I bought a M2 NVMe drive (Samsung PM991) and an M2-to-USB-adapter.
I did not check thouroughly the adapter capability, it was not compatible for NVMe-drives but an NGFF. The drive was not recognized and the housing of the adapter was hot.
I disconnected the drive, bought a NVMe-compatible M2-USB-adapter, assembled it and now I'm getting a overcurrent error when I connect the drive (2 computer and 2 different cables checked).
When I connect the NVMe-compatible USB-adapter without a M2-disk it is correctly recognized as a Realtek RTL9201 USB adapter.
Now the question: is it possible that I had damaged the drive by inserting it in the wrong M2-USB adapter? Or was the M2-drive simply dead on arrival?
Or to be more precise: does a NVMe-drive get electrically damaged when inserted in a NGFF-only adapter?
I've been assembling computer hardware for more than 30 years now so I hope it was not a mishandling problem.
Update and solution:
the drive is ok and was not damaged by inserting it in a NGFF adapter. The second adapter I bought that said it was NVMe-compatible was obviously a fake and must be a NGFF adapter as well.
I bought a third NVMe adapter, the smaller part of the connector on the third adapter is different to both first and second adapter and now everything works as expected.
Best Answer
It is probably not possible at this point to concretely determine if defective as procured or, if you damaged it putting it in the wrong way.
Try returning the drive as defective as the company would not likely be able to concretely determine what happened.