Review: Transcend TC-CM80S with NVMe SSD 832S 512GB

by | Feb 23, 2021 | Review | 0 comments

A quick review of enclosure kit for NVMe SSD with Transcend 832s 512GB of SSD disk.

A couple of weeks ago Transcend with SarotaPR – thank you, Karolina! sends to me a package, where was three things. PenDrive, which I described earlier here, and two other things.

One was the SSD disk, which I described many times on my blog. Last time, for example here. (All previous reviews are written in the Polish language).

The second thing was more interesting for me. Why? Because it is an enclosure for M2 NVME disks.

I asked for that kind of stuff because as always I have a problem with storage in my home lab.

For example, even if I have 500GB of SSD on my new device, that is not enough for some of the labs (like this one). They write, that minimum of space is 300GB. Nope, I have more than 400GB of free space, and that isn’t enough.

So, I needed to find another solution, how to move machines from my lab which currently I’m not using, but I’m pretty sure that I will be using later.

Maybe move to my NAS device? Nah, what if I will take my laptop with me and go to my parents? I will don’t have access to machines. Also, before I download 20-30GB of each machine I will forget what I want to do.

There needs to be a better way to do this.

What if I can use some SSD disks which can be connected to USB ports? After a couple of days, I received a package from Transcend with two (yep, three things, but the third thing is not related to this article ;)) things.

First was SSD disk: M2. SSD 828S 512GB. The second one – TC-CM80S. It is an enclosure kit for M.2 disk.

Review: Transcend TC-CM80S with NVMe SSD 832S 512GB

So, let’s start with some review of that good things!

First a couple of words about the disk.

It is a model: M.2 SSD 832S with DRAM cache. I have 512GB of size, but there are also 256GB and 1TB versions. From me, a version which I have is enough to move many machines to this disk.

I don’t know if you know, but there are a couple of possible sizes of M.2 disk which you can buy. This one is “2280”. Other sizes which you can buy are 2242 and 2260. What is the difference? 2280 is the longest M.2 drive which is existing. 2260 is quite shorter and 2242 is the shortest.

Transcend writes that the disk can read/write data up to 560/500 MB/s with up to 80,000/85,000 IOPS. Not too much. For example, the last disk which I reviewed – 220S has 210,000/290,000 IOPS. That is a big difference which can be visible during normal work. My newest disk which I bought for my lab – Samsung Evo 970 Plus has 480,000/550,000. Almost 5 times more than 832S.

And what is that IOPS?

Input/output operations per second (IOPS, pronounced eye-ops) is an input/output performance measurement used to characterize computer storage devices

By Wikipedia. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS]

In real words, if there is a bigger number of IOPS – it is better.

I didn’t do any tests with connecting that disk directly to M.2 port without USB, so I will not provide any screens from test programs, like CrystalDiskMark.

Next thing – the enclosure.

Is quite a very nice enclosure. It’s small, built-in using aluminum construction and there is very easy installation to add a new disk to this enclosure.

As I said earlier, there are three possibilities of the physical of the disk. To this enclosure, we can insert any of those disks.

Review: Transcend TC-CM80S with NVMe SSD 832S 512GB

If we open the package, there is everything that you need to start using this enclosure kit, like:

  • Enclosure
  • M.2 adapter
  • Type-C to Type-A USB cable (45cm)
  • Metal plate
  • Aluminum sticker
  • Screwdriver
  • Mounting screws

Finally, I do not write there are no mounting screws on the package!

Review: Transcend TC-CM80S with NVMe SSD 832S 512GB

Because this enclosure has a USB-C port, there was only one strange thing for me. Why is there only USB-C to USB-A cable instead of both? They should add also USB-C to USB-C cable to connect directly to the newest devices – like Surface or Macbooks. Now if I want to connect to some kind of that device – I should use an additional adapter.

On the below screen you can see some results from AS SSD Benchmark with 5GB of the test file.

Review: Transcend TC-CM80S with NVMe SSD 832S 512GB

I do some basic tests and started copied 30GB of a single file. First, 10-15% was copied with 330MB/s, rest part of the file with ~220MB/s. I do another test and run the stopwatch – this same file was copied in 130 seconds. An impressive result for me.

I don’t want to do any other special test. That is not the purpose of that blog.

I used this SSD on USB to move particularly machines which I’m not using between internal SSD and SSD on USB and I was very pleased with its performance.

If you’re looking for that kind of solution – maybe that is a good idea to buy this enclosure and disk? Or buy another SSD disk to insert into a USB enclosure and will be also a good solution.

For me? Was more than enough and I can be pretty sure that I will buy something like this one in the future.

Jakub Piesik

Jakub Piesik

Microsoft 365 Consultant

I’m writing not only about Intune and Windows 365. I’m writing about everything what I leared previously and want to share with you!

#security #microsoft365 #intune #windows365 #powershell #automation 🙂