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Will this M.2 enclosure take all M.2 card types?

I've just been trying to read up about M.2 interface differences and I think my brain is going to explode. Who on earth came up with the interface specification? It seems to me like there's still a chance I've bought the wrong enclosure because AFAIK there are two types of PCIE M.2 interface.
 
From my understanding, there are no NVMe to USB adapters at this time. So if it is AHCI, you could try it, if not, just use a PCIe slot + adapter card in a desktop.
 
I need to back up the data from a non-functioning Dell XPS 13 9343. I haven't yet found anything (that I'd consider definitive) to tell me what kind of drive I should expect to find in the laptop.

- edit - now that I have the laptop, I looked up the service tag and the parts in it. The SSD is allegedly this:

R4FXV
1
SSDR, 512, S3, 2280, SAMSUNG, PM851

The PM851 appears to be a SATA M.2 drive, so panic over?
 
mikeymikec said:
I need to back up the data from a non-functioning Dell XPS 13 9343. I haven't yet found anything (that I'd consider definitive) to tell me what kind of drive I should expect to find in the laptop.

- edit - now that I have the laptop, I looked up the service tag and the parts in it. The SSD is allegedly this:

R4FXV
1
SSDR, 512, S3, 2280, SAMSUNG, PM851

The PM851 appears to be a SATA M.2 drive, so panic over?
Click to expand...
Looks like you'll be fine. But as someone has said, I'm not aware of any M.2 enclosure on the market that supports NVME drives, SATA M.2 only.

That said, if you have desktop, you can always buy something like this and stick it into desktop
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HYPER-M-2-MINI-Interface-Motherboard/dp/B017YUCAXS/
 
fleshconsumed said:
Looks like you'll be fine. But as someone has said, I'm not aware of any M.2 enclosure on the market that supports NVME drives, SATA M.2 only.

That said, if you have desktop, you can always buy something like this and stick it into desktop
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HYPER-M-2-MINI-Interface-Motherboard/dp/B017YUCAXS/
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure my board has an M.2 connector, however I'm running Win7: Could that pose a problem?

Admittedly I could really do with this M.2 SSD in an enclosure, given the circumstances (probable laptop migration).

Given how long M.2 has been on the market, would it be reasonable to assume that there's not going to be an NVMe M.2 USB enclosure?
 
The PM851 does seem to be listed as sata, so nothing to worry about. It will work with windows 7 as well. NVMe drives can also work, but require drivers installed.
 
mikeymikec said:
I'm pretty sure my board has an M.2 connector, however I'm running Win7: Could that pose a problem?
Click to expand...
It's only a problem if you're trying to install Win7 on NVMe drive because Win7 ISO images do not include NVMe drivers by default. You'd have to slipstream NVMe drivers into ISO image. If you already have working Win7 machine, and you're using NVMe drive as non-boot drive Win7 should just get drivers from Microsoft.

mikeymikec said:
Admittedly I could really do with this M.2 SSD in an enclosure, given the circumstances (probable laptop migration).

Given how long M.2 has been on the market, would it be reasonable to assume that there's not going to be an NVMe M.2 USB enclosure?
Click to expand...
I think making NVMe to USB chip may be not feasible, either too complicated, or too costly given low demand for it. I wouldn't expect it any time soon if ever.
 
mikeymikec said:
I'm pretty sure my board has an M.2 connector, however I'm running Win7: Could that pose a problem?

Admittedly I could really do with this M.2 SSD in an enclosure, given the circumstances (probable laptop migration).

Given how long M.2 has been on the market, would it be reasonable to assume that there's not going to be an NVMe M.2 USB enclosure?
Click to expand...

Well given that it's a PCI-E based Storage technology, probably not until all the stars align. Not all Storage controllers support hot-add or hot-remove (I'd say most don't in the consumer market), which would be a problem. The technology isn't really suited for USB 3.0, but could work on Thunderbolt. Eventually, enough enterprise features will trickle down to the consumer NVMe controllers, where putting a USB bridge chip next to it would start to be more feasible.

If you really needed a way to do it outside your system, you could use one of those miner cards, that routes a 1x PCI-e signal over a USB cable outside your case to a 16x PCI-e slot. Put an M.2 adapter card in that.
 
After all that, I didn't need the enclosure in the end, I got the laptop working. Slightly frustrating experience!

In other news, I helped a customer pick out a laptop (MSI GL72M 7REX), which states having a PCIE M.2 SSD in its specs, yet running ATTO on it out of the box results in SATA 6Gbps type speeds.
 
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