Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE)

Dell XPS 8950 desktop (Costco 2022 build) i7 Intel-12700, 32GB DDR5 RAM, AMD RX 6700 XT, PCIe M.2 Gen 4. Replaced the C: Drive with a larger and faster 1TB Crucial T500 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 by cloning with a Sabrent Model EC:SNVE USB TYPE C Tool Free Enclosure with no issues. Macrium Reflect Home X, the trail version, was used following an article from XDA-Developers.com “How to set up an SSD as boot drive for your new or existing computer”. I also referred to a older You Tube video by Access Random – “UPDATE: Using Macrium Reflect Free to Clone Windows to a Bootable M.2 SSD” to create a USB Rescue Media . The clone time was about 30 minutes using the Type C port (20 Gbps) on the rear of the computer. Removed the old drive and replaced it with the new T500. I did nothing to the BIOS and left the original settings as Boot [UEFI] and Boot Option one as [Windows Boot Manager] and SATA/NVMe Operation as [RAID ON]. The XPS booted up and ran fine with the exception of Norton having to have the KEY reentered to work. The T500 was recognized by the CrystalDiskMarkInfo program and the old Kioxia NVMe was not listed. With all the problem comments on RAID and UEFI settings in the BIOS, I was at my knowledge limits. Using the winsat disk command in the Terminal Admin mode the Sequential Read was 5980 and Write was 4993. The Crucial Spec Sheet lists their 1TB at 7300/6800. I did not turn on the Momentum Cache in the Crucial Storage Executive software. The current Firmware Version is P8CR003 and would not update to P8CR004 using the Crucial Storage Executive – there was a warning of “no drives were found in the system. This may be because your drives are allocated in a RAID configuration. You may proceed with a manual firmware update”. I will try Crucial Support for the answer. Overall, I am happy the way it turned out – thanks to the XDA-Developers and Access Random articles/video for Macrium Reflect.Update 12/31/2024 Called Crucial Support and the agent confirmed that in order to update/add the P8CR004 latest Firmware with Crucial Storage Executive I could not do this with a RAID configuration on the Dell XPS as it would affect other drives (HHD and SATA SSD) as well. This was why I was receiving the Warning or error. The agent also cautioned using Momentum Cache for the same reason – RAID being on in the BIOS. With my limited computer skills and knowledge, I chose to leave the T500 as is – after all it is twice as fast as the original Kioxia NVMe.Crucial has two FAQ’s to better explain the subject – The first, Storage Executive Fails to Update the Firmware on My SSD states, “Ensure that you are not using RAID mode in the system BIOS settings. RAID will often prevent many of the features in Storage Executive from working with your drive, AHCI is the preferred mode. Refer to your system manufacture for any help with this setting.” The second, Basics of RAID – “In terms of day-to-day use, RAID works similarly to a single disk, but diagnostic tools read data from a RAID configuration differently than they do a single SSD or hard drive. For example, Crucial Storage Executive is not fully compatible with some RAID controllers and configurations, and specific functions such as SMART reporting or firmware updates may not work at all in these unsupported environments, requiring the RAID to be temporarily disassembled for updates or troubleshooting of individual drives. Also, while modern operating systems and RAID drivers allow trim commands to run on SSDs in RAID, legacy operating systems and drivers may not properly support them, meaning functions such as Garbage Collection become more important for maintaining the highest performance from connected SSDs.”

tl;dr ... LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE ... If you're upgrading a laptop's M2 OS drive to a better M2 drive, just pop the $ to get an M2 drive enclosure to replicate the drive in one step. You never know when you'll get that one prima donna laptop that's being a pain not booting from external USB drives, or a cloning software that won't make the cloned drive bootable unless you're cloning right from the active OS drive that's currently running.Reason I went for this Sabrent Enclosure:* not made in china* no screws* aluminum housing (helps dissipate heat)~~~The long versionUpgrading wife's laptop. It has a tiny 125GB M2 SSD as it's only drive. Got a 1TB replacement. I did not have an M2 enclosure then, otherwise would have been simple matter of plugging that in, replicating OS M2 drive to new M2 drive.. and then I'd have everything I needed to tear apart laptop ONE TIME, install everything and BE DONE.Nope. I had a 2.5" external enclosure. So, I decided to clone to that. During cloning process, since I was cloning the active OS drive, the cloning software recognized that and said "hey, you're replicating a bootable drive, do you want to make it EFI or MBR?" Um... I don't know. I picked EFI.Not sure if that made a difference (modern laptops use UEFI, and even the BIOS on her laptop is just a very cut-down UEFI ASCII that has option to use Legacy Mode (BIOS) if needed). So, this shouldn't have made a difference.So, I tear her laptop apart. This is an HP laptop that some engineer from h*** decided to put all upgradeable parts on the UNDERSIDE of the mobo and NO external plastic panel to remove for easy access. So, I had to REMOVE THE MOBO from the laptop to upgrade RAM, WLAN, Repaste the CPU, AND install the new 1TB M2 drive.The 125GB drive that came out was M+B keyed SSD. New that went in was M keyed SSD only. Shouldn't make a difference. Get lappy back together.Try to boot from external USB drive (the 2.5" I put the replication on) and it kept going into Windows Recovery acting like the drive was corrupt. I have no clue why. Go into UEFI, look at settings, it should be able to boot from external. But, her laptop was being super dramatic about it.Test the 2.5" on other computers.. they boot to external just fine, right into her old Windows Desktop. So, wife's laptop is the problem.I try messing around with various options for a day, like recloning the 2.5" drive to another 2.5" drive and trying to force it to be MBR instead of UEFI this time. But, the cloning software was not making the new cloned drive bootable for some reason.Now.. when I first thought of upgrading wife's laptop, I watched vids that showed you could just get an M2 enclosure and make drive replication easy. I decided NOT to spend $30 on that, and instead WASTED 2 days of my life messing around instead.Finally got sick of it all. Ordered M2 enclosure. Was guarding wife's 125GB M2 drive with my life, b/c if that thing got damaged or screwed up I (and, more importantly, my wife) would be upset.Sabrent M2 shows up. Tear apart wife's laptop to replace the 1TB blank M2 w her 125GB M2 again. Loosely put it all back together. Boot. Windows comes up. Sigh of relief. Get the 1TB M2 into the M2 enclosure. Plug in. Clone the 125GB drive. Cloning software finally gives me option of "hey, you're cloning a working OS drive.. we'll make the clone bootable!" THANK YOU! Clone it. Try booting laptop from external M2 Enclosure to test... LAPTOP WON'T BOOT FROM IT! Like, what's the deal, dude?!Decide to just "leap of faith" tear down laptop, put cloned 1TB in, put back together.. boot... Windows boots up fine.I don't know who at HP a) designed such an awful hardware piece-together and b) designed such an awful UEFI it won't boot from external, but they have earned my ire.But, again, stupid me for not just getting an M2 enclosure and doing it the easy way to begin with. 2 days of my life is more than worth $30. Plus, M2 drives are the new norm. So, this M2 enclosure will get more use in the future. And, if my wife needs an new external drive, I can just buy a 1TB M2 to slap in it and give her a glorified USB stick. Win-win-winAnyways.. lesson learned. Don't be cheap. Just get the M2 enclosure, save your time, save your sanity.

My Alienware laptop had a pretty small SSD hard drive. Realizing that it had two slots available, I bought aCrucial P310 2TB SSD to install for more storage. Well, the joke was on me, because Dell split the 512 GB drive supposedly installed in the system into two 256 GB drives. Probably to save money. That meant I had no expansion slot.Enter the Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe to the rescue. With it, I was able to connect the new SSD and use the EaseUS Disk Copy Pro utility to perform a sector-by-sector copy of the boot partition to the new SSD. The whole process, from unboxing to snapping the new drive into the laptop, took maybe 25 minutes. The laptop booted perfect on the new drive, and you'd never know anything was changed. The best part of all is that I still have a second SSD slot if I need even more storage someday.I almost didn't go with this model, as I had just the previous day requested to return a SABRENT Enclosure 3.5” Internal SATA Hard Drives (EC-KSL3), as it had been freezing up on me. But this Sabrent Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE) worked like a charm. Super easy to use, no problems at all, fast, cool, quiet. I would most definitely buy it again.