I want to recover data from M.2 SSD (Hynix HFS512GD9MND) .Its PCIe Gen3 X4 SSD.
I am looking for USB casing in order to connect to my pc. This SSD (in general all NVMe ) gets very hot due to higher power consumption (10W)
Unfortunately there is bad review on all available adapters.
Can someone recommend good model ? Almost all of themhave type C interface so adapter is needed to convert it. In most of the review cables and this conversion has serious issues.
here is review on amazon for 3 leading models and JMmicron chipset,



EDIT: Pluggable has switched from using the troublesome JMC583 chip to the RTL9210 in newer adapters! Be sure to check out the Pluggable product page for details. I now have a Realtek RTL9210 adapter and it's working perfectly in every instance where the JMicron adapters failed miserably. Buy a RTL9210 based adapter! Unfortunately very few adapters use the Realtek chip at this time. If in doubt, buy the Pluggable.

None of this **** works! I bought three of these USB to NVME adapters and all of them have failed in one way or another.

I tried:
The SSK HE-C325
The Plugable USBC-NVME
And the Sabrent EC-NVME

Here's what I learned.

I tested these adapters with three different NVME SSD brands on five different computers with both Windows and Linux. I experienced random power-offs, disconnects, USB bus errors, read timeouts, and other reliability problems. In one instance a desktop boot looped when the EFI tried detecting bootable drives, until I unplugged the adapter. In another case my laptop warned that a USB device had exceeded it's power draw limit. Sometimes they would work fine for awhile, and then they just wouldn't. Putting a short USB extension cable in between the drive and a USB port would often induce USB bus errors. Using front-panel USB ports, otherwise working fine with other devices, would cause similar problems.

All of these adapters were unreliable, and they all use the same chip manufacture inside. The SSK has a JMicron JMS562, and the Plugable and Sabrent use the JMicron JMS583.

Between my own tests and other reviews and comments I am guessing there is something fundamentally wrong with the JMicron chips. They randomly disconnect, cause USB bus errors, will make your computer boot loop, and I've even read a number of reviews claiming that they killed people's SSDs due to overheating, though I blame the enclosures for poor cooling more than the JMicron chip for that.

At this time there are four chips on the open market (that I am aware of) which provide this kind of NVME to USB bridge: JMicron JMS562, JMicron JMS583, Asmedia ASM2362, and Realtek RTL9210.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience with the Asmedia or Realtek chips.

There are very few choices for the Asmedia ASM2362 right now. Both UGreen and Syba have models using them here on Amazon, along with a pile of generic Chinese adapters. I have not tried these yet.

Realtek RTL9210 appears to be the newest chip and there are accordingly the fewest options available for it, but there are at least two adapters here on Amazon and the JEYI i9 GTR looks like the best one to try. Asus apparently has one coming to market soon too but it looks... gamer-ish. I have not tried anything with this chip yet either, but I plan on doing so.

FYI if you want smartmontools (smartctl) to check info on your adapter, you will need to use "-d sntjmicron" argument, and it will need to be version 7.0 or better. Future versions might not require the -d argument but for now it does.

Overheating is a real possibility with these adapters. Take it seriously. I do not recommend slide-in type covers like the SSK and Plugable use. Get a "sandwich" style adapter like the Sabrent. Both the SSK and Plugable included thermal pads with adhesive so strong I assume they were meant to be permanent, because there's no way you could get them off without ripping any label which might be on your SSD, which is exactly what happened to me. Additionally, the thermal pads just didn't do a great job of conducting heat from the SSD to the metal housing. In the case of both the SSK and the Plugable I was able to cause my Samsung 960 EVO to hit it's 77C thermal limit and then it started throttling performance. I was able to get this down to 70C with the Plugable by adding my own custom thermal pads on the top and bottom of the SSD, but it was ugly, difficult, and time consuming. Just do yourself a favor and go with an adapter with a clamshell/sandwich style housing.

The SSK adapter looked great but was the worst in regards to stability. It overdrew power on one of my laptop's USB ports and had the most stability/reliability problems.

The Plugable adapter worked great in some computers, but putting a short USB extension cable or using front-side-USB ports caused it to fail. The adhesive on the thermal pads was also a nightmare to get off.

In regards to the Sabrent EC-NVME, the USB C plug is too far recessed into the carrier, resulting in the cable making a poor connection. The plug on the cable can't be fully inserted because the wall of the aluminum carrier is too thick. This results in disconnects when I wiggled the cable or tried moving the adapter around on my desk.

If it wasn't for this, the Sabrent EC-NVME might be a pretty good adapter. It's a big heavy hunk of metal, so I'm sure it would suck up all the heat from the SSD, and you can put thermal pads on both sides. The latch and cover can rattle around a little bit, but I'm sure that could be solved with a little bit of tape or a dab of silicone. They just erred in the design by failing to use a USB port which would extrude slightly from the body so the cable could be fully inserted.

If you are interested, you might check out the discussion on AnandTech's forums titled "*STABLE* NVMe - USB Adapter?", thread ID "stable-nvme-usb-adapter.2572973". It seems I'm not the only one having trouble finding an adapter that actually works well.

I wasted hours on these adapters, and I feel bad for returning them all, but none of them are reliable.

Thanks for the detailed review.

I'm wondering why you aren't connecting the drive to your machine via its native PCIe interface? There are plenty of PCIe cards, so you don't need to be limited by poor bridge designs.

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I am going to add my 2 cents to this because I am interested in the topic. It might not be worth 2 cents, but here it is anyway.

If heat is the major issue, and data recovery is the operation, why not connect it to a USB 2.0 port? Yes, speed will suck, but with NVMe speed = heat. I know that is probably not the answer you are looking for, but maybe it can be a work around. It is better to recover data slower than have major issues with the recovery.

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If warranty issues are not a concern, then I would rip off the labels and attach heatsinks to each chip via thermal tape. I've been doing this to all sorts of equipment over the years. These heatsinks can be as massive as you like, space permitting. You can even screw a fan onto them.

Here's a way to use the native PCIe interface without compromising cooling, signal integrity and accessibility for electrical measurements:

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=37492&p=264481&hilit=adapter+pcie+cable#p264481

If you're concerned that your customer's faulty SSD may break your machine, you could always pretest it via USB.

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Hi fzabkar & maximus
Thanks a lot for replying.
Unfortunately I don't have latest chipset motherboard having internal M.2 slot .
Can I directly this SSD in PCIE X16 slot instead?
Other alternate is "M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter with Aluminum Heatsink Solution"
I have tried JEYI Adapter for NVMe M.2 SSD's but this SSD is not getting detected there.

Here are specs of JEYI card

I understand that you wouldn't see the PCIe drive in BIOS, but I would think that it should at least appear in Device Manager.

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So I would like to take this off the rails on a crazy train. What about NVMe to SATA instead of USB? Last I knew there were not any adapters that directly did this, and the ones that said they did were mislabeled and only converted M2 SATA to the regular SATA interface. But someone emailed me a while back with the idea of using a couple chained adapters to achieve a true NVMe to SATA adapter. The message indicated that NVMe to USB was not stable, but the NVMe to SATA was much more stable. There is a significant language barrier for the communication, so I cannot be sure if they mean the idea was a success, or if they were suggesting it, or asking a question about if it would work. But there were images included that I am attaching. I have had this on my to do list for awhile to see if it would work, but it was not high on my priority list and I have not had the time. It might not solve the heat problem, but maybe it can solve the instability problems. It is also supposed to allow power cycling, which you can’t do with a direct PCIe NVMe card. If you wait for me to try this, it may still be a while, as I have other things higher on the priority list. Hopefully this is actually a workable idea.

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ISTM that the only SATA component in those images is a cable which converts a standard 15-pin SATA power plug into a 4-pin, +12V/+5V Molex peripheral connector. This is needed to power the adapter PCB.

This adapter simply provides slots for an m.2 NVMe SSD or a PCIe SSD-on-a-card, both of which use the same electrical interface. The two larger chips appear to be PCIe redrivers which are necessary to drive the long SFF-8643 cable. One of the smaller chips may be a 3.3V regulator, but I can't tell for certain.

DS160PR412, Texas Instruments, PCIe 4.0 16 Gbps 4-channel Linear Redriver with Integrated 1:2 Demux, 3.3V, WQFN-42:
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ds160pr412.pdf

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Maybe I assumed the SATA part when I was looking at the board. But I do know the idea was to be able to power cycle it, for when it became unstable. And that it was better than USB.

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This is the product:

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-SFF-8643-NVMe-PCIe-Adapter/dp/B07BBVBDVD

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FYI I just replied to the person that gave the information, and got a very quick reply back, so at least I will be able to ask questions. But I think I will need to acquire the adapters, and there is mention of 3rd party PCIE drivers. Also, some of this may be specific to Linux.

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I can't see why the adapter needs third party drivers, or how it could benefit from same. AFAICT, the entire circuit is just an electronic extension cable. Its function is completely transparent to the OS.

Edit:

ICBW, but maybe that square IC is some kind of controller.

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Communication is not going to be as strait forward as I hoped, as the request is to use Skype, which I honestly have never used until now. Plus the known language barrier, where I have been confused by previous email replies.

So lets look at the adapter boards. The PCIe board appears to be for SAS. Then the external board converts the SAS to NVMe. The external board appears to get power from a standard SATA connector. I think the required driver would be for the PCIe SAS board. I don’t have time to research this further myself at this moment. Maybe this weekend if I have time. But I think the concept is good. I think I did a little research when first presented with it, but that was months ago and I don’t remember.

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When you receive the PCB, tell us the part markings on the ICs. Then we'll know exactly what it does. High resolution photos would help, too.

BTW, I don't believe that there is any protocol conversion going on. That would require some serious electronics.

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I spent a few minutes doing a bit of quick research, and I think I was confused as when looking up SFF-8643 as it was referenced as mini-SAS/SATA. I think this actually allows 4 lanes of PCIe across a cable to the external board. That would explain the lack of electronics. And I also think the power for the external board is from a 4 pin molex connector, although I have not yet found any pics of that side of the board. But the concept appears to be an external hot-pluggable NVMe setup.

I won’t be getting any boards until I have time to do more substantial research. I was kind of hoping that someone else would look at it and try to figure it out...

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That board is intriguing because it has that square IC which could potentially be some kind of controller. Those two redriver ICs can either be programmed via external resistors or via their I2C bus. At least that's how TI's redrivers work. The actual redriver ICs on this PCB are different, but I would expect that they would function similarly.

So I'm wondering whether that "controller IC" could be remotely controlled to switch the redriver muxes on and off. That would be akin to a PHY reset.

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I had a conversation yesterday, and the language barrier was not that bad. I will attach another picture that was sent. I did find out that this setup does work with Windows, but not with my software, and the driver was referenced. I think it was meant that Linux needs a driver installed, if possible, although the conversation ended with me asking those questions with no further reply.

Here is an interesting link I found when doing some searching. I think it is very much related to the whole idea.
https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/de ... y-SFF-8639

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If this other person has the card, ask them for the chip markings.

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My Amazon order:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K1 ... 0DER&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JH ... DVJF&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T8 ... QTUY&psc=1

Should arrive by the end of the week

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