How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100

Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by walterbell on Sunday April 17, 2022 @02:58PM (#31063272)

> 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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by davidgay on Sunday April 17, 2022 @03:39PM (#31063703)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by nrp on Sunday April 17, 2022 @04:08PM (#31063982)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by floatboth on Sunday April 17, 2022 @09:37PM (#31066387)

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...

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by Nextgrid on Sunday April 17, 2022 @04:04PM (#31063929)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by ResNet on Sunday April 17, 2022 @05:17PM (#31064602)

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 I trust that some day we'll get there if it's not superseded by some other standard by then.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/

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by walterbell on Sunday April 17, 2022 @05:59PM (#31064885)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by adam-a on Sunday April 17, 2022 @03:56PM (#31063870)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by beardedscotsman on Sunday April 17, 2022 @04:45PM (#31064325)

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.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by ghostly_s on Sunday April 17, 2022 @06:44PM (#31065240)

The latest SD standard has speeds comparable to CFExpress.

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Re:How to make your own CFexpress card for under $100 by anonymousiam on Sunday April 17, 2022 @05:47PM (#31064790)

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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