OWC Envoy Pro Portable, Bus-Powered USB 3.0 Enclosure for Apple Flash SSDs, (OWCMAU3ENPRPCI)

My daughter's 2017 MacBook Air had a 128 Gig SSD in it and she was running out of storage so I upgraded it to a new larger SSD. The original Apple (Samsung) SSD was just sitting in a drawer wasting away. I decide to repurpose it for our son to use as an external SSD for his school video projects. The problem was finding an enclosure for the proprietary SSD format that Apple uses. I finally found the OWC Envoy on the internet and then on Amazon for sale. Not cheap at nearly $90 it was the only one I could find guaranteed to work with the Apple format. Their may be others, but I couldn't find them. None-the-less, I pulled the trigger and purchased it.When the OWC Envoy showed up it was immediately clear that this is a high quality piece of kit. The aluminum enclosure is manufactured to precise specifications as noted by how it opens and closes. Absolutely no gaps between the two halves of the enclosure. You can't even tell that their are two halves. The electronics inside are extremely neat and clean ... no over use of adhesives or coatings. The enclosure has a large power-on indicator LCD light as well... and it is bright to say the least. The top and bottom are held in place by two screws that are hidden under one of the rubber feet at the bottom of the enclosure. Again, an unnecessary detail, but one they thought of. The cable is truly industrial strength and very sufficient length. Oh ... and did I mention that the enclosure comes in a fabric pouch! Like I said, this is one quality piece of kit.The only thing the end user needs to be aware of is the fact that this enclosure works only with specific Apple original SSD's. One the Amazon site, and their own website, they give a list of which ones it works with. It works great with our 128 Gig 2017 Original Apple MacBook Air SSD. (The SSD is actually produced by Samsung for Apple.) But be sue to do your research and check before purchasing this enclosure.In terms of formatting the SSD that's a whole other topic, but we had to use "View All" in the Apple Disk Utility to see that it's listed as OWC Enclosure as the main name of the SSD once it's installed into the enclosure. If you just go directly to Erase on the Disk Utility menu it won't show that way and you can't erase and reformat the SSD. Once you see OWC Enclosure you can chose that and erase your SSD and go to the format dropdown and go from there. Worked perfectly for us.If you are looking for an enclosure for your Original Apple SSD check this one out. Again, make sure your model and year of Mac is listed before you buy it. But the $90 was more than worth the investment and I can highly recommend this enclosure. 5 Stars!

I was considering giving 4 stars, but ended up going with 5. The device is pretty great: Really high quality look, feel, fit and finish. Compared to a Mac Mini (see my pictures) it's as high quality as any Apple item. My 2014 MacBook Pro got crushed like a paper envelope by a treadmill at the gym, and I saved the ssd drive from it. So I bought a used Mac Mini to replace it, and my old SSD has my Dropbox files.BUT MY GRIPE - can you guess it from my pictures? That fat black cable! In an Apple world where every cable is white and nothing is full 100% black (but "space gray"), it really sticks out badly. So now I'm on a search for a white USB 3.0 cable. I've already bought one that doesn't work and which I need to return.And continuing on that theme, I gotta say that the product photos showing the device standing right next to the laptop are basically a "lie", lol. First, because there's no ugly black cord in the picture :-) But secondly because the cord is actually very stiff and relatively short, and the housing is very light, and so there's NO WAY it'd just sit right next to your laptop like that. It's even a little hard to have it lay flat on the table because of the cord.

Looks like Apple made it, great quality easy to install the HD and it has worked flawlessly for me so far. It was quite expensive but the only option I could find. The one thing I find disturbing is that beyond the high price they have a $35 shipping fee which is a grotesque profit center for them in my opinion. The thing is as light as a feather but $35? Well I got over that as I REALLY needed the device.

I used this product after replacing the internal SSD on my Macbook. The old SSD was fine, I just wanted more space. The drive keeps having issues that cause it to stop mounting until I repartition it. The drive worked fine in the MacBook, so I must conclude that the enclosure is at fault. Still, its better than nothing.

This thing performs great, looks great, and it was easy to install my SSD into. Gives my old SSD new life when I upgraded from a 500GB to 2TB SSD in my mid-2015 MacBook Pro.Only 2 things:1. This thing is too expensive.2. The USB cable is way too thick and stiff. It probably weighs more than the drive enclosure itself. Makes it very difficult to position the drive nicely. The cord twists it so it isn’t flat or straight on my desk. They need to use a thinner, longer, and more flexible cable.

My MacBook Pro 13" (2015) died and wouldn't even turn on. So I wanted to get the data off the SSD drive. Being that the SSD drives in these models were the size of a memory chip, there were few options out there for an old model. This enclosure works perfectly and it's super compact and small. Faster speeds with USB 3.0 than traditional 2.0 speeds. Was able to access all my data. But even better, I've been using this as a portable boot drive. So everything I had prior with my MacOS is there. Love it.