Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure for M.2 NVMe SSD (WTB0201)

The directions for this case begin with, "Plug in an SSD and tighten a screw". However, the screw being referred to was nowhere to be found. The tiny included screws to attach the heat shield and the end cap are so small that they don't catch the notch at the end of the m.2 drive. I thought the screw might have just been missing on my particular case, but we ordered 4 more of these for my work studio and the screw is included with ANY of them. The instructions say that the screw should be included with the m.2 drive, which is patently ridiculous because the right size screw to fit the motherboard on this case should be included with this case. Sure enough, the m.2 drives we purchased all say that the screw should be included with the motherboard (in this instance; of the case). So I have a drive with no screw to hold it in place so I can't really use it. Worse, my work has a bunch of them. Not sure at this point whether to just return them all or go and purchase a bunch of screws from a computer shop somewhere. Either way, I can't give any more than 1 star for a product that basically comes incomplete to actually use.

Here is the good, the bad, and not so ugly. This enclosure is very well made, and exactly what I was looking for. After some hassle, it is working wonderfully well. As far as the screw, I did have a couple of extra screws with mine. One was longer than the others, and had a large enough head, that it did secure the board. It was so long that it did require a bit of torque to tighten securely. It appears that the screw self threads itself when it hits the board material. There is a hole. I am running this on an iMac pro. I started out with a 970 evo plus that I already had. As warned, it does not run on a Mac without upgrading the firmware. I tried to upgrade using my both Mac, and a windows machine. Evidently it is impossible using either of the suggested upgrade procedures while using an external interface. To confirm the enclosure was ok, I took advantage of a BB sale on a WD black 500 for $89. It works flawlessly. I had access to a grandson’s gaming machine and flashed the Samsung drive using magician. The WD drive delivers black magic results identical to what is shown here. The Samsung read is about 2500, but the write is only about 1200. I think that I will use this with the WD, and put the Samsung back in the slower enclosure I have been using. Other than the screw issue, I have yet to see what could be improved.

I purchased this "Wanfocyu Thunderbolt 3 SSD Enclosure for M.2 NVMe Solid State Drive PCIe 3.0 x4 40Gbps" to use with a "Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD" on my 2018 Mac Mini. After careful installation the drive started IMPROPERLY EJECTING itself every couple of minutes. iI I left for the the computer for an hour I would return to 25+ notifications for improper ejection. I emailed the manufacturer to ask if this was a known issue and they were unable to help me. I requested a replacement from Amazon. After thoroughly reading all the documentation I installed the second enclosure, but within an hour it was ejecting itself all over again. The seller refunded my full purchase amount. Thank you!

The device was well-constructed and all necessary parts and instructions were included. However, the device would randomly dismount the disk for no reason. I did not move the device around or have it in an area prone to vibration. It would just randomly dismount the disk so I had to return it.

This drive has been completely unreliable and I am very disappointed for what I paid for it. I do not recommend. At first I thought maybe the cable was bad but I have tried with a $130 Apple pro cable and same behavior. The drive often refuses to be recognized and when it does and for example I try and back up my system it may randomly unmount part way through the backup. At first I thought it was just a bad physical connection but there is clearly more to it than that. Poor quality- some part of this hardware is not working.

Having a true ThunderBolt3 (TB3) versus USBC connection makes all the difference. I was setting up an external boot drive for a 2018 Mac Mini. Used a Adata 1TB drive in a USBC housing and was slower than internal. I decided to try this TB3 housing. The read is about the same as the internal SSD drive from Apple and writes are 2x. Using BlackMagic DIsk Speed Test.app, I get: Apple SSD Read - 2489MBps, Write 645MBps (yes megabyte MBps, not megabit Mbps) Adata SSD Read - 2330MBps, Write 1359MBps (yes megabyte MBps, not megabit Mbps) NOTE: This housing needs lots of power. It can not be used direct with a Mac Mini (at least I couldn't make it work). I have an external powered TB3 dock from CalDigit, the TS3 Plus Dock. When connected to CalDigit w/CalDigit power supply, and then the CalDigit connected to the Mac, everything works great. The performance numbers above are when connected to CalDigit dock.

The install was easy, and the heatsink is great, but the thunderbolt connection is reaaaaallllly spotty. The disk reads disconnected and incorrectly removed every few minutes. I tried replacing the cable, reinserting the M2 drive, switching ports, and even switching computers to no avail. I switched enclosures, and the problem was solved. Not sure what they did wrong, but I think the connector is made from some sort of cheese.

So far, so good, I haven't fully assembled it but mine did come with a screw for the M.2 drive. I ran a basic speed test and got about 16Mbps with the drive I used, so I can't confirm the 40Gbps figure. But that is faster than USB 3.1 Gen 2. Note that since this uses thunderbolt 3, you can actually put any PCIe device, not just an SSD. I put in a more obscure FPGA card and it enumerates.