Portable mSATA / USB enclosure

[NickC_UK]

Has anyone tried any of the portable mSATA enclosures yet?

Seems there are half a dozen different ones available now and I just wondered which one might be quickest and most reliable. Any particular chip I should be looking for or avoiding?

Thanks,

 

[Cerb]

While I don't see even half a dozen, they're all based on the same Asmedia chip, AFAICT (Renesas makes some, too, but nobody seems to use them for these enclosures--I can't find any, at least). Speed will be about the same with all of them, and will be most affected by SSD installed, host controller used, and driver used. The ones that get super fast file benchmark scores all use SF drives inside, and are taking advantage of compressible data.

TBH, one of the biggest problems with them right now will be that since we're transitioning away from mSATA, nobody wants to make new ones, and are instead waiting on M.2 to proliferate, even though that's going to take awhile yet.

I can't say anything personal on specific ones, though. I will say I am surprised that most external USB 3.0 SSDs are standard 2.5" drives. I was thinking of suggesting to get one, and swap out the SSD, but they're almost all 3" wide or more, on top of their expense compared to an M500 or Evo and a an enclosure.

 

[NickC_UK]

Those mSATA cards just seem to be a nice size for a portable drive.

The M.2 cards may well be too long to be a convenient portable drive, there are multiple length possibilities available. Maybe that is why no one has made any portable enclosures for them yet, too many length possibilities.