M.2 Enclosure and Crucial NVMe Drives

Lzztrader on 19/11/2021 - 15:52
Last edited 19/11/2021 - 16:00

Hi folks,

Got a bit of a mystery here.

I have a Volans USB 3.1 M.2 NVMe PCIe External Enclosure Model VL-UCM2

Its a USB C device but my issue is this.

I have a 500GB Samsung EVO NVMe drive in it and can plug it into any computer and see the data or files just fine.
I can can also access it in Win 10 using Disk Manager and delete it, initialize it and format it and it works when plugged in any computer just fine.

Problem now is I go to upgrade my drives in my laptop and take out the Crucial P1 500GB & Crucial P1 1000GB, both which are NVMe M.2 drives still in warranty.

When either of these drives get inserted into the above external M.2 enclosure and plugged in, they are not showing up on any computer and when viewing in Disk Manager it states "Unknown and Not Initialized"

I go to initialize and the Virtual Disk Manager message for either drive says: The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error.

The 500gb Samsung works fine in this caddy as too do all expected tasks.

But why in the heck do the crucial drives not work in this caddy? Its bizzare.

To make sure the drives are still functional, I open my laptop up again and insert the drives and there they are just fine, working and even formatting fine and initializing with Disk Manager.

I also install Micron PCIe drivers to ensure its not a driver things.
Also I have tried bootable Disk Partition tools various partition programs that also do not work on these drives whilst in this particular caddy.

Any angles or suggestions or likely answers would be much appreciated.

Computing Hard Drive Enclosure

Comments

  • BobD on 20/11/2021 - 07:16

    You could have a read of this and see if it helps. It might give you the ability to ask other questions.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
    Take particular note of the socket keying. Which key is your external enclosure and which key are you trying to plug in. You could be trying to plug a B key into an M key socket. Do the drives plug in easily or is it a struggle.

  • zztrader on 20/11/2021 - 12:50

    Thanks for sounding off on that,

    Yeah, Im in tune with socket keys and types and by the literature on this Volans unit is apparently meant to cater to the drives in question.

    I wrote to Volans about about the details posted above to see if they had any idea to why this would happen and they can only point it to this enclosure being a 1st gen enclosure and are going to send me a new enclosure with the latest firmware to see if this solves the problem.

    Fingers crossed 🤞

  • BobD on 21/11/2021 - 07:11

    Sorry about preaching to the converted. Let's hope the new enclosure does the job.

  • zztrader on 21/11/2021 - 12:19

    No worries Bob, all good there mate👍

    I sure am looking forward to seeing if this new enclosure will do the trick as firmware revision sounds logical and probable.

  • zztrader on 30/11/2021 - 18:52

    I just want to close this thread, as the reason for the issue mentioned above certainly was because of the firmware of the enclosure.

    It was really very nice of Volans to send me another enclosure to test it, they were very professional, kind and concerned with the reported issues and I would certainly would recommend them.

    As too, the newer tool-less (Model VL-UCM2-V) NVMe enclosure they sent me makes opening and inserting drives a rapid experience.👍

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