be reporting back the right properties to the OS so the OS will basically be able to use the unmap / deallocate / discard / trim type operations automatically or it will cause a significant performace and possibly life time / data integrity reduction impairment vs the nominal case.

Maybe other vendors' enclosures have better FW to correct this problem which should not be present because they do advertise TRIM / UASP etc. support.

Quote from datasian : For the 2nd one, SATA doesn't refer to the connectors that you're used to but the SATA protocol/data lines. There are cheaper m.2 drives that do not take PCI Express/NVME, but SATA instead. They have an extra notch to differentiate between them and the PCI Express ones. Kingston has a quick writeup on it. https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/...-m2-vs-ssd The first link is for these m.2 that are NVME only. It won't read any SATA ones that you plug in. The second one does both types.

SATA drives are not "cheaper" unless they're being closed out. The big LIE - and it was a profitable whopper as they gouged people - has always been the pricing on the PCIe drives. Both the SATA and PCIe drives use the same nand, they both have controllers (though different) and require the same support/materials to manufacture and sell. The only real difference are the interface and communications protocols.

The keys were to prevent people from making mistakes and inserting the wrong drive in the wrong slot.

Take away - mfgs lie, and lie big. When the industry joins in on the big lie (i.e., $ cost for PCIe), everybody wins. It's true that they've worked on the interface versions (Gen 3, 4, etc.) while SATA III has been defined for a long time, but SATA is still way faster than most people realize at 6Gb/s.

That's why people who actually use computers as opposed to those that read "specs" actually know most people can't tell if an M.2 drive is SATA or PCIe; they're both incredibly fast at most tasks. PCIe wins at COPYING files from one folder to another. That doesn't include a file MOVE necessarily because that's just rewriting entries in the table, the data physically goes no where. I've done the tests myself. I don't care if it's SATA or PCIe for daily tasks, they're both fast. Even gamers can't tell the difference.....