Christmas is here, and if you’ve found yourself with a brand-new SSD in your stocking you may want to know about USB M.2 enclosures. If you’re lucky enough to have gotten a new gaming drive from Santa or a loved one this year, there’s a chance you’ll want to clone your current drive so you can use the new one as your main storage device.
Of course, there’s also the chance that disaster has struck, and upon going to install your new SSD for gaming, you’ve got one fewer SSD slot on our motherboard than you thought. In either case, I have just the gadget for you. UGREEN makes some excellent little accessories for PC gaming, and its M.2 USB enclosure has helped me in a few pinches this year. It can hold even the newest Gen 5 SSDs and connect them to your computer or PS5, which makes it a versatile piece of kit.
A device like this will allow you to either connect your new drive temporarily while you copy data over, or, as a longer-term solution, make use of your speedy new SSD as an external hard drive. UGREEN’s M.2 Enclosure only costs $19.99 at Amazon right now, which isn’t a bad price to pay for such a versatile wee gadget.
If you’re wondering how to clone your SSD, you can check out my handy guide. Not everyone will need a USB enclosure since most of the best gaming PCs will have more than one M.2 slot on their motherboard. That said, if you know one slot is a Gen 4 lane, and the others are slower Gen 3 lanes, you might want your newer, faster drive in that optimized slot. In that case, cloning your drive before it’s actually in your PC might be a less confusing option, especially if you want to keep your boot location the same without messing up some BIOS settings.
If that all sounds like confusing PC-speak, the TLDR is that having an M.2 enclosure might make your life a lot easier in the whole transfer process.
UGREEN’s M.2 Enclosure might also be the perfect solution for someone who doesn’t have space on their motherboard at all and wants to make their own portable SSD. External drives can be pricey these days, especially if you want the performance of the best PS5 external SSDs. If you’ve gotten hold of a top-speed Gen 4 or Gen 5 drive, it could do you wonders as a portable device. UGREEN’s gadget comes with a heatsink, meaning your PCIe-powered storage won’t overheat when working inside it, and its included cables will give you up to a 10GBps speed.
The only drawback I could see with using this as a portable storage solution is its vulnerability. Taking your files on the go can invite bumps and drops, which is why so many portable SSDs come with padded outer shells these days. UGREEN’s enclosure has a rubberized jacket you can put around it which should shield it from the odd knock here and there, but the aluminium chassis still feels fairly fragile, so dropping it into a backpack with other, heavier bits of tech might not be the safest idea.
Nevertheless, an M.2 enclosure like this is a versatile gadget to have in your arsenal, whether you’re upgrading your current PC’s storage, or you find yourself with a spare drive to use for console gaming and portable transfers.
Looking for some last-minute gifts for gamers this Christmas? Check out the best PS5 gifts, and the best Xbox gifts.