How to create your own high-performance portable SSD

On: February 04, 2021

If you want to buy a popular high-performance portable SSD, but the price is high, you can make it yourself. If you build your own portable SSD with off-the-shelf components, you can get the same performance as a brand-name product at a generally lower price.


What type of SSD to choose

First, you can purchase USB SSD enclosures for $10-50 at North America's largest IT e-commerce retailer Newegg, Amazon, and other electronics stores. You'll need to decide what type of enclosure you're going to go shopping with, most of which depends on what type of SSD you're going to put in the enclosure.

2.5-inch SATA SSD (left) vs. M. 2 NVMe SSD (right)

Among them is the 2.5-inch SATA SSDs such as SK Hynix Gold S31. This product has an excellent read speed of about 560MBps. Of course, it doesn't fall short of much faster M.2 PCIe or NVMe SSDs.

If you want to create your own USB portable drive that rivals high-end portable SSDs from popular companies, consider buying a PCIe or NVMe SSD enclosure. Both types are equally easy to manufacture. The 2.5-inch SATA SSD is good enough for general use, but here we'll make it an NVMe drive.

Asus ROG Strix Alion (left) vs. SanDisk Extreme Pro (right)

I bought an Asus ROG Strix Arion enclosure (now $54 from Amazon). The reason I chose this is that it looks stylish with colorful RGB lighting. If you mount SK Hynix Gold P31 NVMe SSD here, you can use the maximum bandwidth of the USB 3.2 generation interface. The bandwidth is basically 1GBps. Like all USB drives, it is backward compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. This enclosure comes with USB-C and USB-A cables.

How to make a portable SSD

Now that you've picked all the parts, let's build them.

  • Before assembling, reduce static electricity by touching metal objects such as furniture legs first.
  • To open the enclosure, open the cover by inserting it into a small pinhole near the USB port using the included thin-bar tool. Set the cover aside and be careful not to touch the sticky thermal pad on the cover. The heat conduction pad absorbs heat from the high-performance SSD with the aluminum body to maintain performance.
  • Loosen the silver fixing screws inside the enclosure. If it is too stiff, use the enclosed insertion rod handle to loosen it.
  • Now insert the M.2 SSD into the enclosure slot at an angle of 15 degrees. The side with the sticker is usually the top of the drive, and the side with the exposed contacts with grooves is inserted. The semicircular notch is the side where the set screw is fixed.
  • Gently insert the drive until no gold contacts are visible. Now grab the set screw and mount it in the semicircular groove of the M.2 drive. Tilt the drive down and tighten the captive screws snugly into place.
  • Align the enclosure's cover along the edge at the USB port and tilt it into place. If the cover does not close, make sure the drive is in the groove of the set screw and not under the groove.
  • With the cover closed, put on the rubber bumper and select the cable you want to use. A cable with two USB-C connections offers the highest performance. This Gold P31 supports faster speeds than USB, so here it is limited by the enclosure, not the drive.

Drives and enclosures are not the only factors that determine the speed of file movement. The port you connect to is also important. Most notebook or desktop computers that support USB-C usually offer the fastest speeds. The older, but more common, USB-A can support a wide variety of speeds from very slow to very fast.

How to format a portable SSD

The final step Windows needs to recognize this drive is to provide it within the operating system.

  • Press Windows+X and select Disk Management. Disk Management shows the drives connected to the computer, one of which is marked as 'Unallocated' for the new drive. Make sure you haven't selected the default drive for your PC or any other drive you don't want to format.
  • Right-click on the drive marked 'Unallocated' and select New Simple Volume.
  • Select'Next' and select the desired volume size. Windows should be set to full drive capacity by default. Click'Next' twice to specify the drive path.
  • The last window is'Format Partition'. Click'Next' and click 'Finish' and Windows will partition and format the new drive.

Now your own portable SSD is ready to use. In particular, the SSD I made has an RGB effect, so it looks like a device for more enthusiasts.

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