OWC Express 1M2 8TB USB4 40Gb/s Portable NVMe SSD Storage Solution

If you’re like me and edit photos and videos for a living while also not wanting to overspend on Apple’s higher storage tiers, this is a godsend! My previous enclosure for a 4TB SSD was an ORICO 40Gbps model with a fan. It was among the first of the 40gbp models at the time, but problems began immediately when using it on my Mac. It would disconnect multiple times, only stopping after I manually ejected and reconnected the drive. This put my video and image files at serious risk as anyone in our line of work would know, but I brushed it off as a design quirk until I discovered the real issue. Overheating. The ORICO would get so hot that it could literally burn you if you touched the metal top of its plastic shell. My breaking point came when, in the middle of an edit in Final Cut Pro, the drive disconnected yet again. That was when I decided to cut my losses, wrap it up, and search for the fastest, most reliable solution i can find. I'm happy to say that search ended with this OWC enclosure and honestly, I couldn’t be happier. Not only does it do exactly what it’s supposed to, but I can finally work without worrying about disconnects or losing my files. The solid metal body and finned design act as a massive heatsink, pulling heat away from the SSD and dissipating it naturally. This keeps the drive safe from overheating, prevents thermal throttling, and ensures I can take FULL advantage of my SSD’s maximum performance. Also while yes it goes get warm, you won't have to worry about burning yourself like the old drive I had. All this mind you, is working without a fan! That's how good the heat management on this thing is! Design-wise its's perfectly matched to my M4 Pro Mac Mini setup, it's small, and lightweight. You don't need extra software or drivers that are needed to run it, you just plug it in and it shows up as a storage device on Mac. The only setup required on your end is applying the thermal tape so it makes solid contact with both the SSD chips and the enclosure. It's nice and thick so you know its going to make full contact on both parts. This is my first OWC product, and it certainly now won’t be my last. If I could give it 10 stars, I would!!!

UPDATE: Still the best enclosure! Had a Predator GM7000 lying around and the 1M2 was once again the only USB4 enclosure that worked with it. It's the only USB4 enclosure good enough I bought it twice TL;DR: The OWC 1M2 is really good because it runs the coolest and is super reliable. The only downside is that replacing the SSD is a hassle once it’s seated inside. I’ve owned the Konyead, Zikedrive, Satechi, and Ugreen USB4 enclosures before purchasing the 1M2. I think the OWC 1M2 is the best out of the five, though not completely perfect. Quick explanation as to why I own all these: I work in film, and transferring multiple terabytes is common. USB4 drives let you do that extremely quickly. The only options for USB4 drives (as of writing) are the SanDisk or Glyph Pro series, which are horribly overpriced (and in SanDisk’s case, even destructive), or enclosures with the asm2464pd controller, which is currently the only one designed for USB4. While these enclosures aren’t cheap either, pairing them with an SSD like the WD SN850X, which has dropped massively in price, gives you fantastic speed for the cost. The OWC 1M2 is really big—bigger than even a 2.5" SATA enclosure (pictured in the second photo). USB4 enclosures are already large by M.2 enclosure standards, mainly for heat dissipation. PCIe Gen 4 SSDs can run as hot as 80°C or even 90°C if you’re using the SN850X, but the 1M2 excels at cooling. The entire enclosure is covered in large fins, and none of my other enclosures come close. Here's why that matters: all my other enclosures get very hot under load. The 1M2, being so over-the-top with cooling, only gets warm to the touch. That’s a huge win. With the others, I have to wait for them to cool down after big transfers. The 1M2 is always cool enough to keep going. In my setup, I use 4TB SN850X or FX900 Pro SSDs. For some reason, the only enclosure that works perfectly with the FX900 is the 1M2. I believe manufacturers write custom code for the 2464 controller, and OWC has written the best code for SSD compatibility. Moving between Windows and macOS, the 1M2 never drops a connection and handles full drive writes really well. The only other enclosure I own that’s equally reliable is the Zikedrive. The Satechi and Ugreen have some rare, forgivable edge cases, while the Konyead is basically toast. I also appreciate that the 1M2 came with reasonably new firmware for the 2464 controller, unlike the others, which I had to update. My only complaint is the design. Out of all the enclosures, the 1M2 seems the least portable. It has large rubber feet on the bottom, and unlike the others (except the Konyead), it’s designed to be upright only. That’s fine, but the annoying part is the screws—hidden behind the rubber feet that you have to tape on yourself. So, once your SSD is seated, replacing it requires removing the rubber feet and unscrewing everything again. Definitely make sure your SSD works 100% before taping the thing shut!

I've bought about 8-10 different SSD enclosures over the years. LOVE this one so much I bought a 2nd (for my other, secondary external "working" "drive") ... bullet proof and even when you hammer it, it hardly warms. Have the WD Black in there (main), running right around 2700-2800 write/read, about 100 faster than my crucial SSDs...haven't done an extended "long read/write" test, I'm sure the WD will hold its own as the buffer gets full/things get hot. Can't go wrong, especially if you're comparing this to all of the cheap MIT/China enclosure knock-offs. The buffer on this thing kicks butt, and moving 100gb+ of files is a snap, as you'd expect.

I am using this with a 2021 M1-Max Macbook Pro, paired with the Playstation Drive, the Western Digital Black SN850X 8TB ! IMPORTANT NOTE! I had to return the SN850X with heatsink, as you must get the naked version for use with this drive! Due to true Thunderbolt 4 support, this is the fastest external drive I've ever had with my Mac, sustaining 3 GB/sec read+write! Before this, the best I achieved was 1TB/second using those USB 3.2 drives. And unlike with a lot of ready made external drives, this one was easily formatted and partitioned in Disk Utility, with no special hoops to jump through. It's worth addressing that the size issue is absolutely not bad at all. Yes, this is about twice the size of a compact external SSD, but for true perspective, it is smaller than my iPhone 16 Pro, and because it's a sturdy aluminum case, you can stash it as is in your backpack. I use this drive for very large backups, and during my initial backup of a 3.8TB folder, which took over a half hour due to having over 5 million files, the case definitely got hot. Not serious burn hot, but "I don't really want to hold this in my hand" hot. I do not consider this an issue, as future backups will be deltas, and what you get is pure silence. ( There aren't many high performance 8TB drives on the market, but I trust the SN850 to be reliable, due to its extensive track record with the Playstation 5, and it was the second cheapest 8TB SSD I found ). All in all, I think OWC really knocked it out of the park with this external drive! For a single external SSD, this is a no brainer as the best possible choice! :)

Couldn't be better. Its blazing fast and stays cool. I threw in the Western Digital WDS800T2X0E which is their 8TB black NVMe SSD card. Fits snug and great. I think its gets good contact with the enclosure to dissipate heat. I immediately transferred roughly 4TB to it and renamed all of the files. It gets a little warm, but that's it, I wouldn't say it gets hot, but I am going to have fun with it and set it on a larger aluminum heat sink as a stand and put a fan on it. I am also going to buy another one and another 8TB card so I can mirror it and have redundancy. For the price, this enclosure with an 8TB NVMe seems to be the BEST bang for the buck. And with independent enclosures for each 8TB of data I care deeply about, I will feel safe having redundancy. I'm not worried about losing a drive, only internal component failures though it hasn't ever happened to me yet. Might end up with four of these and 32TB of space for 25% the cost of a NAS or DAS system. Don't pay for cloud storage, just get a bunch of OWC products and forget about data speeds ever being a problem. This thing is plenty quick. I can actively workflow Lightroom, Topaz, and Photoshop files from this with zero issues. If OWC would sell the four-bay version of this WITHOUT their built in NVMe drives I would get one.

Size - 4TB. Even though it says 4TB, the actual capacity that I see in the drive is 3.84TB and available space is 3.6TB which is strange. I'll need to contact the vendor to understand why the entire 4TB is not available. I formatted this drive on my Mac before using (APFS Encrypted) but still see 3.84TB available. Not sure why. Compatibility - I only have Apple devices so can only talk about Macs. I connected it with a thunderbolt 4 cable to my thunderbolt 4 port on my Mac Studio. The speed is incredible. No issues. It was basically a plug and play device with advertised speeds. I see a 2581 for read data but write is 3141 MB/S. Transferring 108GB from my iCloud account took a min so very happy about that. Drive Quality - It feels very sturdy and quality product. The size is small and something you can easily travel with. Not heavy. I feel that if the internals work as advertised then this should last me for several years. Overall I'm very pleased with the quality, speed and functionality of the drive. Everything looks good except the fact that the drive is 3.84 TB and not 4TB as advertised. I'll provide an update after contacting the vendor. Oct 2, 2025 - UPDATE: I spoke with AWC support desk and the response that I received was that the reason that I see 3.6TB available space is because of over provisioning. This means that a portion of the SSD's total storage is set aside by the drive to optimize performance and to extend life span. All this is good but it is almost 400GB of space for optimization. That's a lot. Here's what the Readme.txt file from AWC says and I quote "Setting up your new drive takes just a few minutes and is as simple as launching the included utility and following the on-screen instructions. When finished, your new drive will have its full capacity and be completely optimized for use with your computer system." I didn't use the utility and instead formatted the drive. From what I'm told, it wouldn't have made a difference. Losing this much space is a bummer but other than that this drive is truly amazing speed and quality wise. I still love the performance and functionality. Support response was pretty quick and professional. Hoping that this drive lasts me a few years.

I've been very impressed with the OWC Express 1M2 (40Gb/s). I was able to very easily install my own SSD and extend the storage space for a new Apple Mac mini while saving several hundred dollars. The OWC Express 1M2 along with the SSD now hold my Apple Home folder and everything is external to the Mac mini. I've got a thunderbolt 4 Mac mini. I opted to go with the 40Gb/s OWC Express 1M2 because thunderbolt 5 speeds in the 80Gb/sec version would have no meaningful impact except for "future proofing". The drive and SSD speeds are great. I've never experienced any transfer speed issues. I've only noticed that the drive/SSD get ejected about every 3 weeks. I'm not sure the cause but am in contact with OWC to find a solution. Other than that, it works perfectly. My OWC express 1M2 is connected and on 24x7. It has a solid build and is always cool to the touch. I would recommend turning the light brightness down when installing any SSD. It's not overly bright but I do see the activity light flashing during the night if I'm awake.

A little larger than I would prefer because space is tight when I travel with camera gear. However, these are really good when it comes to dissapating heat. I've had so much trouble with other NVMe enclosures overheating during heavy use - transferring large 5K raw video files and video editing from NVMe enclosures. These are really good IMHO

This OWC Express 1M2 is a fantastic enclosure. It's incredibly small and portable, making it easy to toss into a backpack pocket. Paired with the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD, the performance is flawless. I've been editing 4K video in Final Cut Pro on my M1 Max Mac Studio in real-time, and I've experienced zero slowdowns—a huge step up from my previous drives. While it does get noticeably warm under heavy load, it maintains excellent functionality and speed. It also feels very durable, giving me peace of mind when carrying it between home and the office. Highly recommend this combination for demanding creative work!

Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! This is not just an external NVMe box. This is THE external NVMe disk box! The quality is surreal, unlike anything similar in the market. I installed a 970 Pro and the thermal dissipation even in heavy rendering work is really very good! I can record write speeds higher than my internal disk. I've tried many external disc boxes, but this one surpasses at all levels!

Great product but unfortunately lost on a trip. Will be buying soon.

I don’t normally so reviews, but I got this and compared it to my other OWC, I’m more than please XL with the results!

Cosa dire? Il punto di forza non è il prezzo, ma al giorno d'oggi trovare dei prodotti che aderiscono al 100% alle prestazioni e ai dettagli dichiarati dal produttore, è diventato qualcosa di raro che deve essere premiato, con una buona recensione e 5 stelle, in particolare su Amazon e altri marketplace analoghi! Prima dell'acquisto ho controllato le specifiche sul sito di OWC, non c'è un dettaglio che non sia aderente alla descrizione (o migliore), a partire dalle prestazioni specificate espressamente per vari modelli di computer di riferimento. In pratica, l'intero case è un dissipatore in alluminio che mantiene i drive a temperature ottimali senza alcun rumore, grazie all'assenza di ventole attive; il pad termico in silicone è già installato, è sufficiente inserire il drive NVMe e avvitare le 3 viti per completare l'installazione; particolare aggiuntivo che mostra attenzione ai dettagli: OWC fornisce alcuni "piedini" gommati da attaccare sotto al case per evitare sfregamenti e rumori fastidiosi, isolando ulteriormente il case dalla superficie su cui è posizionato. Come mostrato nello screenshot, ho raggiunto circa i 3.5 GB/s sia in scrittura che in lettura, valori addirittura maggiori di quelli dichiarati dal produttore (probabilmente dovuti al drive, più performante di quello utilizzato nei test ufficiali). Il led di stato può essere configurato in modalità "normale", "dim" (luce soffusa) o "spento", attraverso uno switch hardware interno (levetta da spostare), ulteriore dettaglio che in applicazioni specifiche può risultare interessante. Considerando che ho potuto acquistare il case con 4 anni di "garanzia estesa" di Amazon, oltre ai 2 anni di garanzia offerti dal produttore, ho finalmente la sensazione di aver speso soldi per un prodotto di alta qualità.