Summary
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Traditional USB SSDs don’t offer an upgrade path, meaning you’re stuck at their initial speed and storage capacity.
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M.2 enclosures offer easy upgrades, as simply replacing the enclosure can offer faster transfer speeds, and swapping out the SSD itself can increase its storage capacity.
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Creating a custom external SSD with an NVMe drive can save money while allowing for future upgrades, all without being difficult to mount.
I wanted to move my Adobe Lightroom library to a portable SSD so I could use it on both my desktop and laptop. Instead of buying a pre-built SSD, I built my own for a fraction of the cost (and can upgrade later if needed).
USB SSDs are an easy solution, without a doubt
But they don’t offer any upgrade path.
Typically, when one thinks of a USB SSD, Pre-built models are the first thing that comes to mind.. Models like the Samsung T7 Shield, Crucial X10 Pro and others are what I typically think of when I imagine a USB SSD.
However, all too often these are much more limiting than one would expect. While it’s great if you want a simple solution, there is no upgrade path. If you buy a 10Gb/s USB 3.2 drive, you’ll always be stuck at that speed. If you buy a 1TB drive, you will always be stuck with that amount of storage.
This may be okay for a lot of people, but it’s not for me. While yes, I have a few of these styles of drives (500GB portable SSDs that I bought almost a decade ago), when I was recently looking to purchase a drive to use with my photos, I wanted to go a different route. 500GB wouldn’t have been enough for what I wanted, and I also wanted the ability to upgrade the drive in the future, either with higher capacity or faster read and write speeds.
M.2 USB enclosures make it easy to upgrade your drive
Plus they are not that expensive
In recent years, SSDs have become In fact fast. M.2 SSDs can now reach transfer speeds of 14 GB/s (or more) with PCIe 5.0. That’s crazy. USB, on the other hand, can only dream of speeds this fast. That’s where the M.2 enclosures come in.
When I set out to find a way to get portable storage for my Lightroom library, I was about to pull the trigger on a 1TB external SSD like many would think about doing. However, I remembered I had some spare 1TB NVMe drives (a perk of being a PC builder for years) and realized I could get an enclosure to reuse that old drive. only It’s $15 on sale to get a USB box rather spend $100 on an external SSD. Not only did I save some money by reusing the hardware I already had, but it also left me with the ability to upgrade in the future.
You see, instead of being tied to a transfer speed limit like I would be with a pre-built external SSD, I can simply swap out the enclosure for one that uses a different standard, such as USB4, Thunderbolt 4, or even the incoming Thunderbolt 5and keep my same 1TB drive if I need faster transfer speeds in the future. Or, I could just pick up and swap out the 1TB drive for a 2TB, 4TB, or even 8TB NVMe drive in the future if I need more storage, which can sometimes be quite a bit cheaper than buying another pre-built external SSD.
- Speed
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10Gbit
- Connection
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USB-C
- Portable
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Yeah
UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure is perfect for assembling your own USB SSD at home. It offers 10Gbps transfer speeds over USB 3.2 Gen 2 and accepts M and M&B key PCIe M.2 SSDs. With a USB-C interface, it will easily connect to your desktop or laptop to give you fast portable storage wherever you go.
Try it, you won’t regret it.
At the end of the day, building my own external SSD saved me quite a bit of money. Plus, it will allow me to upgrade any of the parts of the storage unit in the future with relative ease. Creating my own drive checked all my boxes, including the price, which I didn’t expect when I set out to migrate my Lightroom library.
Whether you have spare NVMe drives or are buying new ones, I recommend building your own portable SSD instead of buying a pre-made one. Usually only one or two screws are required and you will also have much more flexibility in the future.
