NVME to USB

[tszaboo]

Hi. A colleague of mine poured some water down the keyboard of his laptop. And it wasn't a thinkpad, so it is dead now. Anyway, we would like to save the SSD if possible and it is one of these new NVME drives. NVME looks like M.2, but it is PCI-e based, and I cannot find an external USB enclosure for it.
The only solution I could come up with it to use a PCI-e internal adapter and take apart a PC for this... which is tedious.
Does anyone have a solution for this?

[tsman]

The PCIe slot adapter is going to be your best option unless you want to pay lots for a NVMe enclosure and you need a Thunderbolt capable machine for that.

[tszaboo]

The PCIe slot adapter is going to be your best option unless you want to pay lots for a NVMe enclosure and you need a Thunderbolt capable machine for that.

Price is secondary in this case, but I dont know about thunderbolt.

[Fsck]

There are ones with a controller onboard which convert to USB3, but I've only seen them from aliexpress. I'm assuming you don't care about transfer rate and only want to pull data.

[tsman]

Fsck is talking about an enclosure like this. YMMV regarding reliability and performance.

If you want high speed then you'll need a NVMe to Thunderbolt enclosure or a PCIe slot adapter.

AFAIK there is no easy way to add Thunderbolt to a PC that doesn't already have it or specifically lists support for a manufacturer specific Thunderbolt addon card. The PCIe cards all say that you must only use it with the corresponding list of motherboards and other motherboards aren't compatible. Grouchy reviews on Amazon and other seller sites seem to back this up.

[tszaboo]

There are ones with a controller onboard which convert to USB3, but I've only seen them from aliexpress. I'm assuming you don't care about transfer rate and only want to pull data.

That is the plan, we save data if possible than it goes back to HP for repairs.

Fsck is talking about an enclosure like this. YMMV regarding reliability and performance.

If you want high speed then you'll need a NVMe to Thunderbolt enclosure or a PCIe slot adapter.

AFAIK there is no easy way to add Thunderbolt to a PC that doesn't already have it or specifically lists support for a manufacturer specific Thunderbolt addon card. The PCIe cards all say that you must only use it with the corresponding list of motherboards and other motherboards aren't compatible. Grouchy reviews on Amazon and other seller sites seem to back this up.

That chinese looks really fishy to me. 0 feedback doesnt give me too much confidence.
The other one... I need to check if there is a PC at work with thunderbolt. I guess not, but you never know. Otherwise I have a HP desktop with an NVME drive in it, but it has the OS on it. And this would block me from working.

There are only bad choices 

[Monkeh]

NVMe drives are M.2, they don't look like it - they are.

Anyway, your best bet is the internal adapter. It's not that tedious, seriously, it takes about two minutes..

[tsman]

That is the plan, we save data if possible than it goes back to HP for repairs.

If you only want the data and then will be sending back the SSD then I still think the PCIe slot adapter is your best option. It is cheap and should work at full speed with no weird controller to get in the way.

Somebody has 1 of those NVMe to Thunderbolt enclosures on Amazon. $228 and no reviews though. Be wary about the other enclosures being advertised that say B & M key supported but if you actually look more closely, they only work with B keyed M.2 SSDs i.e. SATA.

[Berni]

Yep PCIe to M.2 adapter is the way to go.

M.2 NVMe is just simply PCIe 4x put onto a smaller connector. So all that is needed is to physically connect the right pins onto a PCIe slot and should just work. You likley won't be able to boot from it, but once in windows it should find the drivers for it and just magically make it work.

[tszaboo]

NVMe drives are M.2, they don't look like it - they are.

Anyway, your best bet is the internal adapter. It's not that tedious, seriously, it takes about two minutes..

NVME is not M.2


And M.2 is SATA based, while NVME is PCI-e. Most enclosures especially state that it is not compatible with NVME, while the others just have an outdated description.

[tsman]

NVME is not M.2

No. Your SSD is M.2. There are different slot keys defined in the standard. M.2 isn't just SATA.

B key = PCIe ×2, SATA, USB 2.0 and 3.0, audio, UIM, HSIC, SSIC, I2C and SMBus
M key = PCIe ×4, SATA and SMBus

SATA M.2 SSDs usually have a B key slot just because that is what most laptops had for a M.2 slot. They used the same kind of slot connector for the PCIe WiFi + USB Bluetooth cards or the 3G/4G cards.

[Monkeh]

NVMe drives are M.2, they don't look like it - they are.

Anyway, your best bet is the internal adapter. It's not that tedious, seriously, it takes about two minutes..

NVME is not M.2


And M.2 is SATA based, while NVME is PCI-e. Most enclosures especially state that it is not compatible with NVME, while the others just have an outdated description.

Consumer NVMe SSDs use the M.2 form factor.

M.2 carries: SATA, PCIe, USB2, USB3, SMBus, SDIO, UART, .....

M.2 SSDs come in SATA, PCIe AHCI, and PCIe NVMe. Any of which will work in either slot on the board in this machine. Wifi cards are M.2 now, too.

[Berni]

Yep M.2 supports both SATA and PCIe on the same connector simultaneously(Along with other crap that is not used for SSDs). However hosts are not required to support both. If a motherboard only supports SATA then it will be keyed accordingly to prevent you from plunging in a NVMe SSD. Typically all motherboards that support NVMe drives will also support SATA, but not the other way around.

Since you said you have a NVMe SSD that's why i suggested a purely physical PCIe adapter card as NVMe requires PCIe.

[tszaboo]

Since you said you have a NVMe SSD that's why i suggested a purely physical PCIe adapter card as NVMe requires PCIe.

It is a HP 512-GB Turbo Drive G2 solid-state drive supporting TLC 917926-001, which is PCIe. After searching for 10 minutes, I was fairly sure it is not going to be easy, so I asked the question.

[Monkeh]

Since you said you have a NVMe SSD that's why i suggested a purely physical PCIe adapter card as NVMe requires PCIe.

It is a HP 512-GB Turbo Drive G2 solid-state drive supporting TLC 917926-001, which is PCIe. After searching for 10 minutes, I was fairly sure it is not going to be easy, so I asked the question.

It's very easy. You buy something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/PCI-Slot-Adapter-Converter-Card/dp/B01NAV0XHX

And.. it works.

[Ian.M]

Some SBCs support NVMe, so that might be an option if you don't want to or cant install an adapter in a PCIe equipped desktop.  Boot Linux on the SBC from USB and share the drive on your LAN using SAMBA or DD it across to an image file on a network share.