GoKawiilI recently tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ handheld gaming PC, and came away incredibly impressed with its performance. Put simply, it has no rival in gaming performance, easily eclipsing all other handhelds on the market. Even better, the battery life is also stellar.
However, if there’s one thing that it could use, it’s a storage boost. Despite the $1,800 price tag as tested for our review unit, it still only includes a 1TB SSD. After installing a handful of games from Steam and from the Xbox Store, I was left with 128GB free of the 953GB available on the SSD.
I happen to have a 2TB PNY CS2150 PCIe 5.0 SSD that I used for testing a Thunderbolt 5 SSD enclosure with Thunderbolt 5 docks . Since it was currently sitting unused, I decided to take a stab at replacing the 1TB SSD in the Claw 8 EX AI+ with the CS2150 for some extra storage headroom.
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Getting the hardware setup for the transition
Fortunately for me, much of the legwork had already been finished. The CS2150 was already installed inside an Orico SSD Thunderbolt 5 enclosure, which would serve as my destination drive.
Although I could complete the entire transfer process using only the input methods on the Claw 8 EX AI+, it’s rather tedious to navigate the Windows 11 user interface and enter text on the 8-inch screen. So, I decided to use a Thunderbolt 5 dock to streamline the process. I used:
OWC Thunderbolt 5 Dock
Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse
Orico SSD Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with 2TB PNY CS2150 SSD installed
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