USB 3.1 Enclosure for M.2 NVMe SSD (YWE1903)

With NVMe SSDs now becoming 'affordable' I purchased this 'enclosure' to install a 1TB device into.Normally these SSDs run very hot: however I can report that this device is perfectly capable of keeping the SSD cool enough for a whole day, and still permit the case to be handled (Beware! some others certainly don't!) and I must report that the company's Customer Service is a true paragon of the art! [If only some others were this good!!]Made from black anodised finned 'formed' aluminium, the enclosure features a single USB-C connector (although there is a pin-hole for the blue LED on the internal motherboard to shine through). It comes supplied with a small screwdriver and the relevant 'bits' to mount the internal "top-hat" plate (along with the supplied heatpad) to the motherboard, which then slides neatly inside the outer case. The whole is finished off by two small screws fastening the end-plate in position.A couple of USB cables are supplied - one is Type A > C, and one (short one!) is Type C > C.Power is for the SSD is provided through the USB cable.

I bought this after a previous USB3 case and (msata) SSD I bought had a tendency to heat-up to the level of hot-coffee on a regular basis - had to see if I could sort out this heat issue next time (although in fairness it hasn't caused any problem so far).This caddy with a Sabrent 1TB NVME SSD (I believe it toasted my former macbook and killed the motherboard) has been quite brilliant in the short-time I've had it. Putting it together was a doddle, and it was very reassuring to see that there was an additional heatsink and thermal transfer to place on it as well as the thick metal case to insert in. The feel of both was weighty, a real heavy-duty, serious feel. So I spent several hours copying and recopying and filling up 1TB of space and doing a few benchmarks and it's impressed. Stayed cool and very rapid. Running the default benchmark testing was not bad, considering that the theoretical maximum speed on USB 3.0 is 640 MB/sec (5 Gbps) (see attached) which benched at 421 MB/s read, 410 MB/s write. So far so good.If there's a main downside, it's that the caddy doesn't report the SMART data to the OS, hence a star taken off for that for the rating.Now for the real-world test. Formatted with F2FS (a flash filesystem designed for SSDs, used in mobile devices). These are some test results of copying from an internal regular mechanical SATA HDD (btrfs filesystem) to the enclosure drive using the rsync command on linux and USB3.0 rev 1, which is how I'll be mostly using it so the performance may vary on a better equipped more modern setup than my PC.In summary around 50-94 MB/s for many small files to fewer large ones.1.Number of files: 50,444 (reg: 44,429, dir: 5,426, link: 589)Total file size: 50.81G bytessent 50.83G bytes received 862.28K bytes 82.18M bytes/sec2.Number of files: 148,842 (reg: 121,330, dir: 27,512)Total transferred file size: 39.33G bytessent 39.35G bytes received 2.39M bytes 52.50M bytes/sec3.Number of files: 8,797 (reg: 8,534, dir: 263)Total transferred file size: 44.26G bytessent 44.27G bytes received 162.97K bytes 94.49M bytes/sec4.Number of files: 68,485 (reg: 65,303, dir: 3,182)Total file size: 727.40G bytessent 727.59G bytes received 1.25M bytes 83.76M bytes/secCopying from internal SATA3 SSD (F2FS filesystem) to caddy SSD 140MB/s:Number of files: 65,415 (reg: 56,488, dir: 6,141, link: 2,786)Total transferred file size: 37.14G bytessent 37.15G bytes received 1.10M bytes 140.47M bytes/sectotal size is 37.14G speedup is 1.00Copying from caddy SSD to internal SATA SSD 134MB/S:Number of files: 11,999 (reg: 11,483, dir: 516)Number of created files: 11,999 (reg: 11,483, dir: 516)Number of regular files transferred: 11,483Total transferred file size: 45.43G bytessent 45.44G bytes received 219.76K bytes 134.25M bytes/secCopying same internal SATA SSD to caddy SSD 128MB/S:Number of files: 11,999 (reg: 11,483, dir: 516)Total transferred file size: 45.43G bytessent 45.44G bytes received 219.76K bytes 128.55M bytes/secSo it's fine for my uses, although this may be disappointing to some, it's probably due to the fact I'm using an older PC, Linux, and less well recognized filesystem formats, I'm quite happy with 'only' 130 MB/s copying between the internal SSD and external one.

I have a SX8200 which has speeds going to 1000MB/s and I use USB 3.1 for this so I don't expect it to reach 1000MB/s but it can barely reach 300MB/s which is half the speed it was advertised of around 600MB/s. This wasn't the biggest problem as I only use it for gaming so I'm not moving files a lot but nowadays it starts randomly disconnecting and so the game crashes. I've had this for over 4 months and now it starts doing this. Bad product over time. I would like a refund but its too late now. Save your money.

This product allowed me to add a high performance SSD as a backup device. Low cost and well worth the cost.

I bought this enclosure along with a Sabrent Rocket Q-Media 1TB SSD to use as a time machine disk for my new 16" MacBook Pro. Installation is easy and it's well made, with a separate internal heatsink. When you first plug it in the read and write speeds are excellent, around 950MB/s, but after about an hour the write speed drops to around 400MB/s and the read less than 100MB/s, worse than an old spinning drive! I suspect this is heat throttling, and the enclosure gets very hot to the touch.Then the problems really start, regular "beach balls" when doing any file handling tasks (to any drive, not the external enclosure), and frequent kernel panics and crashes. I've replaced the enclosure with a Sabrent one-piece aluminium enclosure and no longer have any issues.It's a shame as it's a compact and smart looking reasonably priced enclosure. I've now put a WD Blue 1TB SSD in it and will be single use to send files to a client, so not the end of the world. Just don't expect it to work as a permanently attached drive on a new MacBook Pro, at least that's my experience.