[SOLVED] M.2 over HDD/SSD for external project storage?

[ThatOneTechDude]

Hello,

So, as the title states, I'm wondering about whether there's any real benefit to using an M.2 as an external drive over a traditional SSD/HDD.

I'm a graphic designer and am also starting to delve in to Unreal Engine 5 game development and would like to keep my projects on external drives, labelled and so on, however I don't have a huge amount of space in my apartment and so would like to keep the space that's taken up by said external drives to a minimum, as well as increase their portability. I don't always have a huge amount of space in my bags to carry around external drives so a USB would be immensely handy.

A lot of people suggest things like the WD My Passport external hard drives and things like that, and whilst some of them are very small in form factor, nothing can compare to the size of an M.2 USB drive, especially if using the Silverstone enclosure, linked here, because the USB port can retract, basically giving me a pretty damn small external drive.

The con to an M.2 drive is obviously the cost. Regular external HDD/SSDs will set you back maybe £50-£70 depending on the size, obviously some range in to the hundreds, but with an M.2 I'd say you're probably looking at that much just for the M.2 then the added cost of the enclosure on top of that.

I've always known that SSD has trumped HDD in terms of read/write speeds, and I have an M.2 in my motherboard which trumps my SSD. So the main thing I'm wondering is:

Is an M.2 worth the extra cost for an external drive or would any of you, who are more educated than I am, suggest to simply save the money, go with an HDD/SSD and deal with their larger form factor?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

If what you do pays for itself, then there's no need to question buying into the portable M.2 SSD enclosure+M.2 SSD route. The question that does pose itself is, how long will it take to pay itself off?

If the parts will recoup their expenses, regardless of time, then I'd invest in said platform. Do keep in mind that you do save up on space(although it can also lead you to loose them, considering some people loose their keys) while also seemingly being faster in data migration, meaning less time waiting for data to move/copy/cut/paste over, so more time spent doing other things.

 

[USAFRet]

The only advantage an M.2 sized external drive has it is size.
The data is still being pumped through the same USB bus.

A 2.5" format HDD or SSD external isn't that much larger than an M.2 format external.

 

[CountMike]

Hello,

So, as the title states, I'm wondering about whether there's any real benefit to using an M.2 as an external drive over a traditional SSD/HDD.

I'm a graphic designer and am also starting to delve in to Unreal Engine 5 game development and would like to keep my projects on external drives, labelled and so on, however I don't have a huge amount of space in my apartment and so would like to keep the space that's taken up by said external drives to a minimum, as well as increase their portability. I don't always have a huge amount of space in my bags to carry around external drives so a USB would be immensely handy.

A lot of people suggest things like the WD My Passport external hard drives and things like that, and whilst some of them are very small in form factor, nothing can compare to the size of an M.2 USB drive, especially if using the Silverstone enclosure, linked here, because the USB port can retract, basically giving me a pretty damn small external drive.

The con to an M.2 drive is obviously the cost. Regular external HDD/SSDs will set you back maybe £50-£70 depending on the size, obviously some range in to the hundreds, but with an M.2 I'd say you're probably looking at that much just for the M.2 then the added cost of the enclosure on top of that.

I've always known that SSD has trumped HDD in terms of read/write speeds, and I have an M.2 in my motherboard which trumps my SSD. So the main thing I'm wondering is:

Is an M.2 worth the extra cost for an external drive or would any of you, who are more educated than I am, suggest to simply save the money, go with an HDD/SSD and deal with their larger form factor?

In this role, beside the size (which I don't believe is important to you), only advantage on NVME drive would be speed, otherwise in all other aspects it's equal to SATA SSDs. To get full use of speed it has to be connected to fastest possible USB. In addition to price of NVME M.2 drives, their interfaces are also more expensive. There are of course othe than NVMe M'2 SSDs that are much closer in price to SATA drives but they work at SATA SSD speeds.
Except for couple, I switched all of my classical USB sticks to SATA SSDs connected by only one USB 3.1 to SATA adapter and so nixed the need for enclosed adapters which are more expensive.
SATA SSDs don't really need to be enclosed and such enclosures also tend to get disks hot, (heat and SSDs don't really go together well. If you are not carrying in your pockets, enclosure is not really necessary.