I’ve been reviewing NAS devices in all shapes and forms for months. While I keep spare drives specifically just to test the samples sent to me, I often go out of my way to grab new SSDs and HDDs for my home lab. NVMe SSDs, in particular, are an essential part of my setup, as I use them with everything from SBCs and mini-PCs to NAS units and server rigs.

As such, I have some spare PCIe Gen 3 drives that remain on standby until I require their blazing fast transfer speeds in my projects. Since some of them were gathering dust anyway, I figured I could pair them with a budget-friendly NVMe enclosure and use them as external drives. Turns out, old SSDs can double as high-speed external drives when combined with newer USB interfaces. Heck, I now consider my PCIe 3.0 SSD and NVMe combo the most inexpensive companion for my MacBook.

A cheap way to add extra high-speed storage

NVMe drives are fast. Like, really fast

Compared to slow HDDs, SATA SSDs are known for their fast transfer speeds. However, NVMe drives are several orders of magnitude faster than their SATA counterparts. For reference, drives powered by the outdated PCIe Gen 3 can hit up to 3,500 MB/s, while their SATA-based rivals can barely manage 500-600MB/s. To put that into perspective, a single PCIe Gen 3 SSD (with an x2 bus) can choke a 10 Gigabit connection, which is typically the fastest network standard in a consumer-grade setup.

Despite their break-neck speeds, NVMe SSDs are the most portable drives of the bunch. Rather than requiring a separate power source like the enclosures for 3.5-inch HDDs, the NVMe adapters work once you plug them into a USB slot. Throw in their (comparatively) better resistance to vibrations and bumps, and old NVMe SSDs serve as incredible storage units for frequent travelers.

The perfect companion for my MacBook

No need to worry about filling up the entire 256GB drive

Besides letting me use a high-speed SSD as an overkill thumbstick, the NVMe enclosure has quickly become my favorite peripheral for my MacBook. A couple of days ago, I saw the MacBook Air M4 retail at a 10% discount, and couldn’t stop myself from buying it. Unfortunately, the model I ordered includes a mere 256GB SSD as its sole storage drive. Apple being Apple, the California-based tech giant has the annoying practice of soldering SSDs onto the laptop's motherboard, thus preventing me from upgrading the storage provisions on my shiny new toy. For a home labber whose first instinct is to deploy virtual machines on every piece of hardware in sight, I ended up filling 50% of the disk space with ISOs, VM files, and hypervisors on the very day I received the MacBook.

Thankfully, my NVMe enclosure came as a crutch, as I could offload most of the data onto the SSD. The best part? Since the MacBook Air M4 has two USB 4 ports, the NVMe drive can spread its wings without getting throttled by a slow USB interface. While we’re on the subject…

Remember to plug it into the right port

You don't want to pair an NVMe drive with a USB 2.0 port

Considering the blazing-fast speeds the average NVMe SSD can hit, you’ll want to be careful about the USB standard used by the enclosure. For instance, a USB 4 port can hit up to 40 Gbps, which translates to 5,000 MB/s in transfer speeds (yeah, GB/s and Gb/s are entirely different units of measurement).

That’s way more than the maximum theoretical limit a PCIe Gen 3 drive can attain. Heck, if your workloads are particularly intensive, you can even get slightly higher speeds with a PCIe 4.0 drive, though you won’t be able to break past the 7000 MB/s barrier. Likewise, you’ll also want to be careful about the USB port on your PC to avoid bottlenecking your SSD. With the USB standard following one of the most atrocious naming schemes out there, you wouldn’t want to mistake a USB 3.0 port for a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface.

With just $25, my NVMe drive became the fastest external SSD in my setup

If you’ve got some spare NVMe drives and are struggling to come up with a decent use case for them, a cheap enclosure won’t let you down. Whether it’s sharing files between systems or editing RAW footage, you’ll notice the difference in transfer speeds immediately, even if you’ve used SATA SSDs in the past. Me? I plan to use mine to store my game library and a couple of virtual machine projects. Just make sure you don’t store confidential data if your drive is nearing the end of its lifespan, or you could risk losing your precious files.