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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

> There are several companies that produce CFexpress NVME adapters.

Neat. Is there a comparable NVME 2230 enclosure with USB-C external connector for use in laptop USB4/Thunderbolt ports?

That could combine SSD speed/reliability with the portability of a flash drive.

IIUC, CFExpress is just a PCIe interface in a different form factor, so the adapter in the post should basically just be a pass-through. Conversely, a USB-C adapter would require some level of protocol adaptation/electronics/etc.

Yep. We considered building an M.2 2230 NVMe USB-C adapter, but it was more efficient to just use a USB-C NAND Flash controller that interfaces the same types of flash that NVMe SSDs do. One less layer of translation.

Who's we? :) And what are the controllers called?

Plenty of USB-C SSDs on the market are actually M.2 in a trenchcoat, e.g. the nice looking black and orange SanDisk: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/9631os/sandisk_ex...

USB-C connectors can carry Thunderbolt which is essentially external PCI-Express, so the adapter might have to be very minimal if you’re fine with it only being compatible with Thunderbolt-capable devices.

A Thunderbolt flash drive in the form factor of a USB-C YubiKey 5C Nano [0] would be the ultimate solution for me. I trust that some day we'll get there if it's not superseded by some other standard by then.

[0] https://www.yubico.com/us/product/yubikey-5c-nano/

Is there a USB-C flash drive smaller than the 2022 Samsung USB 3.2 Gen1, https://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/memory-storage...? For USB-A there is Sandisk Cruzer Fit similar to Yubikey Nano, but most USB-C flash drives are larger.

I hope CFexpress replaces SD card slots on laptops. I’d love to boost or swap the storage in my in mine but sd cards are so slow and.

This needs more camera manufacturers adding CFExpress over SD cards. However, there are a large number of other devices such as audio recorders using SD, so this could be wishful thinking for now at least.

The latest SD standard has speeds comparable to CFExpress.

I don't know about 2230, but I have used this with the 2280 form factor.

I have used this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z8Y85GL/

It works, but it runs hot so I added one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WJVFQQ9

I've tested it with 8TB nvme flash. Don't know if it can support anything higher.

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