I have a Mac Mini (Late 2014) which has two thunderbolt ports. I'm looking to purchase a M.2 NVME SSD enclosure that will allow me to enclose my Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVME SSD and connect to my thunderbolt 2 port. Has anyone tried to do this? I would appreciate any feedback of how you did this.
Thanks
Mac mini, macOS 10.15
First, in order to connect to the Thunderbolt port on your Mini,
the enclosure must be a Thunderbolt enclosure, not just "USB-C".
Any device that is only specified as USB-C, will in reality be either
USB3.1 Gen 1 (what used to simply be called USB3) or USB3.1 Gen 2.
A Thunderbolt3 enclosure will require you to use a Thunderbolt3 to Thuderbolt2
adapter such as:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter?fnode=85
I haven't done this, but I have tried to use a USB 3 device with Thunderbolt 2. It didn't work. I think in my case, I was trying to use a bus-powered device. Unfortunately, most such devices are bus-powered.
The only one I can find that looks like it would work is this enclosure from OWC: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3EX4M2SL/
It explicitly says that it works with Thunderbolt 2 using a Thunderbolt 2/3 adapter. This is because it has its own power supply.
It won't be as fast as a NVME, but for the sake of cost and simplicity. You would be far better off just using an external USB 3.0 SSD or building your own by putting a SATA 6G SSD into a decent USB 3.0 enclosure. FWIW an external USB 3.0 SSD will get you around 480 to 520 MB/s Read/Write which is far better than your Mac Mini's current 5400rpm HDD at 60 to 80 MB/s.
M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure
