Reusing an SSD in a Fanxiang enclosure

[Non-Euclidean]

I have a few older short SSDs around.

So a while ago I made the mistake of buying purchased a Dell chromebook (i5 IIRC). I was sick of forced windows updates and wanted to rebel. After a while, I wanted to play Fallout/Fallout2 on it. I found a BIOS to install (logo was a rabbit). Once that was on it I could do a USB install of W10. It was fine for a few years, but eventually the battery overheated. Soon after it suffered a catastrophic impact when I tested its aerodynamic lift and gyroscopic stability. C'est La Vie.

It came with a 32G MTS400 SSD. I upgraded to a Transcend 256G SSD. Also n years ago I purchased a Dell Inspiron for mom. Last month I upgraded her to a refurb Dell Optiplex 5070. Opening up the Inspiron, it has had a Kioxia 256G M2 NVME Gen3 2230 (and a 1TB 3.5" HDD).

Time to make an external 256G for whatever purpose. The wife wanted the ability to watch some movies on a tv off premises. First I was thinking USB stick. I will also test the SSD. I transcoded from mkv to mp4, since Googling said that was the greatest compatibility.

So looking at Amazon I found this:

fanxiang SSD Enclosure, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), M.2 NVMe PCIe to USB Adapter/Reader, Solid State Drive External Enclosure, Supports M and B&M Keys and Size 2230 SSDs, NVMe​

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL5CR5ZM

I soon discovered its too small for the MTS400, which is a bit longer than the 2230.

Here is what you get, minus the screw closing the lid, and the spindle it runs through that supports the end of the SSD. I had some 1mm Gelid pad around so I used that. Maybe I need to go back and remove the info sticker that was on top of the SSD. I lazily just applied the pad to it.

Installation was a breeze. It does get toasty though.

A test provided these numbers, which I think is way too slow for gen3. This was over a TBolt4 cable to my TS5 Docking station (not the included cable visible above). I went with ExFAT for compatibility.