If you need the fastest possible external storage speed, Hyper has this tool for you. The company's new HyperDrive enclosure uses USB4 V2 to turn any NVMe drive into a high-performance external drive, but you'll have to pay a pretty penny for the privilege.
HyperDrive Next USB4 V2 M.2 PCIe Case(that's exactly what it's called) is one of many external USB NVMe drive enclosures on the market today. You take an NVMe M.2 drive, put it in a case, and then the NVMe becomes an external SSD that you can use across all your devices. I have a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD in a USB case and it is useful for PC backup and temporary storage for video editing.
This model is special because it supports USB 4 version 2.0 using the protocol's maximum speed of 80 Gbps, as well as Thunderbolt 5. The actual data transfer speed for the drive is limited to 64 Gbps, but this will still provide full speed with most (if not all) PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. For example, 2 TB WD_BLACK SN7100 has a read speed of up to 58 Gbit/s (7250 MB/s), and Samsung 990 Pro 2 TBThe maximum read speed is 59.6 Gbps (7450 ​​MB/s). New PCIe Gen 5 SSDs have even faster speeds, but this case doesn't support them.
HyperDrive Next has a USB Type-C port for connecting to a computer, tablet, phone or other USB-compatible device. However, this port only supplies 7.5W to the drive, so you can optionally connect another Type-C port to deliver up to 25W of power to the connected drive, ensuring the fastest possible speed. However, it's a little strange that it doesn't support the full power of just one port.
The case features a tool-free design, built-in thermal padding, and a silicone boot for IP55 water and dust resistance. Hyper also says the case is suitable for AI accelerator cards, not just NVMe storage.
HyperDrive Next USB4 V2 starts with blazing speed. 200 US dollars from the company's online store. If you don't already have an NVMe drive, they have also become more expensive over the past few months. not as much as DDR5 RAM. You'll also need a computer with USB4 V2 or Thunderbolt 5 to get the promised drive speeds.
If you want to turn a spare NVMe drive into an external SSD, UGREEN USB4 40 Gbps enclosure costs half the price of HyperDrive Next with a slower (24 Gbps) maximum disk speed. There are also many USB 3.2-based NVMe enclosures available that can reach speeds of 10 Gbps. This is a significant bottleneck if you pair it with a fast SSD, but it's still much faster than a regular flash drive or external hard drive, and you can always move the SSD to a nicer enclosure in the future.
Source: Hyper
