Shell Thunder SSD Enclosure (0GB) with Active Cooling - PCIe NVMe Portable External Enclosure m3

Update: July 29,2023 - All 7 of my Shell Thunder enclosures are still going strong with no issues. Used daily with MacOS Ventura 13.5 on multiple MBPs and Mac Studios as 24/7 time machine backups and for large data transfers. The drives in these enclosures, up to 4TBs, never throttle even when copying hundreds of gigabytes of data at one time. I can't say that about the other enclosures I own, and it all comes down to active cooling and design.BTW, I still can't find any other single drive TB3 or USB4.0 enclosure for NVME drives on the market that offers active cooling.Update: June 17, 2022 - All Shell Thunder enclosures are still going strong with no issues and still the best I can find for under 200 dollars. Review now updated with screenshot and tested using MBP M1 Max with MacOS Monterey.Edited Original:Since purchasing my first Shell Thunder in November 2020, I now own several of these enclosures, having just received two more I set up yesterday with 1 TB drives for data transfers on my Macbook Pro and Mac Pro systems.Having received some NVME enclosures in tiny little bags and paper thin boxes that fall apart as soon as you open them, it's a pleasure to open the shipping box from Amazon and find a bulky, white Fledging Shell Thunder box inside. The thick, rigid box itself and the attention to detail in how the enclosure and misc items are packed and protected inside the box lets you know this company cares about, and is proud of, their product. When you own a lot of NVME enclosures, that attention to detail and recognizing the hands-on user experience truly begins when OPENING the packaging really DOES make the company stand out among the competition. What other company has known this forever? Oh yeah, Apple.But nice packaging only takes you so far, and the product obviously has to be stellar as well if you're to be completely satisfied. With this particular item, it moves to the assembly experienceAssembly is, for the most part, relatively straight forward and easy, aside from some hyper-tightened enclosure screws on the last enclosure I set up. Speaking of which, even the screws don't strip like on other nvme enclosures and they're also not micro-tiny. The Shell Thunder includes a couple extra screws just in case you lose one, OR one is missing from the enclosure when you receive it. Yes, that happened to me and no, I didn't mind since there were extras. Okay, I admit it irked me a bit and my right eyelid twitched when I turned over the new enclosure and saw 3 intact screws and an empty hole where the 4th should be, but I'm weird that way even though there were two extras.As the attached Blackmagic Speed Test screenshot shows, performance is stellar and right up there with the best TB3/TB4 enclosures, topping out at roughly 2500+ MB/s read and write using a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1tb drive, MacOS APFS format and MacOS Monterey on a MBP M1 Max. Just as important, I've never had a Shell Thunder case gets hot or the NVME throttle from overheating during large data transfers. Another common complaint on external NVME enclosures is random disconnects. I've never experienced this with the Shell Thunder, and I have one permenently attached to a Caldigit TB3 hub, serving as my timemachine backup drive. It works flawlessly for its normal hourly backup schedule for my Macbook Pro, and I've yet to have it disconnect or otherwise not be available.Hopefully we'll see more true USB4.0 NVME enclosures with active cooling hit the market soon. I'd also love to see a future Shell Thunder version shift to USB4.0 as well, which will add backwards compatibility for USB 3. But for now, the current Shell Thunder is the go-to enclosure for me.Highly recommended.

In March of 2020 I was looking for a fast Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD to use as a working disk for photo editing. I researched extensively and found that a common problem with this type of enclosure was heat. If the SSD got too hot it slowed down or may even become damaged. I found the Shell Thunder SSD Enclosure for TB3 which featured active cooling and decided to give it a try. It was easy to install my own M.2 drive and within minutes it was up and running. It made a huge difference in the speed in which I could read and write information from my photo editing program. It impressed me so much I decided to purchase another one to use as a scratch folder and browse cache location. The new enclosure arrived in a timely manner and the drive was installed without incident. I did notice though that the speed was much less the the first one I had purchased. I sent a message to Fledging support and promptly received a reply. They asked for a bit of information and then without hesitation sent out a new enclosure. Because of the shipping problems during this time, it was late November, the new drive seemed to be hung up in the system. Fledging’s support representative stayed in contact with me and after a short time sent another one in case the first was lost in the mail. Both new enclosures arrived a day apart and the problem was solved. They sent me prepaid shipping labels and I returned both the defective enclosure and the extra new one. Their product is fantastic and the companies support is incredible! If you need an M.2 PCIe NVMe drive enclosure this is the one you want to get.

I ordered the thunderbolt drive with 2Tb preinstalled a month before Christmas. I wanted it for 4k multi-cam video work on my IMac. (FCPX). Let me say up front that it is super fast and I am super pleased. It is quiet. My drive arrived as scheduled. Its read and write speed subjectively equaled my system SSD! Unfortunately it died within 24 hours, and would not stay connected. I initiated a problem report with Amazon and was issued a return authorization. I rarely return items so did not have a lot of experience with this process. I really wanted to exchange it, not just return it, however, so I contacted Fledgling on their website. They were super responsive and offered to send a replacement so I ignored the Amazon return slip.. The replacement did not arrive as expected, so I contacted them and they sent another one! When it did not show up I contacted my local post office and learned that the regional mail center had entire truckloads of mail unsorted due to Covid and the Christmas rush. Finally well after Christmas the initial replacement drive arrived and has preformed flawlessly for two video projects. Fledgling provided return slips for both the bad drive and the extra replacement. The drive works well and speeds up processing (rendering etc.) for my video projects. It would be nice if I could have gotten a 3 or 4TB ssd in it as 4k video eats drive space quickly. However by keeping and eye on things I have done 1 hour projects with no trouble. I would buy again.