Century Reveals RAID 0 M.2 NVMe Thunderbolt 3 External Exclosure

Source: Tom's Hardware added 24th Oct 2020



(Image credit: Century)

If you want super-fast external storage, Century might have just the solution for you: The company has unveiled an all-new M.2 SSD external enclosure featuring M.2 RAID 0 support for what it claims are the fastest read and write speeds from a portable device.

The external enclosure sports a 15W power delivery system, allowing the enclosure to run up to four NVMe SSDs at up to PCI-E Gen 3.0 speeds with all four SSDs in RAID 0. Due to the system being a software RAID, maximum theoretical speed can be up to 2550 MBps, which is incredibly quick for an external storage solution. The enclosure also features active cooling to help cool off the flash and memory controllers on your M.2 NVMe drives, which tend to get hot with no airflow.

(Image credit: Century)

Technically you can use any M.2 NVMe Gen 3.0 or Gen 4.0 SSD in the enclosure. However, Century does recommend four specific SSDs from Seagate, Western Digital, and ADATA for maximum compatibility: The Seagate BarraCuda 510 and FireCuda 510/520, the WD Black SN750, and ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro.

For the rear I/O, you get two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a single Displayport 1.2 for daisy-chaining a monitor if needed, and finally, a DC port for power.

This is a great solution if you need high-speed storage on the go. You’ll have to supply the SSDs yourself, but you have the benefit of using your own SSDs for your own specific needs. At this time, there is no word on availability or pricing.