AI-driven demand has pushed prices to insanely high levels for the best external SSDs and the best flash drives — if you can find those sought-after models in stock at all these days. But if you’re a long-time PC builder or you've upgraded your laptop's boot drive in the last decade, there’s a good chance you have an older drive of some kind sitting in a drawer or in a closet, doing nothing more useful than collecting dust.

Whether it's a SATA SSD, an OEM M.2 from an older laptop, or even a spinning hard drive, you can turn any of these into handy external storage by picking up one of the best SSD and hard drive enclosures, with some options selling for less than $10 when on sale. In most cases, you won't even have to mess with a screwdriver. Just open the enclosure, drop in your old drive, and you're good to go.

Of course, the drive you have and the enclosure you choose will dictate how fast your DIY external drive will be. But speed doesn't matter much if you're just doing simple backups or transferring a few files. And even a SATA SSD is pretty speedy for most mainstream tasks. If you're using the drive to edit lots of 4K video, doing animation work, or running local LLMs, you'll need a faster, newer PCIe 4 or 5 M.2 SSD and an enclosure that can deliver as much bandwidth as your fastest USB-C port can handle.

To break down the kind of speed you can expect from digging out an older hard drive or SSD and putting it to work as external storage, we installed several older drives (and even a speedy recent PCIe 5 model) into various enclosures and put them through some of the same tests we use for testing brand-new drives. And we'll compare those results to speedy dedicated external SSDs and flash drives, to see what, if any, speed you might lose.

Of course, every individual drive model will have its own performance variances, as we see when testing internal SSDs, but the results and charts below will give you a sense of what to expect, generally, from whatever class or type of drive you happen to have at your disposal, and whether it's speedy enough for your needs.

I grabbed four different drives, three of which were older drives of various types that I found in my storage drawer or in older enclosures, and ran some of the tests that we typically run for external storage reviews, to see how they perform compared to a high-end flash drive and a fast external SSD.

Drives

▶️ Western Digital WD5000BPVT 2.5-inch hard drive (500GB)

This 2011-era 2.5-inch hard drive either came from an old laptop or was something left over from testing in a previous job. I've held onto it, in part, as a photography prop to show storage options in PC cases. It's clearly not a fast drive, but a good representation of the lowest-tier option to build your own portable storage drive.

▶️ Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch SATA SSD (512GB)

I originally intended to use my old Crucial MX100 2.5-inch SATA drive for this test (as seen in the main image, above), but when I plugged it in (for the first time in at least five years), it was effectively dead, as it wasn't recognized by any PC I connected it to. So I pivoted to a Samsung 850 Pro, a slightly higher-end drive from the same year (2014). It's sure to be much faster than the spinning-platter hard drive, but as a SATA drive, it's going to top out around 550 Mb/s.

▶️ Intel 660p PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD (2TB)

I picked up a 2TB Intel 660p back in 2019 for $109 (the first time SSDs got really cheap), to use as an external drive. I eventually replaced it with a 4TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus that I bought for $199 about a year ago (the last time storage was cheap). It's rated to 1,800 MB/s read and write at that capacity, so it's good for any 10 Gbps or 20 Gbps enclosures, which is why we tested it in both. But if you're after USB4 or Thunderbolt 3+ speeds, you'll want something faster.

▶️ Gigabyte Aorus 12000 PCIe 5.0 SSD (1TB)

If you want to put together an external drive that's as fast as reasonably possible with a single M.2, you're probably not going to have a drive like that sitting unused in a drawer. So to see what is possible with an SSD that you might pay for, specifically to build an external drive with the fastest possible speeds, I grabbed the Aorus 12000 PCIe 5.0 SSD from Gigabyte. At the 1TB capacity I tested, its rated sequential read (11,700 MB/s) and write (9,500 MB/s) speeds aren't going to be a significant bottleneck, even if you opt for a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure.

Enclosures

▶️ Orico 2139U3-V1 Clear HDD/SSD enclosure (5 Gbps)

There are loads of affordable enclosures for 2.5-inch SATA hard drives and SSDs. You'll want one with UASP support for faster transfers if you are or plan to ever install an SSD, and most are plastic these days. I opted for this one both because I like its transparent shell (so I can see what drive is housed inside) and because it often goes on sale for less than $10. It's $10.99 at full price, but I paid around $8 for it. It snaps together without the need for any screws, which is convenient. But if you're carrying the drive around regularly, I could see the cover falling off now and then.

$8.99 at Amazon

▶️ Lemorele SD3L NVMe M.2 SSD enclosure (10 Gbps)

Affordable M.2 SSD enclosures are also easy to find online. I chose this one, because, again, it sells for around $10. Plus it has a built-in USB-C and USB-A port (one on each end), so you'll never need to fish for a cable, making it kind of like a large flash drive. It also lets you drop in a drive without a screwdriver or other tools. Its main downside is that it doesn't support older SATA M.2 drives, so it's only good for NVMe models.

$9.49 at Amazon

▶️ Asus ROG Strix Aiolos NMVe/SATA M.2 SSD enclosure (20 Gbps)

This premium metal enclosure is also tool-free, and helpfully supports both NVMe and SATA M.2 drives – the former at speeds up to 20 Gbps so long as you have a system with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 port. It also has some flashy RGB and includes a carrying strap that can make fishing it out of your bag a little easier.

$65.22 at Amazon

▶️ OWC Express 1M2 USB4 / 40Gbps enclosure

An enclosure meant for fast PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 SSDs, this premium model is effectively a large hunk of aluminum with fins for heat dissipation. And when your drive could be slinging data at up to 5,000 MB/s, you'll need that kind of cooling to keep speeds from dropping due to heat. It's far from the cheapest or the smallest, but if you're after some of the fastest external speeds possible from a single drive, you don't want to skimp on something smaller and cheaper. And I prefer this kind of larger, passive cooling over something with a tiny, whiny fan.

$78.99 at Amazon

Comparison of external SSDs and flash drives

To get a sense of how our DIY external drives compare to retail external storage, we will include results in our charts from a trio of current options. On the 10 Gbps front, there's the 1TB Kingston Dual Portable SSD (in a flash drive form factor with USB-C and USB-A ports) that was selling for $226 when this was written.

Stepping things up to 20 Gbps, we have the Crucial X10, a compact drive that we tested in 4TB trim. That capacity doesn't currently appear to be available, but the 2TB option was $304 at Amazon. The key consideration with this (and any 20 Gbps drive or enclosure) is that you'll need a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen2 2x2 port to achieve top speeds. Even if your system has a technically faster USB4 or Thunderbolt port, there's a good chance your drive will be capped at 10 Gbps, because the two-lane 10 Gbps configuration in Gen 2 2x2 differs electrically from USB4 (which is itself built around Thunderbolt 3). Unless you have a specific need, it's smarter to opt for a USB4 or Thunderbolt drive or enclosure at this point.

Speaking of USB4, we also included our favorite drive of that flavor, Corsair's EX400U. It sports a magnetic back for attaching to some phones (and various other things with iron in them), and was selling for over $600 in the 2TB capacity we tested when this was written. Naturally, storage prices are in flux right now, so prices may be different.

Enclosure and drive testing

We tested our drives and enclosures on our USB4-equipped storage test PC, running a Ryzen 5 7600X CPU and Asus' ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard.

▶️ Synthetic Testing: CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings. The sequential read and write test effectively amounts to a best-case scenario, which often closely aligns with the read /write specs that drive makers put in their specs and on the product box.

Unsurprisingly, the 2.5-inch hard drive in our Orico enclosure lands last here, putting up reads and writes a bit below 90 MB/s. That's OK for incremental backups and if you only occasionally need to carry around files. But the Samsung 850 Pro is 4-5 times faster in the same enclosure. Speeds below 500 MB/s might seem slow compared to modern SSDs, but it's perfectly serviceable for most tasks, and even running programs.

If you are regularly moving around terabytes of data, though, you'll want something faster. Intel's 660p passed 1,000 MB/s on this test in reads and writes. That's a little slower than our 10 Gbps flash drive, especially on reads, but close enough that you wouldn't notice the difference between the two without running benchmarks.

Dropping that same 660p SSD into the 20 Gbps Asus ROG enclosure, it got close to, but not quite over 2,000 MB/s. The Crucial X10 was about 100 MB faster, but again that's about a 5% difference. So if you have a decent PCIe 3.0 drive sitting around that you can drop into an enclosure, you can get performance that's very close to the much costlier competition.

Stepping up to our PCIe 5.0 Aorus SSD in the large aluminum OWC enclosure, reads and writes topped 3,700 MB/s. On writes, that actually beat Corsair's excellent EX400U, although the OWC-enclosed Aorus did lag about 10% behind on reads. And even if you're buying a bare 2TB PCIe 5 drive and the OWC enclosure, it will cost much less than the Corsair's current $600-plus for the same capacity. A 10% performance difference isn't bad, considering.

The CrystalDiskMark 4K read / write test is more of a measure of how well a drive handles a plethora of small files, the kind of workload you might encounter when running a program, an OS, or a game directly from the drive.

On this test, we see the flash drives are poor choices for running programs or an OS directly from the drive – the 850 Pro doesn't look great on writes, either, although it's a drive that I’ve used as a boot SSD in the past. But the Intel drive in the 10 and 20 Gbps enclosure did better here than the Crucial X10 drive.

On the fast 40 Gbps front, our Aorus test drive and OWC's enclosure did better on reads, but the Corsair EX400U was much faster with small file writes. In reality though, everything but the sub-10 Gbps drives and the Kingston Dual drive should handle small file performance well in most use cases.

▶️ Transfer Rates: DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 50 GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive. This is a separate drive from our boot drive to avoid slowdowns due to the operating system background tasks that can be difficult to control.

In this real-world file transfer test, we see somewhat similar, though slower results as we saw with the synthetic sequential test above. Things look better for the Kingston flash drive here, but our 660p Intel drive in the 10 Gbps enclosure is still faster (it jas a thermal advantage being a much larger drive, physically). And the same drive in the 20 Gbps Asus enclosure again beats the 20 Gbps Crucial drive — and significantly when it comes to reads.

Looking at our USB4 OWC enclosure with the Aorus PCIe Gen 5 drive, it impressively blows away the Corsair EX400U. Both drives are fast, but our DIY USB4 drive is nearly 38% faster on reads and almost 70% faster on writes. I suspect some of the advantage comes from the fact that the OWC enclosure is about 5x larger and entirely made out of aluminum, while the Corsair drive has a metal top, but otherwise the shell is mostly plastic.

Final Thoughts

Older drives don’t lose much speed in the right enclosure

We could do a few more tests, but one thing is clear. Depending on what spare drive you have on hand and the enclosure you use, you don't necessarily have to lose any speed if you opt for building your own external storage enclosure rather than buying a retail external drive. Of course, if all you have is a hard drive, you're going to get external hard drive speeds, which are mostly good for basic backup and / or moving a few files between devices. If you have an old SATA SSD, dropping it into the same 2.5-inch enclosure should give you speeds 3-5 times faster than a portable hard drive, which is plenty fast enough to be useful for mainstream tasks. And if all you need to do is buy an enclosure for $8-$15 and drop in an old drive, that's easily the best value in external storage these days. If you have an old SATA M.2 SSD, getting an enclosure for it for less than $20 is a similarly excellent money-saving option.

If you're lucky enough to have an old PCIe 3 NVMe M.2 drive hanging around that you can drop into a 10 Gbps or 20 Gbps enclosure, you can get speeds nearly as fast and, in some cases faster, than competing drives that cost hundreds of dollars.

And if you truly need the fastest external storage speeds, even if you have to buy a 1TB or 2TB PCIe 4 or PCIe 5 drive and a sub-$100 enclosure, you can still achieve comparable or better speed than some of the fastest USB4 options, for hundreds less – although you'll still likely have to spend a few hundred dollars to get there.

In short, we may lament the fact that component price hikes have driven up the cost of components to the point that it's usually cheaper to buy one of the best prebuilt PCs these days than building one yourself. But it's still often cheaper to build your own external SSD than to buy one at today's inflated prices. And if you happen to have a suitable drive sitting around that you aren't using, one you can insert into an enclosure, you could easily save hundreds of dollars. Just remember to check the drive's health before using it to store any irreplaceable data. Because if your old drive had an active life as a boot drive in years past before you replaced it, it could be on its last legs, and no one wants to piece together an external drive only to have it fail after a few weeks or months of use.

Japanese PC peripherals and accessories stalwart Elecom has announced that it is pulling out of the Blu-ray drive market. The Osaka-based outfit, established in 1986, has pulled the plug on nine drives. That’s the entirety of its external USB-attached drive portfolio. In an official notice of discontinuation (machine translation), the firm apologized for any inconvenience its decision would cause and said the drives would stop being sold on June 30, 2026, depending on stock levels.

Removing these nine drives from retail could leave quite a vacuum. Elecom’s range was an example of micro-segmentation, with these nine drives differing in various ways with permutations of USB-A, and/or USB-C interfaces, colors, M-Disc support, software package, and it even had a model specifically for Macs. It is rather drastic to cancel them all and not leave at least one of the more popular options available. At least some of the drives appear to have been branded as ‘Logitec’ (not Logitech, which is known as Logicool in Japan).

Another one bites the dust

In recent months, we have gotten the impression that firms have been dropping established Blu-ray hardware products like hot potatoes. LG and Sony have publicly announced their exit from various Blu-ray player and recorder segments. The latter also stopped recordable Blu-ray media production – an important factor for the broader optical drive industry.

In a move rather similar to Elecom’s, Japan-based peripherals maker Buffalo also recently announced it was withdrawing from the Blu-ray disk drive market. However, the firm was quick to follow up with a statement to Tom’s Hardware, reassuring the readership that it was “fully committed to supplying optical drives to the American market, and our DVD/Blu-ray drive products are anticipated to remain available for the near future.” We note that Buffalo still has a trio of external Blu-ray drives available on Amazon.com starting from $99.

Blu-ray optical drives entered the consumer sphere at CES 2006, so has been around for over two decades. In its early days, it successfully saw off the HD DVD format, and it remains the format of choice for movie and TV buffs who want to keep their favorites in a physical library, able to dip in and enjoy the ultimate quality whenever they are in the mood.

The voracious hardware demands on AI hyperscalers have been driving up prices (and driving down availability) of all kinds of PC hardware for half a year now. If you’re after a new external SSD, prices have so far nearly doubled from their all-time lows. But compared to the price of RAM, an RTX 5090, or an internal SSD, spending 70-80% more for external storage than you would have paid this time last year is a relative bargain.

And if you do need a new external drive, you might want to buy one soon. Because new drive launches in 2026 seem to be few and far between, as we should expect given the current demands on the supply of flash storage. And it seems likely that the few companies that are launching new external drives may be having to make do with some… less-than-ideal NAND. Exhibit A: Take a look at the sustained writes from this Orico drive I recently reviewed.

In our real-world file transfer test, it was at least in the range of other drives of its class.

But when it comes to sustained write speeds, the results were the worst I’ve seen for any SSD since I started testing external storage for Tom’s Hardware. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.

Keep in mind that we tested a 512GB review sample, so the faster SLC cache will be larger on higher-capacity models. But if and when you do enough fast writing to hit the native NAND speed, you are looking at writes in the 60-80 MB/s range – with occasional dips below 50 MB/s.

This performance was so low that I reached out to Orico to make sure this was the expected speed and we weren’t dealing with a faulty drive. A representative told me that, while higher-capacity models would have more SLC cache and perform slightly better overall, “the product is functioning normally and there are no quality issues.”

In short, the drive was working as expected, while delivering sustained write speeds that are worse than hard drive write speeds, and even worse than many of the best flash drives we’ve tested. I had to get a closer look.

Opening the BookDrive

Prying the BookDrive open, the controller for the internal M.2 drive is a DRAMless Maxiotek map1202C, which Google tells me has been used in various drives going back as far as 2019. I couldn’t identify the maker of the flash, though. Neither the two alphanumeric strings silkscreened on the NAND packages showed up in search results, and there doesn’t seem to be another label underneath what’s on the surface of the chips.

But regardless of who made them, the flash in this “new” external SSD has the slowest write performance of any solid-state drive I’ve tested in at least a decade – and possibly ever. Even Intel’s 2008-era X25-M internal SSD managed to hit 72.2 MB/s writes in our testing — I didn’t start testing SSDs until sometime in 2009.

External storage in 2026

Granted, the surprisingly bad performance of one recent drive may not definitively tell us a whole lot about all the external storage drives launching in 2026. But we’re already in mid-March, and Sandisk is the only major SSD company I’m aware of that has announced new portable drives this year. We’re awaiting those SSDs for testing, and I fully expect them to perform much better than the Orico drive above.

But Sandisk’s new mid-range (20 Gbps) Extreme V3 drive sells for $459.99 direct from SanDisk (supposedly marked down from $574.99). And given the 20 Gbps interface bandwidth cap, how much better could that new drive be than Crucial’s X10 Pro drive that I tested (and was generally impressed by) back in 2023? Parent company Micron may have publicly ditched its consumer-focused Crucial brand in favor of the lucrative AI market late last year, but the X10 Pro is still readily available, and at a current $259 for the 2TB model, it’s priced $200 (just shy of 44%) less than Sandisk’s brand-new drive at the same capacity.

It seems pretty safe to assume that any new external SSDs from big-name brands will be priced similarly to Sandisk’s recently announced drives. Because, from a business standpoint, any stock that flash companies are holding back from their eager AI customers to put into consumer products is probably a financial risk. And any new product from smaller drive makers (generally those who aren’t making their own flash), if there are many new products at all, will have to make do with whatever scrap flash is available that both AI companies and the flash makers themselves don’t want. Chances are, both the performance and the endurance of the flash in those drives will be questionable at best.

Buy soon, and consider an older SSD

In short, if you need a new solid-state external drive, I would advise looking at something that came out more than six months ago (before the rise of AI hyperscaler demand), that has been thoroughly tested (by Tom’s Hardware or some other site you trust), and that is still available at a reasonable price. Our Best External SSD page has six great solid-state options that we’ve tested.

Because who knows how long the stock of those older drives is going to last? While some new drives this year may be a little faster, they’re almost certainly going to be significantly more expensive than what’s available now. Any new drives from smaller companies may fail to meet even basic SSD performance expectations from several years ago. If you wait long enough and the market doesn’t improve, you may be stuck buying a drive that both costs much more and performs much worse than what’s available now.

Fake hard drives have become more common over the past decade or so, as online marketplaces have connected third-party sellers and buyers. That's exactly what happened to Reddit user u/BulyudiPorti, who purchased a Seagate external hard drive — or at least thought they did — and received a hollow drive with barely anything inside.

datahoarder from r/DataHoarder/comments/1nykjtr/fake_seagate_external_drives

As seen above, the user opened the drive only to find a small circuit board driving a microSD Card, glued to the chassis with a piece of metal underneath. An identical metal block is also attached to the top lid to give it a false sense of heft, so it feels real at first glance. The user echoes that sentiment, saying how "everything about it looked and felt legit," up until the disassembly revealed what was really lying under the hood.

No further details were shared, such as where the drive was purchased, but we can see it's packaged as a 1TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim, a fairly common option on the market. The innards of this model reveal a 2.5-inch SATA hard drive inside the enclosure, with a SATA-to-USB adapter at the top. So, it's safe to say that seeing a sticky SD card hastily strapped together in there instead confirms you've been scammed.

Lots of commenters pointed out that this is easily avoidable: all you need to do is buy from reputable vendors or marketplaces with stringent consumer protection laws. The original poster never replied, possibly lending credence to the narrative that they perhaps got it from somewhere disreputable, with one commenter mocking, "Wdym the $29.90 24TB drive is a scam?" Since there are no conclusive details, we must reserve our judgment.

Stay vigilant out there, no matter where you're buying from. If a deal looks way too enticing, it's most likely a scam, and bad actors are often ten steps ahead of you to game the system out of issuing returns. However, even buying from reputable platforms can sometimes end badly. Just recently, someone received a literal brick in lieu of the RTX 5080 they ordered from Amazon, and that's just one story out of countless others. Check out our roundup of the best external drives to inform yourself of what's actually worth buying. We also regularly scour for deals so you can score a legit discount.

Storage enthusiasts should check out this deal on Seagate's large 24TB External HDD drive. Arriving in these pre-Memorial Day deals, this large storage option works out as only $11.60 per Terabyte. The option is also there to "shuck" these drives if you feel comfortable doing so, and install them in a NAS or home server. This will obviously void any limited warranties, plus your mileage may vary on what drive is inside the enclosure.

Available from Best Buy, you can save $50 on the list price of the Seagate Expansion Desktop 24TB HDD, now only $279. The large 24TB capacity means more room for your files, and with the USB 3.0 bandwidth, the transfer speeds won't be horrendous, although they will pale in comparison to more modern SSD speeds.

The Seagate Expansion external HDD comes in a rugged black plastic chassis measuring about 7x2x5 inches. The unit is designed to stand vertically, with small feet on the bottom and a power and USB cable connection on the rear. This unit needs external power to run, an AC power adapter is included in the packaging.

Everything you need to set up this drive is included in the box with the Seagate Expansion HDD. Packaged inside is an 18-inch USB 3.0 cable and a power cable, and a power adapter. Also, with the purchase of this Seagate external HDD, you have the option of using Seagate's Rescue Data Recovery Services software for data backups.

Secure data storage manufacturer iStorage has announced new versions of its encrypted desktop hard drives, the diskAshur DT3 and diskAshur DT2. Both drives offer PIN authentication and hardware-level encryption. They will now be available with up to 26TB capacity, making them suitable for users looking for high-capacity storage with enhanced security measures.

The diskAshur DT3 is notably the world's first encrypted hard drive currently undergoing certification for FIPS 140-3 Level 3, an updated U.S. standard for cryptographic security. For context, FIPS 140-2 certified drives (like the diskAshur DT2) are currently the standard for securing sensitive data across sectors like government, defense, finance, and healthcare.

However, FIPS 140-2 is expected to be phased out by September 2026 in favor of FIPS 140-3. The new standard is said to offer improved security features such as tamper resistance, enhanced encryption, better key management, and protection against side-channel attacks, at the same time aligning with global regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

The diskAshur DT3 is also TAA compliant and features FIPS PUB 197-validated AES-XTS 256-bit hardware encryption and a Common Criteria EAL5+ certified secure microprocessor. On the other hand, the diskAshur DT2 is also quite secure, featuring a Common Criteria EAL5+ certified microprocessor and accreditations from NCSC CPA, FIPS 140-2 Level 3, NLNCSA BSPA, and NATO Restricted.

Spotted today is a great-value combo deal on a dual storage solution for a PC, Console, or Laptop with both a speedy 1TB Gen 4.0 SSD and an additional 20TB of external HDD storage. You might even want to shuck the external drive if that's your thing, but you'd definitely want to check out what's inside first and be aware that it will 100% void any warranty.

This fantastic combo deal is available at Newegg, where the WD Elements 20TB external HDD and 1TB WD_Black SN770 SSD are paired together for just $279. The original list price for just the WD Elements HDD drive was $529 alone, and the current price of the 1TB SN770 is $73, so it's easy to see the savings in this combo deal.

We reviewed the WD_Black SN770 and awarded it an Editor's Choice for its stellar performance metrics when it launched in 2022. Now, this 1TB Gen 4.0 NVMe PCIe 2280 M.2 SSD is included for free with the purchase of the 20TB WD Elements external hard drive.

This external 20TB HDD attaches to your system via a USB 3.0 interface with a Micro-USB Type B connector. Performance expectations should be tempered, as traditional HDDs over a 5Gb/s USB cable are unlikely to break any transfer speed records. However, if you require large storage volumes and aren't in a hurry, this is a perfect compromise between price and performance. The enclosure comes with an AC adaptor to power the enclosure.

It's Cyber Monday 2024 and getting near your last chance to pick up some great deals on HDDs, whether it's a large external drive with an enclosure for easily transporting and backing up your media to large-capacity drives for popping into your favorite NAS for beefy back-up capacity for you LAN network media and larger data files. Hard disk drives may feel old school, and they surely aren't as fast as the latest SSDs, but you just can't beat the price per GB cost and reliability of large-capacity HDDs.

Over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, we've been keeping a keen eye out for all the best HDD deals on some of our favorite HDD picks. With prices as low as only 2 cents per GB on high-reliability NAS drives such as the 20TB WD Red Pro at $319, there are some great bargains to be had.

We've curated the best HDD deals from across the web this Cyber Monday and curated them into a handy table with a rough idea of the cents per GB cost of each drive. Check back frequently as we keep this table updated as we uncover more great offers on HDDs from retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, B&H Photo, and Best Buy.

A note of caution: If you are concerned about getting the fastest performance possible, avoid drives with SMR recording technology. Slow SMR tech is inconsistent and is common in cheap drives, while CMR recording ensures consistent, fast performance. That said, if you are just using your hard drive for archival purposes, backups, videos, or pictures, SMR is often just fine. Just be aware of the tradeoff, but SMR drives do often comes at stiff discounts.

Among these drives, our favorite Cyber Monday HDD deals are:

We are working hard to find the best computer deals for you this Cyber Monday. If you're looking for more savings, check out our Cyber Monday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

Earlier today, Gigabyte unveiled its first Thunderbolt 5 add-in card, the Gigabyte Thunderbolt 5, which uses an Intel JHL9580 Thunderbolt 5 controller over the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. It features three Mini-DisplayPort ports and two standard USB Type-C ports that are compliant with the Thunderbolt 5 specification. The add-in card also bundles three Mini DisplayPort cables and three internal header cables (two Thunderbolt header cables and one USB 2.0 header cable).

By default, Thunderbolt 5 operates at up to 80 Gigabits per second, twice the speed of Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4. However, in select scenarios, particularly when connected to external displays, Thunderbolt 5 can also boost bandwidth up to 120 gigabits per second. Gigabyte advertises support for daisy-chaining up to 10 devices (5 devices per main USB-C port) and the USB-PD (Power Delivery) 3.1 standard with up to 100 watts per port.

With the debut of Thunderbolt 5 add-in cards like this, users with at least a PCIe 4.0 motherboard can opt into the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem, even if their default motherboard I/O doesn't support it. For particularly SFF (Small Form Factor) or thin client PCs, Thunderbolt 5 expansion alongside utilities like external GPU docking stations could be key to providing access to hardware power that would otherwise be impossible for the form factor, though typically, if you have an open PCIe slot you can install an actual graphics card.

More importantly, desktop users who want to opt into Thunderbolt 5 would likely do so for the standard's external storage capabilities. The existence of external Thunderbolt 5 drives like the previously-covered Sabrent Rocket XTRM5 and the OWC Envoy Ultra will be best utilized for many desktop users with add-in cards like this one.

Interestingly, these drives are only rated for around 48 to 50 gigabits (6 GB) read speeds, so future external Thunderbolt 5 drives should actually get even faster than these options. And as long as you have a reasonably recent motherboard supporting PCIe 4 (pretty much every motherboard made since 2019), you should also be able to enjoy these superior external storage drives.

Despite the rise of cloud-based storage, USB flash drives have been the go-to option for those who need local, pocketable access to important files for decades. These tiny drives are still sold nearly everywhere (including at chain drug stores, often at highly inflated prices), despite companies like Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox making online storage a convenient and often free (depending on capacity) alternative.

But because flash drives often work just fine for a decade or more, you could be hanging onto one that’s pitifully slow by today’s standards, and too cramped to hold all the data you need here in 2026. Capacities of up to 2 TB are an option with several recent flash drive models (and 1 TB is common), and the performance of the fastest flash drives approaches that of some of the best external SSDs.

We’ve tested dozens of recent flash drives, from leading brands and lesser-known alternatives, and listed the best USB flash drives below, to help narrow down your pocket-friendly storage search. That said, if fast performance is key to your workflow and you can deal with a device that's just a little bit bigger and requires a cable, one of the best external SSDs is usually a better buy.

Also, if you have a spare M.2 SSD from upgrading a laptop or desktop, you can save some money building your own external SSD by mounting an old drive in an enclosure.

 Best Flash Drives You Can Buy Today

Best Fast, Affordable Flash Drive

Just like its roomier 1TB variant, the 256GB Kingston DataTraveler Max is a speed demon in the flash drive world. At $30-$35, Kingston’s 256GB drive is a great balance of speed, affordability, and capacity for those who don’t want to spend much more on a roomier, somewhat faster alternative.

Available with either a USB-C or USB-A connector, the 256GB DataTraveler Max performed nearly as well as its more spacious 1TB sibling in our PCMark, DiskBench, and CrystalDiskMark tests, making it one of the fastest flash drives we’ve tested. And it’s also fairly slim, making it easy to slip into a pocket.

Just note that, if you’re a desktop user and you opt for the model with the USB-C port, you will likely have problems plugging the drive into rear USB-C ports on the motherboard. Thanks to the two-piece plastic slide mechanism that protects the drive’s port when not in use, the USB-C connector is slightly too short to plug into most motherboards successfully.

I tried this with three boards I have on hand and had the same issue with each. But, if your PC case has a front USB-C port or you’re using a laptop, this shouldn’t be an issue. I only had this problem with rear motherboard ports and this drive.

Those looking for similar performance and price without the USB-C connector issues should instead consider the 256GB TeamGroup X1 Max. It has a USB-C port on one end (that we didn't have problems connecting to a motherboard) and a USB-A port on the other. Its performance is also excellent, but the caps on either in don't fit that snugly and will be easy to lose.

Fastest Flash Drive

The line between flash drives and external SSDs is increasingly indistinct, and SK hynix's Tube T31 blurs it even more, by putting an actual M.2 drive on a small PCB and shoving it into a somewhat bulky but surprisingly speedy flash drive form factor.

Capacity is limited to just 512GB and 1TB models, but this is the fastest "SSD stick" we've tested yet, surpassing Transcend's ESD310C and Kingston's DataTraveler Max drives on most of our tests. Priced at $85-$90 when we wrote this, it's also slightly more affordable than those drives at the 1TB capacity.

If you're after a simple portable drive and don't need 20 Gbps speeds or a capacity higher than 1TB, it's a great choice. Its bulk might get in the way of nearby ports on a desktop or hub. But on a laptop, the USB-A port (if you still have one) is likely set apart from other USB ports. And on a desktop, you probably have several USB-A ports to choose from, unlike USB-C.

Read: SK hynix Tube T31 Review

Fastest USB-C Flash Drive

Much like the SK hynix Tube T31 drive (which is generally slightly faster in testing but also larger) Adata's SC750 blurs the line between flash drive and SSD, by essentially putting a retractable USB port on a small SSD inside a plastic housing, making for a compact flash drive that beats nearly every competing drive that doesn't require an external cable.

In our testing, the 10Gbps-rated Adata SC750 beat the Tube T31 in PCMark 10, came in second in reads in our 10GB DiskBench read test, and was faster than the hynix drive in writes. Adata's drive didn't look quite as good in our CrystalDiskMark results, but overall it's generally the second-fastest drive we've tested in this category.

And unlike the Tube T31, it uses USB-C rather than the older USB-A port. So if you want to plug your drive into a phone or you have a laptop with only USB-C ports, it should be at the top of your list for convenient and speedy external storage.

In terms of price, the ADATA SC750 may cost slihgtly more or slightly less than SK hynix's drive, depending on whether the latter is on sale. But given the similar performance and what generally seems to be about a $10 price difference between the two drives, if you're considering both drives, you should probably make your choice based on which port (USB-C for Adata, USB-C for SK hynix) is the most convenient for your use cases.

Read: Adata SC750 review

Best Cheap and Tiny Flash Drive

If you're after a drive that's small enough to leave plugged into your laptop most of the time, or you just want something you can clip to your keychain and forget about until you need it, Samsung's FIT Plus stands out. The 128GB model we tested sells for $18, and when we wrote this the top-capacity 256GB model was selling for just $25 direct from Samsung.

At less than an inch long, including its USB-A connector, it will stick out of your port less than an inch when plugged in. And it has a hole for a lanyard, it feels solid – in fact, this sub-$20 drive feels better than the most expensive drives on our list. And Samsung says it's rated to survive in up to 1 meter of water for 72 hours. In case it doesn't, the company covers the drive with a generous five-year warranty.

That being said, our testing shows this tiny drive is in a much lower performance class than the bigger, pricier, roomier models. On our real-world DiskBench 10GB test, the Samsung Fit Plus read our files at a decent 319.7 MB/s, but could only write at 58.4 MB/s.

That's just over half the read speed and less than 15% of the write speed of Kingston's 1TB DataTraveler Max. That said, the Samsung drive's performance was still significantly better than most of the drives we tested with capacities less than 1TB. SanDisk's Extreme Pro 128GB wrote our test files about twice as fast, but it costs nearly 2.5 times as much and is more than six times longer.

Best High Capacity Flash Drive

There are loads of insanely cheap no-name 2TB flash drives available on Amazon and sites like Aliexpress if you like throwing your money at scammy garbage tech – but the 2TB Buffalo SSD-PUT is real and (at $160 when we wrote this) a surprisingly good deal. It's cheaper than most larger 2TB external SSDs (although some of those will definitely be faster), and significantly smaller (although still bulky for a flash drive).

Overall, this drive did slightly better on our benchmarks than its 1TB sibling, meaning it doesn't beat or often quite match the Kingston DataTraveler Max. But for the price -- and especially considering it's one of a very few 2TB drives available from a known brand, this is a very impressive performer.

On the minus side, the drive has the same creaky, cheap-feeling plastic shell as the 1TB model, and it's nearly an inch wide, making it a tight fit on some laptops where the ports are placed close together. But you get a roomy 2TB of pocket-friendly storage at fast speeds (for a flash drive), and a bundled USB-C adapter should your device not have a USB-A port handy.

If Buffalo would just release this drive in solid-feeling metal housing (or even a solid-feeling plastic one), this would arguably be the perfect flash drive for those who need lots of storage in their pocket.

Flash Drive Shopping Considerations

How We Test Flash Drives

Our current testbed consists of an ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite motherboard and a Core i5-12600K CPU. This system gives us native Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 port via the front header (connected through Corsair's 5000D Airflow case).

All of our benchmark testing was done with drives plugged into the system's rear USB 3.1 Gen 2/ USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports. The Aorus board we used has one Type-C and one Type-A port rated for these speeds, so we were able to accommodate drives with both types of connectors.

To get a sense of how these flash drives compare to a larger (though still usually pocketable) external SSD, we also ran our flash drive tests on the Mushkin CarbonX, a 1TB External SSD that's rated to similar speeds as the fastest flash drives, or "Up to 1,000 MBps."

This drive is no longer widely available, but you can expect similar performance from some of the more affordable options on our Best External SSDs list.

Given external SSDs' general ability to perform better on longer-duration workloads (and particularly small file writes, which we'll see shortly in testing), an external SSD is often a better option if you are going to frequently be moving large amounts of files on and off your drive, and especially if you plan to run programs from your portable storage device.

The larger surface area and improved controllers and components of external SSDs tend to make them better at those kinds of tasks, though there are of course noticeable performance differences in that product category as well.

Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 10GB dataset. We copy 1,204 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

A Note on Temperatures

If you've used a flash drive in the past and written lots of data on it, there's a good chance you've grabbed it to yank it out when you're done and winced at the hot – or at the very least surprisingly warm – exterior. We've certainly dealt with uncomfortably toasty drives before, but perhaps that's becoming an issue of the past.

We initially checked 10 of the drives we tested, and none felt hot to the touch after writing large amounts of data. We used an IR thermometer to check the temperature of several during a long 100GB write test.

After several minutes of sustained writing, the Transcend and PNY drives got the warmest, but were still under 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid-feeling metal-clad Orico drive got up to just 83.4 degrees, and the similarly solid OWC Envoy Pro Mini remained the coolest, at just 78.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The tiny Samsung Fit Plus, which barely has any surface area compared to the other drives, topped out at 82.1 degrees in our testing.

For future drives, we will only measure surface temperatures when a drive feels unusually warm during testing.

Other Flash Drives We Tested

Kingston Dual Portable SSD (1TB): This dual-port 10 Gbps drive from Kingston delivers convenience, versatility, and chart-topping synthetic and sequential read performance, outpacing our favorite USB-A-only SK hynix Tube T31 in some of our tests.

But it isn't quite the fastest when it comes to writes, and its small file performance was mixed, marking it as not the best choice for running programs or an operating system directly off the drive.

Still, the Kingston Dual drive makes a strong case as a fast and compact file mover, and is available in capacities up to 2TB, despite its slim metal shell. It's a worthy alternative to the Tube T31 if you're primarily using the drive to back up and carry files (and you need USB-C connectivity).

But it's also currently expensive, selling for north of $150 for the 1TB model we tested, while the SK hynix drive was available at Micro Center for about $50 less.

The Tube T31 is increasingly scarce, however, while Kingston's drive just recently launched. If the Dual Portable SSD goes on sale, it's a great option if, again, you don't care much about small file performance.

SanDisk Extreme Fit (1TB): This tiny USB-C drive is designed to be a semi-permanent attachment to the side of your laptop (or the back of your desktop), as an easy way to add storage space. Available in capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB (the capacity we tested), it's not aiming to be a speed demon, with advertised read speeds of "up to 400 MB/s."

In our testing, it achieves that in our sequential CrystalDiskMark test (419.34 MB/s, to be exact), while delivering a decent real-world read speed of 318.3 MB/s in our 10GB file transfer test.

But write speeds are much lower (82.52 MB/s in the same 10GB test), and the small SanDisk drive's score of 274 on our PCMark 10 Data Drive test was less than a quarter that of the chart-topping Kingston drive. For its general purpose of semi-permanent storage, it's fast enough for general use without feeling sluggish (particularly when retrieving files).

But as small as it is, it doesn't sit flush with your USB port, making snags or bumps an obvious worry. And it's wide enough that it comes very close to blocking the adjacent USB-C port on my Asus laptop. So unless you're dealing with sensitive files or have spotty Wi-Fi, you may want to opt for cloud storage instead.

Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD (2TB): Despite being one of the best-looking and premium-feeling of the recent spate of so-called "stick SSDs," Seagate's flash drive-style drive just didn't stand out in benchmark testing, often lagging behind the SK hynix Tube T31 and TeamGroup's X1 Max, both of which cost less.

A price drop would make this drive more appealing, but it just wasn't as speedy in our tests as other high-end stick storage options.

PNY Pro Elite V3 (1TB): This third iteration of PNY's high-end flash drive has a solid metal sliding shell that protects its USB-A port when not in use. Its 1,000 MB/s read and 800 MB/s write speed rating, in particular, is a bit more modest than the claims of its high-end competition.

And while it exceeded those speeds in our sequential test, it disappointed elsewhere, like in PCMark, where it scored only half of some of the best alternatives we've tested.

It also couldn't crack the top five in our real-world read test (though its write speed there was nearly the best). So while the Pro Elite V3 is head and shoulders above the V1 and V2 that came before it, it doesn't stand out in terms of overall performance.

And at $105 for the 1TB model we tested, it's also one of the priciest 1TB drives we've tested. When we wrote this, the faster SK hynix Tube T31 was $86 at the same capacity, making it easily the better drive.

Silicon Power MS70 (1TB) and DS72 (1TB): These two drives from Silicon Power perform roughly the same and have similarly solid-feeling shells and flip-up caps. The DS72 has a USB-C connector on one and and USB-A on the other, while the MS70 makes do with just USB-A.

The Silicon Power drives also perform fairly well overall, but were inconsistent on our tests. In Crystal Diskmark's sequential tests, they were the best flash drives we've tested yet, and they were also among the best on our 10GB DiskBench test.

But on the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, they consistently delivered scores that were roughly half of what the Transcend and Kingston drives we tested and they weren't particularly impressive in our 4K test, either.

Pricing for the 1TB models that we tested was also in an awkward middle area, between our favorite mainstream drive from Buffalo and the better-performing options from Transcend and Kingston.

Still, if the price drops by $10-$20, these would be good options, particularly if you mostly want a drive to move files from one place to another rather than to run programs directly. Their physical design and build quality feel better than some of the more expensive options out there.

Orico USSD-X (512GB): Orico's latest flash drive is wrapped completely in metal, and feels surprisingly solid in your hand. And supposedly it will be offered in several colors. Its performance in our testing hovered between middle of the pack and near the top, excelling in our PCMark and Diskbench tests, especially.

That said, its performance didn't stand above the rest in any single test, and at the time of testing, we couldn't find it for sale in the US. Hopefully, the company improves its supply issues, because this USB-A drive feels better to hold and use than arguably any other flash drive we've tested. And its performance is quite solid. We just need to know how much it will cost.

OWC Envoy Pro Mini (1TB): This drive was the second-fastest overall and sports a solid metal shell. But its design is overly complicated, as is its setup process (which forces you to agree to a EULA which, when we wrote this, was still 404ing). Really though, the primary problem with OWC's drive is price. At $149 for the most spacious 1TB model, it's nearly as expensive as the 2TB Buffalo drive. And often the Buffalo drive goes on sale for less.

Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime (1TB): With a name this obnoxiously aggressive (and $90 price to match), we were expecting impressive things from Patriot's top-end flash drive. And it did quite well in some tests, but struggled on our 10GB file transfer test, managing to write at just 91.7 MB/s–behind all but the lower-capacity, much lower-priced drives on this list.

PNY Pro Elite (1TB): We like the solid metal shell of this PNY drive, but its $130 asking price is higher than any other 1TB drive we've tested. And it struggled on our 10GB write test, managing just 96.9 MB/s, which was slower than even Samsung's 256GB Duo Plus drive. There isn't much that's pro or elite about that.

Orico UFSD-C (1TB): This metal-clad USB-C drive looks and feels great and performed quite well overall, though its benchmark results didn't stand out in any real way. Its main issue is availability. The company sent us the 1TB model we asked for, but it doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere in the US.

You can order it on Aliexpress, but even there it's only available at up to 512GB, and its $82 current price is close to what we'd expect the 1TB model to sell for.

Samsung USB-Type-C (‎128GB): One of Samsung's newer drives, this model sports solely a USB-C connector and isn't much bigger than the USB-A Fit Plus drive. But it's slightly more expensive than the Fit drive and had a tendency to land near the bottom of our tested Samsung drives in terms of performance.

If you need USB-C and don't need a lot of speed (and particularly write speed) and capacity (it tops out at 256GB), this isn't a bad drive. It just doesn't stand out in any substantive way. And we wish its write speed were at least twice as fast as the 59-67 MB/s we saw in our sequential tests. Read speeds were, at least, much faster at more than 300 MB/s.

SanDisk Extreme Pro (128GB): While SanDisk's high-end drive performed well compared to other 128GB models, its $43 price at that capacity is about 2.5x that of Samsung's Fit Plus. And while it is available in up to 1TB capacities, the most spacious model sells for between $130 and $200, making it much more expensive than competing drives.

SanDisk Ultra (256GB): SanDisk's plastic-clad Ultra drive is exactly the kind of thing you'll see drastically overpriced at your local pharmacy or big-box store. Online, it seems fairly reasonable at about $20. But Samsung's Fit Plus is much smaller, performed better in most of our tests, and can be found for $5-10 more in the 256GB capacity.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

A portable SSD or hard drive is a device that can handle all kinds of storage tasks. It can house huge libraries of files (depending on capacity) and share them between PCs, Macs, tablets, and phones. The best external SSD can also contain full system backup files to restore your system's OS and software in the event of a crash, or it can let you run apps directly from the drive itself. But if you plan on doing the latter, an SSD is a much better choice than a comparatively slow and delicate external hard drive with a read / write head and spinning platters. For related reasons, external SSDs are also much faster than lower-priced external hard drives.

To help you choose the best external storage device for your needs, we test and review dozens of drives as they become available and publish our list of specific recommendations for the best portable SSDs and hard drives below. If you're looking for an internal hard drive for your PC or NAS, head to our list of best hard drives. We also have an expansive list of internal SSDs on our list of the best SSDs. Below, you'll find our list of the best external SSDs and HDDs we've tested.

Best Portable SSD

The SanDisk Pro-G40 is an excellent all-around portable SSD. It has both Thunderbolt 3 and USB modes, so it will work on a wide range of devices, although you may need a Type-C to Type-A adapter or cable. All-around performance is good. Its write performance is exceptional, and your experience in general should be consistently fast. The drive is built on somewhat dated hardware, but this is a mature platform that works excellently for a portable solution. The metal and rubberized casing is another bonusm as it keeps the drive cool while also protecting it against most environmental hazards.

The primary downside to the Pro-G40 is its price. If you don’t need the Thunderbolt functionality you have better options like the Samsung T7 Shield. You can also put together your own portable solution by buying an appropriate enclosure and drive. If you want high-end portability and performance in a rugged package, though, the Pro-G40 is the drive for you.

Read: SanDisk Pro-G40 SSD Review

Best External Hard Drive

If you’re on the hunt for a new external hard drive, WD’s My Passport is an excellent choice. With a solid track record, password protection, and capacities that recently got bumped up to 6TB, it’s prepared to store a lot -- if not all -- of your data and keep it safe.

As street prices have started to fall, it's become a better value than ever. It looks good and comes backed by a plentiful 3-year warranty. To top things off, it boasts top-notch AES 256-bit hardware encryption password protection to keep your content secure from prying eyes.

Read: WD My Passport 5TB Review

We also recently reviewed the 6TB version of the WD My Passport drive. It's a bit thicker and heavier than the 5TB version but otherwise seems to perform about the same. If you need more capacity than lesser models, it's a fine option. But note that there's a $50 price increase for the extra terabyte of capacity, so you'll probably want to ask yourself if you really need that extra space before buying.

Read: WD My Passport 6TB Review

Best USB4 SSD

In the USB4 realm, which is much more widespread than faster Thunderbolt 5, Corsair’s EX400U strikes a great balance between performance and price. Our sequential testing shows it's capable of read speeds above 4,000 MBps, and read speeds over 3,700 MBps. And our sustained Iometer testing showed the drive maintaing a write speed typically between 1,600 and 1,700 MBps for 15 minutes. So it doesn't drastically slow down after its cache has been depleted.

The EX400U certainly isn't cheap at around $189 for the 2TB model we tested, or $349 for the 4TB model. But it's downright affordable compared to the LaCie's Rugged SSD Pro5 Thunderbolt 5 drive, which was selling for $329 for the 2TB model and $529 for the 4TB model when we wrote this. The Corsair SSD also has a magnet on the back that lets it snap onto modern iPhones and some Android phones, making it handy for recording high-res video.

The Corsair drive also ships in a 1TB flavor (around $119), which the LaCie drive lacks. Given Corsair’s drive is much faster and more future-proof than top 20Gbps drives like the Crucial X10 Pro, it makes those older drives hard to argue for, since they still often sell for around the same price as the faster EX400U.

Read: Corsair EX400U (2TB) review

Best SSD for Travel

Sharge Disk Pro may be the most interesting, innovative, and genuinely useful 10 Gbps drives I've ever tested. It's built-in USB / HDMI hub makes it great for travel or on-the-go work (just make sure you carry a USB-C port with a slim connector). And its performance is close enough to the best in its class that you wouldn't notice the difference outside of benchmarks.

For professional tasks, Scharge’s drive also delivered excellent sustained writes, possibly aided by its active cooling, sticking above the 900 MB/s mark for the full 30 minutes of our Iometer benchmark testing. If you need a drive that won’t slow down during massive file transfers or write-heavy workloads, this is one of the best 10 Gbps options I’ve tested. Then there's the magnetic back, which can make using it with compatible phones much more convenient.

Of all the drives I've tested in recent years, if I didn't need anything faster than 10 Gbps, this is the drive I would reach for when traveling. Because my laptop doesn't have enough ports, I don’t have to worry about it slowing down when dumping terabytes of photos, video, or other files onto the drive.

Read: Sharge Disk Pro 2TB review

Best Fast Cross-Platform SSD

LaCie’s Rugged SSD4 occupies an interesting niche. For Windows (and presumably Android) users with USB4, Corsair’s EX400U is nearly as fast in many of our tests, while costing less. And for Mac purists who have the latest hardware, LaCie’s Rugged SSD Pro5 is significantly faster if you have machines with a Thunderbolt 5 port.

But for creators and enthusiasts with production workflows or portable file needs that span multiple platforms, the LaCie Rugged SSD4 delivers the fastest performance we’ve seen across Windows and Macs. We saw sequential speeds around 4,000 MB/s reads and 3,700 MB/s writes in Windows 11, and somewhat slower but still fast reads on a current-gen Mac Min of 3,440 MB/s reads and 3,093 MB/s writes. Add in the three years of included data recovery, and the Rugged SSD4 is easy to recommend for those who need speed and peace of mind while working in Windows, macOS, and maybe Android and iOS as well (though we didn’t test the drive on the latter two platforms).

Read: LaCie Rugged SSD4 4TB Review

Best Rugged Portable Hard Drive

While it is on the pricey side, LaCie’s Rugged RAID Pro isn’t too overpriced considering its market placement and the peace of mind of data redundancy. LaCie includes one month of all Adobe apps for free, a $79.49 (£61) value. More importantly, the drive comes with three years of free data recovery protection. That service can (at times) cost thousands of dollars.

If you are a creative professional in the market for an external HDD, be sure to check this drive out. There aren't many competitors: Most other HDD solutions are much larger, and flash-based SSDs don’t yet offer similarly-priced capacity, nor the same value-adds. The LaCie Rugged RAID Pro 4TB has a unique blend of features and accessories that make it easy to use and quite the versatile travel companion.

Read: Lacie Rugged RAID Pro Review

Most Conveniently Secure Portable SSD

Samsung’s T7 Touch is an innovative portable SSD that blends USB 3.2 Gen 2 performance with convenient AES 256-bit hardware security that’s unlocked by the touch of your fingertip. The built-in fingerprint scanner is the most convenient way to unlock your data that we’ve seen yet. The design is elegant and to a higher standard than your ordinary run-of-the-mill portable drive. The aluminum construction is solid, and various color options are available to suit your unique taste.

That said, G-Technology's recent ArmorLock drive gives Samsung a run for its secure storage money, by using an app and key that's stored on your Android or iOS phone to unlock your drive. It may not be as convenient as swiping your finger across a sensor on your external SSD, but it might just be more secure.

Read: Samsung T7 Touch Portable SSD Review

Best Thunderbolt 5 Portable SSD

The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro 5 combines a tried-and-true rugged design with by far the fastest single-drive speeds we’ve ever seen on an external SSD, when tested on a Thunderbolt 5-equipped Mac.It also ships with five years of Seagate's data recovery service, making it easy to recommend for Mac users – particularly those who only or primarily use current-gen Mac hardware and need the fastest possible performance for media creation or other write-heavy purposes.

Just note that its support on older hardware is so complex that it requires its own compatibility page, and in our testing in Windows 11 over a USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 port, it was slower than recent native USB4 drives. So at least until Thunerbolt 5 becomes more widespread on Macs and PCs, this isn't the best drive for workflows that include Windows PCs.

Read: LaCieRugged SSD Pro5 review

Best Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD

Driven by an OEM variant of a Samsung 970 EVO and an Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3-to-PCIe bridge, Samsung’s X5 is the fastest Thunderbolt 3 portable SSD we’ve tested. Not only will it help speed up your workflow, but it also comes with an additional layer of AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption and password protection for those who need to meet compliance requirements. The three-year warranty is lacking for the professional crowd, and we wish the company offered more color options like those found with the company’s T5 and T7 portable SSDs.

Read: Samsung X5 Portable SSD Review

Drives that didn't make the list

Of course, not every drive we test is the best. But prices change and not everyone has the same storage needs. So if one of these drives goes on a good sale and you like how it performs, it might be worth considering.

We've classified the SK hynix Tube T31 as a flash drive, or SSD stick, since it has a familiar flash drive form factor. But inside, it's actually an m.2 SSD on a small PCB. It's fast by flash drive standards, sports a USB-A port that tops out at 10Gbps, and is only available at 512GB and 1TB capacities. But if those limitations sound good to you, it's well worth considering. It's also on our list of the best flash drives.

Adata's SD810 is a far more traditional external SSD, and one that's surprisingly affordable for a 20Gbps drive. It's great for bursty tasks like moving a few GB of files or perhaps running some light programs. But our testing showed that under sustained speedy writes, its cache can quickly run out, and the drive then writes at hard-drive speeds until the cache can recover. That won't be a problem for everyone. But if you're going to buy a 20Gbps drive, you should probably consider one that can better maintain that speed.

How We Test External SSDs 

Our current testbed consists of an ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite motherboard and a Core i5-12600K CPU. This system gives us native Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 port via the front header (connected through Corsair's 5000D Airflow case).

We run several tests on the external drives we test, with a mixture of real-world and synthetic benchmarks, and both sequential and small file (4K) reads and writes.

▶️ Trace Testing: PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. We report both the proprietary overall score, as well as the bandwidth measured during the test.

▶️ Transfer Rates: DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive. This is a separate drive from our boot drive, to avoid slowdowns due to the operating system background tasks that can be difficult to control for.

▶️ Synthetic Testing: CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

The sequential read and write test effectively amounts to a best-case scenario, which often closely aligns with the read /write specs that drive makers put in their specs and on the product box.

The 4K read / write test, meanwhile, is more of a measure of how well the drive handles a plethora of small files, the kind of workload you might encounter when running a program, an OS, or a game directly from the drive.

▶️ Sustained Write Performance: Iometer

A drive's rated write specifications are only a piece of the performance picture. Most external SSDs (just like their internal counterparts) implement a write cache, or a fast area of flash, programmed to perform like faster SLC, that absorbs incoming data.

Sustained write speeds often suffer tremendously when the workload saturates the cache and slips into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.

This test in particular tends to separate so-called "professional" drives from the rest. Those who often dump massive file libraries onto their external drives, often filling entire drives up in one go, need fast sustained write speeds. More casual storage users, on the other hand, are more likely to write smaller files or libraries of 100GB or less. These kinds of users can still benefit from fast sustained writes, but it may not be as necessary if you rarely or never write enough data to your drive at once from a fast enough source to burn through an SSD's fast SLC cache.

Also tested

Not every drive we test lands on our best external SSD list, but that doesn't mean these alternative drives aren't worth consideration. We recently tested Team Group's PD20, a 20Gbps drive that's available in capacities up to 4TB.

It's an attractive drive with a silver (plastic) and black rubber shell, but its performance in our testing didn't stand out against the competition, particularly when it comes to sustained writes. The drive still performs well enough in most mainstream tasks that many will find its performance just fine. If you like the way it looks, it's worth considering, especially if you can find it on sale.

You can also make your own external SSD

Note that, if you have a spare drive, you can easily make your own portable drive. Dozens of 2.5-inch drive enclosures can be found online for between $10-$25 (£15-25) that will let you drop in an old drive easily, and turn it into an external hard drive or SSD.

And if you have an M.2 drive that you've swapped out of a gaming laptop, ultrabook or upgraded away from in your gaming PC, we've recently looked at NVMe enclosures from MyDigitalSSD and Pluggable. If you have a SATA-based M.2 drive that you'd like to turn into a portable drive, Silverstone's MS09 enclosure lets you do just that. And if you're keen on building your own speedy external SSD but don't have a drive handy to use, the recent WD Blue SN550 is a good candidate for that task. It's only available in capacities up to 1TB, but it's plenty speedy for external storage, and the more spacious model is already selling for as little as $115 at various online outlets.

Just make sure you get an enclosure that matches your drive, be that SATA or NVMe. And also keep in mind that DIY external drives usually aren't sealed, so they're not as likely to stand up to dust and dampness as well as external SSDs and portable hard drives that are designed to do so.

Best External SSD FAQs

When shopping for an external drive or SSD, consider the following:

Finding Discounts on the Best External Storage Drives

Whether you're shopping for one of the best external storage drives or one that didn't quite make our list, you may find savings by checking out the latest Crucial promo codes, Newegg promo codes, Amazon promo codes, Corsair coupon codes, Samsung promo codes or Micro Center coupons.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best Hard Drive

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Veteran US software engineer and security researcher Steve Gibson has announced a new drive tool from Gibson Research Corporation (GRC). The underlying purpose of ValiDrive v1.0 is to “spot-check any USB mass storage drive for fraudulently missing storage,” which has become ever more important given the influx of fake drives flooding online retailers. This freeware tool also checks any USB-connected drive for read / write errors.

In case it isn’t clear from your own experience of buying discount USB drives why it will be useful, Gibson reveals that he bought 12 drives from Amazon in the last month, and ValiDrive proved that “every single one of them was a bogus fraudulent drive.” See the image above for the motley collection of deceitful drives that can be picked up from one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces.

Gibson’s Amazon shopping splurge was prompted by testers of SpinRite v6.1 (GRC's premier mass storage maintenance and data recovery system) being perturbed at the “diabolical” proliferation of fake USB drives on the market. These fraudulent drives don’t offer the capacities advertised and will routinely lose data to maintain their deceit.

Above, you can see an example ValiDrive UI screenshot showing a scan result. GRC says that this USB drive was sold as a 2 TB capacity device, but only 62 GB of capacity was present and verified by the tool.

ValiDrive certainly sounds like quite a thorough testing tool. Where Windows and lesser sys-info tools are happy to go along with and misreport fraudulently described drive capacities, ValiDrive is claimed to put the storage through a “576-region spot-check to test the readability, writability, and true storage presence of any [USB connected] drive.”

ValiDrive 1.0 is a pleasingly compact and portable app, as we have grown to expect from GRC, weighing in at just 95KB. Some may criticize the Windows 3.1 aesthetics, but others will find it no-frills and functional, or even retro-cute. In addition to Gibson’s dirty dozen Amazon drive testing, respondents to the developer’s Twitter post seem pretty happy with ValiDrive so far. Several tested drives which users suspected to be fraudulent were found to be so. Meanwhile, others testing big brand drives from reputable sellers have reported success in capacity verification.

We have recently reported on fake SSDs and fake high-performance external SSDs packed with microSD cards.

ValiDrive 1.0 is available to download now and is freeware.

South Korean memory maker SK Hynix has announced its intention to enter the portable consumer SSD market. Its first such product, the Beetle X31, is said to be ready to meet the growing demand for potable SSDs, and to offer a compelling mix of “performance, convenient portability, and stylish design.” SK Hynix’s palm-sized Beetle X31 connects to other devices via USB and offers transfers of up to 1,050 MB/s.

As far as consumers go, we are sure that SK Hynix’s entry will be welcomed. The firm has a good reputation for competitive memory and storage components, and more competition should be good to keep rivals like Samsung and WD / SanDisk on their toes.

Considering the design first, the Beetle X31 is pleasingly compact and described by SK Hynix as ‘palm-sized.’ The packaging shows a scarab beetle nestled in a sand dune, but the SK Hynix design is much more like a slightly worn bar of soap in its shape. A gold-colored model is showcased, and the maker says the case is made from aluminum. The metal chassis is suitable for strength and heat dissipation, and SK Hynix considers this design aspect a distinct advantage over competitor products.

The transfer performance of the Beetle X31 precisely matches our current best-pick SanDisk Pro-G40 SSD, at least on paper. However, we note the SK Hynix device is much smaller and less than half the weight of the SanDisk. SK Hynix also asserts its device has excellent sustained performance. For example, it says that the Beetle X31, with its ample heatsink and DRAM cache, can transfer 500 GB of files at an average rate of over 900 MB/s.

SK Hynix hints that the Beetle X31 is already available on its home turf. The portable SSD will become available in worldwide markets, starting with the US later this month. We don’t have pricing for the 512 GB or 1 TB models at the time of writing.

Those of you interested in an external storage device are advised to take a peek at our Best External SSDs and Hard Drives of 2023 feature. Hopefully, we can get a Beetle X31 sample and find out if it is worth joining our shortlist.

WD has responded to the growing throng of disgruntled SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro portable SSD users who have been through or are facing the frightening prospect of sudden data loss. Ars Technica sought comment from the SanDisk parent company after it noted multiple social media threads complaining of data loss and drives sometimes becoming completely unreadable. SanDisk says that a firmware fix is on the way "soon," but its response only mentions 4TB versions of these portable flash storage devices, and not an update for the 2TB models. 

Prudent computer users buy data storage solutions from the likes of SanDisk to ensure their data is safe and secure. Portable SSDs like the SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro series come with the promise of "professional grade storage… rugged… worry-free… dependable" operation for at least five years (the warranty duration). Thus, these portable SSDs should be a good choice for a working data or backup drive.

In recent months, dissatisfaction with the SanDisk Extreme SSD series has grown, as evidenced by reddit threads like this, or this, or this. Symptoms commonly experienced are that after a sustained write to the drive, all the data on the device will appear to have been wiped. Some then find that the drive isn't just empty but has been rendered completely unwritable. Ouch.

An Ars employee has been unfortunate enough to have experienced not one but two (2TB) SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs dying. In his experience, "a slew of read and write errors" were thrown up after the drives reached about half full. After disconnecting and reconnecting, the drives appeared to be unformatted, and it sounds like the data in place wasn't recoverable. Normally the odds of having two successive drives failing like this would be huge, but WD has admitted there is something wrong with the firmware, and it will issue an update to fix things.

"Western Digital is aware of reports indicating some customers have experienced an issue with 4TB SanDisk Extreme and/or Extreme Pro portable SSDs (SDSSDE61-4T00 and SDSSDE81-4T00 respectively)," wrote the storage tech company, in response to Ars Technica's inquiries. "We have resolved the issue and will publish a firmware update to our website soon. Customers with questions or who are experiencing issues should contact our Customer Support team for assistance."

The WD statement neglects to mention the possibility of refunds, much to some users' chagrin. Additionally, it is unclear whether the lack of mention of 2TB drives is an oversight or whether they will also get updated firmware "soon," as they should.

Some unconfirmed chatter suggests that the SanDisk Extreme SSD issues affect only those using devices "manufactured after November 2022." Still, at the time of writing, we would advise anyone using these drives to use them with extreme caution. Perhaps it is advisable to only use these storage devices for convenient duplicate or temporary data until the fix arrives and it has been tested well.

We can't help but notice that there are some hefty discounts on SanDisk Extreme / Pro SSDs on Amazon right now. However, until the above mess gets sorted out to everyone's satisfaction, buyers should stay clear - even though one of these drives performed very well during our lab testing (March 2021) and gained a place in our Best External SSDs and Hard Drives feature.

Western Digital is about to start selling its own storage expansion cards for Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S game consoles. BestBuy listed these cards on its website over the weekend, ahead of a formal launch, revealing that these devices will be cheaper than those exclusively offered by Seagate for well over two years (via The Verge). 

The WD_Black C50 Expansion Card for Xbox listed by BestBuy (archive link) has a 1TB storage capacity and is priced at $180. By contrast, Seagate's 1TB storage expansion card has a list price of $220, but is now available for $190 at Amazon. Meanwhile, Seagate's 512GB drive has an MSRP of $110, whereas a 2TB drive costs $360 (down from $400 originally).  

Interestingly, Amazon has placeholders for 4TB, 5TB, and 8TB expansion cards too, which suggests that Seagate might be prepping higher-capacity versions of expansion SSDs for Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Microsoft's latest Xbox Series X|S game consoles use proprietary storage expansion cards. These cards come in the CFexpress 1.0 Type-B form factor, but they use two PCIe Gen4 lanes, which goes beyond the two PCIe Gen3 lanes that the CFexpress 1.0 Type-B specification requires.  

Microsoft charges a royalty for storage expansion cards designed for Xbox, and so until recently, Seagate was the only company willing to make them. Since these cards have been available exclusively from Seagate since the launch of the latest Xbox machines in late 2020, they have been pretty expensive.

It's noteworthy that an enthusiast has demonstrated that it is possible to build an expansion drive for the latest Xbox consoles by using a CFexpress-to-M.2-2230 adapter (which was initially intended for constructing storage devices with greater capacity for cameras), provided you bring your own SSD. These adapters are currently available for $30 from Amazon.

Journalists at Ecuadorian news outlets have received USB thumb drives rigged with military grade explosive charges. According to the Associated Press, at least five booby-trapped USB flash drives were sent to journalists across Ecuador. Thankfully, only one of the devices actually exploded, and it caused no injuries. A suspect has been detained for questioning.

Lenin Artieda, a journalist at the Ecuavisa news organization, was the unfortunate recipient of the USB flash drive that actually exploded. Artieda opened an envelope on Monday morning and fished out a nondescript USB drive. He plugged it into his computer and it exploded, destroying the PC. 

Neither Artieda, nor anyone else in the room, were injured by the blast. Later investigations by the authorities revealed that only half of the explosive charge within the USB flash drive case had ignited — so the journalist and others in the office at the time of the explosion were lucky, in a way.

Artieda is well known for his news coverage of crime and corruption. He has obviously ruffled the feathers of one or more nefarious Ecuadorian individuals to receive this unwelcome attention. Government officials are calling the USB drive mail bombs domestic terrorism.

The explosive packed into the USB drives is thought to have been RDX. RDX is a high explosive that's more powerful than TNT and has no discernible smell or taste, and was widely used in WWII. You've probably heard of RDX's plasticized form — it's the explosive agent found in C-4.

Other news outlets in Ecuador were similarly targeted. According to the AP report, Teleamazonas, Radio Exa, and TC Televisión also received devices but they failed to explode. The report doesn't discuss why these devices failed to explode, but perhaps the USB ports they were plugged into didn't offer a high enough voltage to detonate the RDX. Authorities also intercepted one explosive USB device before it reached its destination. 

Computer users should always beware of unsolicited, found, or left-behind USB drives. Even if they aren't rigged with explosives, plugging in an unknown USB drive is risky — they could house viruses, such as spyware, keyloggers, Trojans etc. There are also USB killer sticks, which are widely and cheaply available and are not very friendly to electronic devices.

@momomo_us on Twitter shared a post showing one of the most aggressive-looking PS5 NVMe SSD coolers we've seen so far, called the Graugear G-PS5HS01-Cov. This cooler's main selling point is its copper heatsink that protrudes out of the PS5's NVMe housing to increase heat dissipation. This feature should make drives equipped with it interesting competitors for the best PS5 SSDs, as well as aftermarket coolers like Sabrent's M.2 NVMe PS5 Heatsink which we reviewed last year.

The use of a copper heatpipe is unique and not something you'll find in any other PS5 cooler right now. The cooling device is comprised of two main parts: the main housing and the external copper heatsink. The main housing utilizes an aluminum heatsink that makes direct contact with the NVMe drive. This heatsink is then connected to a copper heatpipe justs out and away from the drive, connecting to a copper heatsink.

A key feature of the copper heatsink is where it is located: The heatpipe routes it so that it sits right next to the PS5's cooling fan, effectively giving the NVMe SSD active cooling properties. This should give the drive an immense amount of cooling, which should be more than adequate for any NVMe SSD the PS5 supports.

For context, one of the best PS5 SSD coolers we've tested so far is the Sabrent PS5 SSD heatsink, keeping a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus at an average of just 61 degrees Celcius during write operations, and at 59 C average during read operations with passive cooling alone.

As a result, Graugear's cooling solution should blow Sabrent's solution lower temps even more. Hopefully we'll get a chance to test this new cooler soon to see if its cooling capabilities prove to be as powerful as we suspect. SSD performance will be particularly interesting to test, since over-cooling NAND flash has a tendency to do more harm than good, reducing performance, although keeping the drive's controller cool can definitely help.

How do you keep external spinning-platter hard drives relevant in a world where the price of much-speedier solid-state drives is cratering? You go big or go home – and Western Digital is clearly going big.

The company's latest additions to its "My Book" lineup pack up to two 22TB internal 3.5-inch hard drives. That gives you a cavernous 44TB unformatted capacity with the top-end My Book Duo, which the company's press release states will "help consumers preserve their ever-growing digital world."

At 22TB, WD says the single-drive My Book model is WD's highest-capacity consumer drive to date. But bare 3.5-inch 22TB hard drives have been available from the WD since the middle of last year. There's no doubt that sealed external hard drives serve a different market of USB plug-and-play consumers than people who buy internal drives for PCs or NAS boxes. There will certainly, though, be those interested in shucking these drives to get at the 3.5-inch drive (or drives) inside.

At launch, though, the My Book drives are primarily going to appeal to those who need lots of external storage for local backup and media. Because while internal 22TB hard drives from WD currently sell for around $500, the single-drive WD My Book 22TB model has an MSRP of $599 (£594 in the UK). And the dual-drive 44TB My Book Duo retails for an eye-watering $1,499 (£1,487 in the UK). At least the Duo drive has a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the back, letting it function as a basic connectivity hub. WD says both models are available from today, and of course, there are lesser-capacity My Book models available, all the way down to 3TB for less than $150.

As always, we advise extreme caution about storing vast amounts of irreplaceable data (like family memories and important paperwork) on roomy hard drives like this unless it's also backed up somewhere else. Because hard drives do die, often without any discernible warning. That goes double for the dual-drive 44TB My Book Duo. WD ships the drive in RAID0, which increases performance and lets operating systems see the two internal drives as a single volume. But because RAID0 deposits pieces of your precious data across both drives, if one drive fails, you won't likely be able to get any of your files back – at least without sending the device to an expensive data recovery service.

There are prices that sound “too good to be true,” and then there are prices that sound so good they must be fake. A portable, external 16TB SSD for less than $120 is definitely the latter. 

Before you get all optimistic about storage deals, ReviewGeek bought one of these drives and published a teardown. In this teardown, they found the alleged “16TB USB 3.1 M.2 SSD” was actually a 64GB USB 2.0 micro SD card installed on a circuit board acting as a USB-adapter. In other words, fake. (It didn’t seem to have any malware, though, so that’s... something.) We've seen good 64GB cards going for as low as $11 on Amazon.

If you’re hoping Amazon is on top of this, they’re not. Type ‘16TB SSD’ into Amazon right now, and at least 15 listings for portable, external 16TB SSDs will pop up, priced between $63 and $120. To put this wildly implausible pricing into context, a $120 16TB SSD translates to about three-fourths of a cent ($0.0075) per GB. A month ago, cloud storage provider BackBlaze predicted that the price of HDD storage will drop to one cent ($0.01) per GB by 2025. Yes, hard drive storage — so a 16TB HDD in 2025 will still cost about $40 more than these supposed 16TB SSDs in 2023. 

Here’s the thing: minus the insane pricing, the listings for these 16TB SSDs don’t necessarily look fake, at a glance. Sure, they all feature the same pictures of ultra-generic aluminum casing, and they’re all sold by companies with names that look like they were taken from random CAPTCHAs.

But they don’t necessarily look like scams, and some even look legitimate if you’re not paying attention. For one thing, they’re mostly listed as “shipping from” Amazon. This label is supposed to inspire buyer security, because it means the product ships directly from Amazon’s warehouse. In other words, you can rest assured that Amazon has the product. Unfortunately, that’s all it means — Amazon may be technically in possession of this product, but it clearly takes no responsibility for what it is (or, rather, isn’t). 

Another thing that makes these listings look more legitimate is their ratings — most have decent star ratings with reviews in the double digits. If something has a poor star rating but hundreds of reviews, it looks less like a total scam and more like a cheap, crappy product (which a lot of people are willing to accept). 

But if you actually look at the reviews, it gets suspicious. Many of them are clearly not about the listing — in the reviews I looked at for these SSDs, I saw people talking about everything from blankets to bracelets to webcams and home decor. 

This is the result of unscrupulous sellers abusing Amazon’s review merging feature: Amazon lets sellers update listings with new products while keeping the existing listing’s reviews. This is supposed to be so that sellers can add variations to a product page — new colors, sizes, or maybe even a small upgrade, so long as it’s essentially the same product. The reviews are allowed to stay up because it makes sense that a review of, for example, a red shirt, would still be useful for someone looking at the same shirt in a different color. 

You’re not supposed to update a product page with a totally different product, but you can. Sellers build up review cred on a product listing page and capitalize on that page’s star rating and review count by constantly swapping in random products. Even though the inconsistency usually becomes obvious with enough reviews, it’s not that obvious — remember, Amazon buyers can give items a star rating without writing a review, and they also aren’t necessarily the most in-depth reviewers. A lot of reviews are very short and/or generic (e.g. “great color” or “loved it”) — on some of these scammy SSDs, I had to dig through a page or two before I found reviews that were obviously talking about a different product. 

This type of scammy “review merging” is, of course, against Amazon’s policy, but these sellers don’t care and Amazon can’t seem to shut them down fast enough. These 16TB SSDs have been around for a while: Colif on our own Tom’s Hardware forums pointed out several of these scammy listings in Aug. 2022, and TechRadar noticed the trend in Nov. 2022 during Black Friday. Amazon has since taken down those listings, as well as the listing for the product ReviewGeek purchased. 

Amazon also responded to ReviewGeek’s recent teardown with a statement detailing their policy on review merging: 

“We do not allow product listings to be taken over or incorrect information to be listed, and we have zero tolerance for fake reviews. We have clear policies that prohibit reviews abuse, and we suspend, ban, and take legal action against those who violate these policies and remove inauthentic reviews. The items in question did violate our policies and they have been removed.”

Except I just searched for 16TB SSDs on Amazon again and eight of the first 10 results are scams.

Since Amazon can’t figure out how to fix this, make sure you dig a little deeper before impulse-buying storage (if the price makes you want to impulse-buy, that might be a sign). Read the reviews and don’t trust Amazon, because they’ll ship anything from their warehouses. 

If you read all of this and you really do want a portable, external 16TB SSD, you can find one on our list of best external SSDs and hard drives. The 16TB Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q has RAID capability and sequential read speeds of up to 1.4GBps (2.8GBps over Thunderbolt 3). It normally retails for just under $3,000, but is currently on sale for $2,400 at Amazon. 

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 portable SSD is a tiny, lightweight drive up to 4TB that you can easily carry around. It’s very similar to the Corsair EX100U in performance and pricing, with some minor differences. Designed to compete with the best external SSDs, It has TLC flash memory, which is nice, and the embedded design means that it is small and efficient. This flash produces solid sustained write performance, a place where the EX100U eventually falls flat, but the weak UFD controller otherwise holds the nano V2’s performance potential back. This is not significant for many use cases because the USB interface is already restrictive in random performance for heavier workloads.

The 20 Gbps interface is, however, a bonus for traditional sequential workloads such as media file transfers and backups. The tighter and more rugged design of the Rocket nano V2, in contrast to the EX100U, translates to a more reliable experience on the whole, particularly with sustained writes. Direct competitors such as the updated Corsair X6 are stuck with QLC and usually a 10 Gbps interface. The Samsung T7 Shield is also limited to 10 Gbps but is otherwise an excellent portable drive, but it’s also bulkier. The nano V2 is appealing if you need 20 Gbps for burst transfers, high portability with some ruggedness, and a minimum level of sustained write performance.

Specifications of Sabrent Rocket nano V2 

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 is available at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. Launch pricing for these capacities is $119.99, $199.99, and $499.99, respectively. This makes the 2TB model the best value, although pricing may change. It is, of course, still far cheaper than the recently-reviewed SanDisk Pro-G40, but a bit more expensive than the updated Crucial X6. It’s very similar to the Corsair EX100U in design and pricing.

The Rocket nano V2 has a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface and reaches up to 1600/1500 MBps for sequential read and write. Random performance is seldom stipulated for external drives due to interface limitations.

The drive has a 3-year warranty with registration which is not atypical in the industry, although we prefer 5-year for premium products. The drive is very small and lightweight coming in at 2.85 x 1.28 x 0.57 inches and 1.57 ounces, although without the outer silicone shell it’s a bit smaller and lighter. This outer covering does offer better protection against drops.

Software and Accessories of Sabrent Rocket nano V2

The Rocket nano V2 comes with Type-C to Type-A and Type-C to Type-C USB cables. This means it can work on a wider range of devices without you having to buy a separate cable.

As of the time of review, the drive was not supported in Sabrent’s SSD toolbox application, but it may be added later. Sabrent generally offers an OEM version of Acronis True Image Home for its SSDs but this drive is not supported yet. We recommend Macrium Reflect Free for imaging and cloning needs.

A Closer Look at Sabrent Rocket nano V2

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 is a simple, small portable SSD. The overall design is muted but pleasant. An optional silicone shroud offers additional protection. It has a single USB-C port that is not waterproof, in a departure from the EX100U’s annoying solution. It should be pointed out that this is a very lightweight drive which makes its high capacity options quite attractive, considering it manages them without using QLC.

This is an embedded, or hybrid, design, which means that there’s no bridge controller. The Phison U18 is a native UFD controller which makes this closer to a USB drive in many respects. This can reduce cost, complexity, and physical size. It also usually means lower power draw with higher efficiency. It also means that the storage portion cannot be shucked. There are four NAND packages to go along with the controller, two per side.

The Phison U18 controller is only 2-channel with up to 8 chip enable for each channel, which to us suggests it’s best with 8 dies but can manage 16 just fine. Given the capacity range of the Rocket nano V2 it’s possible to use both 512Gb and 1Tb dies, the latter to reach 4TB. This somewhat limits what flash can be used as some TLC is only available at 512Gb and most QLC only at 1Tb.

This gives us a hint about what the Corsair EX100U is using - Corsair would only state 3D TLC - but Sabrent is more explicit about it. To be direct, we would be looking at either Kioxia’s 112-layer BiCS5 TLC or SK hynix’s 128-layer V6 TLC.

This looks like SK hynix’s 128-layer V6 TLC. This is very good flash, famously used in the SK hynix Gold P31, an extremely popular drive. That particular SSD stood out for its excellent power efficiency but its performance was also class-leading. As with the EX100U we see TI DDR4000 ICs which we believe help maintain a high bus speed with this much flash on a 2-channel controller. The EX100U we reviewed appears to have had the same flash but Corsair left open the door to changing it if necessary.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

The 2TB Sabrent Rocket nano V2 is up against the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2, the Corsair EX100U, the Kingston XS2000, the Samsung T7 Shield, the SanDisk Pro-G40, the Lexar SL660 Blaze, and the Adata SE900G. The XS2000 and SL660 Blaze are being tested at 1TB.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The Rocket nano V2 is near the bottom in 3DMark, although it does edge out the EX100U. Portable storage is not ideal for high-end gaming, although at this time there is very little difference between any two SSDs when it comes to game load times. This drive would be fine if you wanted to run some games off of it.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

PCMark 10 performance tends to follow 3DMark, and that is the case here with the nano V2 again falling behind. The UFD controller operates like a flash drive which can have negative consequences for some performance measurements. This drive is not ideal for heavier application workloads.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Performance is a bit better in DiskBench, but the USB interface in general is restrictive for all the drives tested except for the Thunderbolt-capable Professional Pro-G40.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

ATTO write results are good but read results could be better for the Rocket nano V2. There’s a notable dip at 1MB although performance is acceptable on the whole. CDM sequential performance is also merely fair, with most of the 20 Gbps drives falling within a general range. The 10 Gbps T7 Shield notably falls behind while the TB3 Professional Pro-G40 leads the pack.

Where the nano V2 shines is with random performance in CDM, specifically low queue depth 4KB. The omission of a bridge chip may have helped a bit here, although the flash being used is also quite good. That would explain the XS2000’s relatively poor results in comparison. 4KB performance is an important marker for subjective feel.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states via sensor and an infrared thermometer. The typical ambient temperature is at 24C. The load state involves sustained writes at maximum speed with measurement ensuing if and until throttling is demonstrated to discover the equilibrium temperature.

The 2TB Rocket nano V2 writes in pSLC mode at almost 1.57GBps for just over 15 seconds with a cache of 24GB. This is a small, dynamic cache, best used to absorb random writes. Recovery in general will be a bit slower. For larger writes, especially sequential ones, sustained performance in TLC mode is at over 800MBps. This is an excellent result for a drive like this and means it can be used for applications where a certain level of consistent performance is desirable, such as with transferring footage.

This is also where the Rocket nano V2 pulls away from the very similar EX100U. Our sustained write test involves the use of active cooling to avoid throttling. The EX100U still throttled while the Rocket nano V2 did not. The Rocket nano V2’s aluminum casing and thermal interface help keep it cool, an important consideration especially in warmer environments. That casing is also more protective in general.

We wanted to get a feel for how this drive handled a sustained load in comparison to the EX100U, a drive that easily throttled, with no active cooling. With sustained writes, the maximum temperature reached by SMART was 75C with the metal part - inside the silicone outer case - reaching 54C. The Rocket nano V2 did not throttle.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. Portable SSDs are tested with write caching explicitly enabled for the device within Windows.

Conclusion

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 is a capable but unexciting portable SSD. Performance is generally weak but it does well with 4KB and sustained writes, two crucial areas for storage of this type; portable drives are often used to transfer files, particularly larger files, with occasional reading of backup data. The Rocket nano V2 is also quite small and lightweight which makes it easy to carry around, it comes with both types of USB cables you might need, and the metal exterior adds protection and helps keep the drive cool. It checks all the boxes for effective portable storage.

The Rocket nano V2 additionally has an optional silicone case which can add some drop resistance, but the drive lacks an IP rating and the USB port is not waterproof. Coupled with just a 3-year maximum warranty, this reinforces the drive as being budget-oriented. The good news is that it’s available up to 4TB and comes with excellent TLC, factors that help set it apart from some of the competition. The 20 Gbps interface is also nice but of secondary importance.

We are giving this drive the same score as the EX100U despite the fact that the Rocket nano V2 is the better drive. The nano V2 does not have the same throttling issues of the EX100U and the overall design also feels superior, almost like a premium product. However, we cannot score it higher because the performance just isn’t there. That is the trade-off for getting such a small drive, keeping in mind that this is also a very efficient design that won’t completely drain your laptop battery. It really comes down to picking the drive that suits your needs at the right price point, and the Rocket nano V2 is a fair option to have.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

The Corsair EX100U is an unexceptional portable SSD that manages to pack up to 4TB with a 20 Gbps interface in a small package. It does this using TLC rather than QLC flash, which is preferred, but performance as a whole is inconsistent. The warranty is a bit on the weak side but Corsair does back it up with software and includes both popular types of USB-C cables. Pricing is not particularly competitive but this is a competent middle-of-the-road portable SSD - if you’re not looking for anything fancy.

Portable SSDs tend towards the cheaper end, for example at 10 Gbps with QLC, or at the more expensive professional end, with Thunderbolt speeds and performant TLC. Examples of both would be the Inland Platinum External and SanDisk Professional G-Drive (previously G-Technology G-Drive), respectively. It’s possible to get good sustained performance at 10 Gbps, such as with the Samsung T7 Shield, but affordable 20 Gbps options are a bit more limited, particularly if you need 4TB.

The EX100U suffers a bit from an identity crisis with contradictory characteristics, for example having not-horrible sequential write performance but combining it with a cheap design. It’s clearly budget-oriented with its 2-channel controller and lackluster all-around performance yet it comes with TLC, high-capacity options, and a 20 Gbps interface. It’s not aimed at being a professional drive with its weaker warranty and physical build despite having this faster interface. Not on par with the best external SSDs, Corsair's drive is best defined as a compromise or impulse buy if you need a general portable SSD.

Specifications

The Corsair EX100U is rated up to 1,600/1,500 MBps for sequential read and write, respectively, at all capacities. It’s offered at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. It utilizes a USB-C interface for up to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speeds, or 20 Gbps. The drive itself is small at 79.37 x 36.5 x 11mm, weighing it at just 22 grams. Corsair backs it with a 3-year warranty and 250TB of writes per TB of capacity.

At the time of review, the drive was available on Amazon and Corsair’s website for as little as $102.99, $189.99, and $464.99, from smallest to largest capacity. The 1TB and 2TB models are the best values to be had, but are more expensive than competitors like the Crucial X6 and Inland Platinum External. It’s also more expensive than the Samsung T7 Shield, which is more rugged and professional. The EX100U has the advantage of a faster interface than all three, and faster flash than the first two QLC-based drives.

Software and Accessories of Corsair EX100U

The drive comes with two short USB cables, USB Type-C to Type-A and to Type-C. This allows it to be used on most devices. Corsair also offers a download of its Corsair SSD Toolbox, available on Corsair’s website. This software allows you to check the health of the drive and update firmware if required.

A Closer Look at Corsair EX100U

The Corsair EX100U is diminutive which is beneficial for those that desire maximum portability. It’s also quite lightweight, and as a solid state device it has some resistance to shock and vibration. The USB-C port is hidden behind a rubber cover which when closed will offer some protection from dust and water. The drive is rated to pull up to 4W of power, as shown on the back label.

The cap design is, in our opinion, poor. It’s not intuitive to open and you have to be careful when opening it. It’s not particularly rugged, which is an important point because there must be a good seal in order for it to protect the port from liquids, unlike with better designs.

The drive does not have a lot of protection and also no thermal padding. It’s a single PCB with an embedded USB-C connector. On-board we see four NAND packages, the controller, and two additional integrated circuits (ICs) that stand out.

The controller is the Phison U18, the faster sibling of the U17 that we saw in the updated Crucial X6 and the Inland Platinum External. These two controllers are very similar, but the U18 is 20 Gbps with its USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface while the U17 is at 10 Gbps with USB 3.2 Gen 2x1. As the controllers are only 2-channel, the bus speed is necessarily increased from 800 to 1400 MT/s. These controllers are a hybrid design in the sense that they replace the need for an external bridge chip. This can have ramifications for performance and power consumption. It also simplifies the design and saves on cost.

We can also see two Texas Instruments TS3DDR4000 ICs between the controller and the NAND. These DDR switches have multiple applications, for example being able to commit data to non-volatile media from DRAM during a power loss event. This controller is DRAM-less but, of course, current ONFi flash is based on NV-DDR3 I/O. These ICs allow for high speed switching for 1:2 so likely assist the 2-channel controller with the use of four NAND packages. Only the 2TB and 4TB models have four while the 1TB has two, so the latter may not have these chips.

The Phison U18 is a native universal flash drive (UFD) controller which suggests it is designed for USB applications. The 2-channel design reinforces this assumption. As such, the 1400 MT/s bus required to hit USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speeds may be a bit taxing for a full-on SSD solution. This may be why these ICs are on-board for higher capacities, especially as a USB flash drive will typically not have this many NAND packages. The TS3DDR4000 data sheet explicitly states, for one application, that “to meet the performance requirement of an SSD, the ability to isolate the loading becomes necessary.”

I was not able to get information or confirmation on this from either Corsair or Phison.

The flash is labeled HA7HG64AWA which appears to be 176-layer Micron TLC. Corsair would not confirm this when I asked, possibly to reserve the ability to swap out of the flash at a later date. Corsair lists the drive as having “3D NAND” officially. Given that this drive is available up to 4TB, BiCS5 TLC is another possibility. We did not see any samples of this hardware with QLC at this time.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

For portable SSD testing, write caching is enabled on all drives. This is as recommended by Corsair. The 2TB Corsair EX100U is up against three other drives at its capacity including the Samsung T7, the Adata SE900G, the SanDisk Pro G-Drive (formerly G-Technology G-Drive), and the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2. 1TB competitors include the Lexar SL660 Blaze, the Kingston XS2000, and the WD My Passport SSD. Portable drives are often limited in speed by the USB interface and also often use 4-channel controllers, so comparing 1TB drives is fair game.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The EX100U comes in dead last for the 3DMark benchmark. This is one reason we wanted to confirm the flash with Corsair as initial thinking was that the EX100U could be using QLC. It instead seems to be a consequence of using a 2-channel UFD controller.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The EX100U also finishes last in PCMark 10. This makes it difficult to recommend it for enthusiasts, but synthetic benchmarks are not everything, especially when it comes to portable SSDs.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

[Charts]

The EX100U is mediocre in DiskBench, its performance bolstered by its 20 Gbps interface. It is able to match or beat some of the 10 Gbps drives in this test.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

EX100U sequential performance is also reasonable in ATTO and CDM. There’s a dip with the 1MB block size in ATTO which may reveal some characteristics or quirks of the underlying hardware. The EX100U also shows some solid numbers for random 4K performance, suggesting that this flash is TLC. CDM results as a whole paint a better picture for the drive.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states via sensor and an infrared thermometer. The typical ambient temperature is at 24C. The load state involves sustained writes at maximum speed with measurement ensuing if and until throttling is demonstrated to discover the equilibrium temperature.

The 2TB Corsair EX100U writes in pSLC mode at around 1.58 GBps for a bit over 15 seconds. The cache in this case is about 24GB, which matches the typical size for SSDs based on Phison’s E12 controller. However, Corsair lists this cache as static while those drives had a dynamic cache. This implies that the EX100U’s cache size will vary directly with total drive capacity, for example being perhaps half this size on the 1TB model. Static pSLC tends to be associated with higher sustained writes and can improve both endurance and drive consistency. It also tends to recover fluidly as it does not have to cycle through available TLC.

This seems to be the case as the EX100U manages up to 850 MBps after the cache is exhausted for a prolonged period of time. The drive does then drop down to about 330 MBps before rebounding to 610 MBps or so. While not particularly amazing, the EX100U almost keeps up with drives like the My Passport SSD and SanDisk Professional G-Drive, which is remarkable given that the EX100U is using a 2-channel controller. This suggests that Corsair intentionally used TLC and static pSLC to ensure relatively good sequential write performance.

This drive is not ideal for a content creator who needs very specific, consistent performance with sustained writes, but on the other hand it is superior to many other drives like the SL660 Blaze. It’s also cheaper than the SanDisk Pro-G40 but costs a bit more than the Samsung T7 Shield. The EX100U is positioned to offer capacity, relatively good write performance, portability, and 20 Gbps speeds in the middle of the market, offering a compromise that manages to avoid QLC.

We expected this drive to get toasty due to the overall construction and we were not surprised. The EX100U idled at 48C, a bit on the high side, then hit 80C+ with sustained writes. At that point write speeds began to fluctuate widely, suggesting a thermal throttling limit. Our assumption that this would not meet the criteria for professional use - where you may want consistent write speeds - is proven valid. However, it should be fine for general transfers.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. Portable SSDs are tested with write caching explicitly enabled for the device within Windows.

Conclusion

The Corsair EX100U is a pretty basic portable SSD, having strengths and weaknesses without any real coherent design. It’s small with good capacity options and has sufficient performance for everyday portable drive needs. Its price is a bit higher for its 20 Gbps interface and TLC flash, but its build and overall performance fall short of what a professional would need. This puts it somewhere in the middle of the options currently available on the market. Corsair is at least a known brand, which fends off cheap imitators.

We would recommend this as a compromise purchase, for example if you want 20 Gbps burst performance with enough sustained performance to handle larger transfers. The ability to get up to 4TB is nice, too, especially given the small and light design. We would not suggest it for use in less amenable environments or when maximum performance is required. It’s a sufficient portable SSD for most needs without any stand-out features.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Yesterday, Tesla launched its 2022 Holiday Update, which has traditionally been the most significant update of the year for the company's electric vehicles. The biggest addition to the Holiday Update was support for Steam games on 2022+ Model S and Model X vehicles. These EVs feature a potent Ryzen SoC with RDNA2-class graphics and 16GB of RAM, making them perfect for gaming on the large 17-inch center display or the 8-inch display for the rear passengers.

But what will you do for storage with Tesla's ever-expanding gaming portfolio? Well, Tesla would love for you to purchase its new, wildly overpriced 1TB Solid State Drive (SSD). The storage device showed up in the Tesla Shop this week, promising to store everything from "Tesla Arcade games" to "Dashcam footage." That sounds all well and good, but Tesla is asking an astonishing $350 for this 1TB SSD.

To put that price into perspective, we took a quick trip over to Amazon and found several significantly cheaper portable 1TB SSDs, many of which are well under $100:

• Crucial X6 1TB Portable USB 3.2 SSD - $69.99
• Crucial X8 1TB Portable USB 3.2 SSD - $79.99
• Samsung T7 Shield 1TB Portable USB 3.2 SSD - $89.99
• SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable USB 3.2 SSD - $99.99

So, why should you buy Tesla's branded 1TB SSD when it's five times the price of popular, name-brand portable SSDs? Tesla claims that its 1TB SSD is "automotive-grade," designed to "withstand extreme cabin temperatures" and survive "vehicle shocks and vibrations."

Tesla provides no figures beyond these claims. However, Micron's automotive-grade SSDs have an extended operating temperature range of -40 degrees Celsius to between 85 C and 105 C, while some of Western Digital's automotive-grade SSDs are ruggedized with shock resistance of 1,500g at 0.5ms and vibration resistance of forces of 30g at 7 Hz to 2,000 Hz. Neither company appears to have a portable automotive-grade SSD in its portfolio; regardless, it's likely that Tesla's SSD will be able to withstand some extreme conditions that the average SSD can't. 

That said, normal portable SSDs are more than capable of withstanding vibrations and bumps from a regular moving vehicle. As for temperatures, the $89 Samsung T7 Shield has an operating temperature range of 0 C to 60 C, a non-operating temperature range of -40 C to 85 C, and an operating humidity range of 5% to 95%. 

So, unless you have the cabin temperature below freezing while you're driving, the Tesla SSD is unlikely to offer any tangible durability advantages over run-of-the-mill SSDs in non-emergency situations. 

Tesla also provides no figures or specs that we could use to compare to existing products on the market. Instead, the product page simply states that its SSD will offer similar read/write speeds. Most of the portable 1TB SSDs we found for under $100 feature read/write speeds ranging from 800 MBps to 1,050 MBps.

Most Tesla EVs come standard from the factory with a 128GB USB thumb drive for Sentry Mode storage. If you're looking to take advantage of the expanded gaming capabilities in the Model S and Model X, there are plenty of great portable SSDs that have more storage and cost less than the new Tesla SSD, which doesn't really seem like a good option unless you like throwing money away. 

But if your heart is set on a brand-new Tesla-branded 1TB SSD, the drive will go on sale in February 2023 for $350.

Rugged adventurous types who like to take their SSDs hiking, hunting or cave diving have a new storage solution to appeal to their outdoorsy tastes, as Western Digital has announced the latest release from its Sandisk subsidiary: the Pro-G40 with Thunderbolt 3.

With an IP68 rating (dust-tight and able to be submerged in water) the Pro-G40 can also withstand a remarkable 4,000lbs of crush weight (that’s equivalent to a white rhino, or a Ford Taurus) and can withstand a drop of three meters (9.8ft) onto a carpeted concrete floor. While there's little detail in the announcement about what it’s made of, apart from being ‘pro-grade’ and ‘ultra-rugged’ with ‘premium strength’, we do know it has an aluminum core that acts as a heat-sink to help maintain high speeds. 

The combination of the SSD and Thunderbolt 3 (40Gb/s) / USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gb/s) Type-C interface gives the drive a high transfer rate of up to 2700MB/s read and 1900MB/s write, capable of transferring 50GB in 30 seconds, which will please filmmakers looking for a speedy backup solution to use in the field. Even better, that kind of speed allows real-time 4K/8K editing straight from the drive. There's no mention of it in the announcement, but it’s almost certainly bus-powered too, given that there are no other ports on the drive.

Western Digital has also identified a problem with USB Type-C cables all being identical on the outside, but not on the inside, and has thoughtfully included a cable with the drive that supports both interfaces. “The new PRO-G40 SSD eliminates the problem we have all experienced before: grabbing the wrong USB-C cable or computer for our Thunderbolt 3 or USB devices,” said Hector Sandoval, vice president of product marketing, pricing and programs at Western Digital. “By supporting both interfaces and including a cable that does as well, this drive enables creatives to efficiently collaborate across devices without having to worry about carrying the right gear nor diminishing sustained performance as they continue producing impactful content.”

The Sandisk Professional Pro-G40 is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, comes only in black, and should be available on the Western Digital store by the time you read this. MSRP is around $480 (£415 in the UK), presumably for the 1TB version. If you're in the US, you can check our curated list of current Western Digital coupon codes for possible savings. 

Seagate has a new partner to help advance its quest for domination of the data storage industry. The storage stalwart has teamed up with a DNA-based digital data storage startup called Catalog, which was founded by MIT alumni in 2016. The technical twosome today announced that they will be working on several initiatives together, but the most interesting potential advance could be the work on making DNA-based platforms up to 1,000 times smaller.

Tom’s Hardware has covered the melding of DNA and computer storage technology several times previously. From all those stories, what stands out is the potential for incredible data densities via this organically occurring medium, perfected by nature. In coverage of this topic last year we reported that DNA has the potential to store up to 455 exabytes per gram. This puts to shame a modern 20TB HDD, which is only capable of storing 0.027 terabytes per gram.

Seagate and Catalog aren’t working on any improbably tiny devices together though. They are starting from Catalog’s very sizable DNA-based platform dubbed ‘Shannon’ which is described as being “about the size of an average family kitchen.” Shrinking this DNA storage installation down is still highly worthwhile, and using Seagate’s ‘lab on a chip’ technology to reduce the volume of chemistry required for DNA-based storage and computation it is hoped to shrink this family kitchen setup down to 1000th its current size. By our rough calculations that would mean the new setup would fit within a 7 liter chassis.

Seagate’s ‘lab-on-a-chip’ doesn’t handle code. Instead, it features tiny reservoirs and channels to process miniscule amounts of DNA in liquid form. These reservoirs pump precise mixes of liquids into other reservoirs for controlled reactions and results. The miniaturized technology also facilities greater amounts of automation. With the smaller ‘lab’ it is expected that the next-gen platform will be compact enough to offer commercially viable DNA storage in settings as diverse as offices, ocean research vessels and space stations.

You may be thinking about the data storage capacity these collaborative DAN storage devices using Seagate’s chip can provide. Previous news releases from Catalog have boasted that while hard drive storage can pack in about 30 million gigabytes into a cubic meter of space, its DNA lab can store 600 billion gigabytes in the same volume. Thus a new seven liter version of ‘Shannon’ should store about 4 billion gigabytes, again according to our rough calculations.

Catalog says the first combined test of its DNA storage and Seagate’s technology will begin mid-September. Hopefully, that means we will hear more about the actual working 1000x smaller version of Shannon shortly.

IBM started to ship diskettes in 1973 and this type of removable storage media eventually become so popular that Japanese government agencies imposed a rule to submit data on diskettes and over time on CD-ROMs. Apparently, this rule is still valid, so officials have been using diskettes and CD-ROMs — instead of emails or cloud storage services — to submit data to this day. 

Some of Japan's Ministers of State think that it's time to move forward.

"Where can you buy floppy disks these days?" Taro Kono, Japan's Minister of Digital Affairs, asked reporters rhetorically on Tuesday, reports Nikkei. "We will change [these rules] promptly." 

At present, Japanese laws contain 1,900 provisions requiring the use of obsolete storage media, such as 3.5-inch diskettes or CD-ROMs. Going digital will make Japanese government agencies more efficient overall as file transfers via the Internet are quicker. But, like other authorities, Japanese government agencies must follow rules meticulously — and so the Japanese government has created a task force to revise the rules set decades ago. 

Nowadays it is not only hard to obtain diskettes (as they are barely manufactured by anyone), it's also difficult to use them to store anything, because modern text and spreadsheet files require much more space than their predecessors from the 1980s and 1990s. There are still applications that rely on file formats (and even software) released 30 or 40 years ago — and can therefore be stored on diskettes and/or CD-ROMs — the world has mostly moved on to USB flash drives, Blu-ray discs, and cloud storage services, all of which have larger capacities and are more efficient and reliable.  

That said, there are some industries that use diskettes and will continue to use them for a while. For example, some Boeing 747-400 planes use 3.5-inch diskettes for avionics software. Also, some of military equipment and sections (such as nuclear forces) continue to use not only 8-inch diskettes, but even punched cards. 

With thousands of laws requiring usage of diskettes or CD-ROMs, we assume it will take quite some time before the obsolete storage media goes extinct. Until then, one can still enjoy an external 3.5-inch diskette reader even on Windows 11 machines for as little as $20 — though it does require a special driver from Microsoft. 

If something sounds too good to be true, then it is. That's the first thing that should go through your mind when you see a 30TB portable SSD selling for $39 at Walmart (h/t to Ars Technica). The drive is far from being one of the best SSDs - but it deserves a spot on everyone's blocklist.

Twitter user Ray Redacted recently purchased a 30TB portable SSD on AliExpress for the giggles. The drive sells for $31.40 but is available at a third-party seller on Walmart for a small premium. Aesthetically, the "Portable SSD" is a clone of the popular Samsung T5. The Chinese knockoff even uses a similar text as the T5. Although advertised as a USB 3.1 drive, Ray later discovered that it's limited to USB 2.0 speeds. Internally, the portable SSD features a small, green PCB (HUB-TF2) that carries two microSD cards glued to it.

There are different versions of the same scam. For example, another Twitter user revealed that his portable SSD came with a USB pen drive inside instead of two microSD cards. In other words, the portable SSD is just a USB hub with various microSD slots or, in the other case, a USB pen drive.

It's not the first time we've seen storage devices with dubious specifications. Fake USB pen drives, SSDs, and SD cards are all over the market, and one must be careful when purchasing. Nonetheless, the intricacy of this particular portable SSD is pretty interesting. The swindler uses two microSD cards and slaps a hacked firmware on them to misreport the capacity. The actual size of the microSD card isn't important since the firmware fools Windows into thinking the cards are bigger than they are.

In the case of Ray's drive, Windows detects the unit as two 15TB drives. In reality, the microSD cards were smaller. He noted that the USB-C to USB-C 3.1 cable is a sham and the drive sticks to the USB 2.0 standard, allowing transfer speeds up to 60 MBps. The hacked firmware writes new data on top of the old data and keeps the directory. It appears to be working, but when you try to access your files, there's nothing there.

Consumers must be careful when purchasing goods online, whether computer hardware or not. It's even more important nowadays since big-name retailers such as Newegg and Walmart have allowed third-party sellers to use their marketplace platforms for e-commerce.

One of the easy ways to quickly get malware on a victim's PC is to trick them into thinking that they are getting something for free and make them install everything themselves. It is what criminals from the U.K. do in a bid to steal money from their targets.

Scammers from the U.K. send USB drives with Microsoft's Office suites in seemingly real Microsoft packaging to random addresses trying to make victims think that they received a legitimate Office Professional Plus (worth $439) by mistake. After the victim plugs the USB drive into their PC, it is not an Office launch installation wizard but encourages people to call a fake support line. The latter then persuades the casualty to hand over remote access to the PC and provide them payment information, reports Sky News.

"As soon as they had plugged the USB into the computer, a warning screen appeared saying there was a virus," said Martin Pitman, a cybersecurity consultant for Atheniem. "To get help and fix the issue, they needed to call a toll-free number to get the computer up and running again. As soon as they called the number on screen, the helpdesk installed some sort of [remote access program] and took control of the victim's computer. Here the hackers 'sorted' the problem and then passed the victim over to the Office 365 subscription team to help complete the action."

Baiting attacks are nothing new, but they target specific victims and rarely use postal packages for various reasons. But the fraudsters from the U.K. targeted random people using postal packages, according to the cybersecurity expert. Such targeting may seem inefficient, but if you send out a thousand counterfeit Microsoft Office packages and steal money from a few dozens of people, the act will quickly pay for itself. Moreover, it could be more efficient than sending out millions of fraudulent emails, as people these days are aware of email scammers.

Microsoft is aware of the issue but says it is a rare occurrence. However, it is not so rare for Microsoft to be mindful of it and launch an internal investigation. Nowadays, the company prefers to distribute its software via the Internet and advises its customers to visit an appropriate support page to find out how to avoid fraud and scams.

The new Crucial X6 is an affordable external USB-C SSD designed for big capacity and maximum portability. The drive is well-priced for those who need a significant amount of storage that’s faster and more reliable than what you get with a portable hard drive, making it a contender for our list of best external SSDs, but its rated performance is nothing to write home about and it comes with minimal frills and extras. 

Crucial’s original X6 used a DRAM-less SATA controller with a similar type of flash, but it was limited to 540MBps of sequential read throughput. The newer model, tested at a capacious 4TB, is rated for up to 800MBps. This makes it a good choice for storage on the go or if you want something relatively quick to back up your data. Its performance is definitely limited, though, so while it can survive a fall from height, you should keep your performance expectations in check. Content creators might want to look at something like the Samsung T7 Shield instead.

This drive is lightweight and small in stature, making it easy to throw into your laptop bag or backpack. It's also designed to survive drops and runs fairly cool. However, it doesn’t come with a Type-A cable, which might reduce its appeal.

Specifications

The Crucial X6 is available at 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. The 500GB SKU is still limited to the original peak read throughput of 540MBps; however, the larger models are now rated for up to 800MBps for sequential reads. The drives are drop-resistant up to two meters, or about 6.5 feet. The drive is small and lightweight in every incarnation, specified as less than 1.5 ounces and easy to fit in a pocket. Crucial backs this drive with a three-year warranty.

Pricing is best at 1TB or higher capacities, and that’s where you should look to buy a drive like this anyway. While the cost per gigabyte could be lower, it remains reasonable against its competition. It would be best if you bought this for basic storage extension; the Crucial X6 isn't intended to be a high-end product.

Software and Accessories 

The Crucial X6 comes with a Type-C to Type-C cable, but you can use a Type-C to Type-A cable if you purchase one separately. Crucial's downloadable and free Storage Executive software works with the X6, allowing you to get firmware updates, manage drive functions, and monitor the drive's health. Crucial's Momentum Cache feature offers the ability to dedicate system memory (RAM) to act as a cache for the drive, but we do not recommend this feature due to data integrity concerns in the event of an unexpected disconnection or power loss. 

A Closer Look

The Crucial X6 comes in a relatively small rounded black case, but Crucial claims it can survive a two-meter fall. One side has a USB-C connector to attach the included Type-C to Type-C cable, while the back lists basic information about the drive, like its capacity and the serial number. There's nothing flashy here, but the drive's small size and lightweight nature make it quite portable.

Internally we see EMI shielding, tape, and thermal padding. The latter should allow the drive to stay relatively cool during prolonged use. Beneath all of this is the PCB, which includes a DRAM-less controller and, for the 4TB SKU, two NAND packages on either side (for a total of four).

A closer look at the controller lets us see various power circuitry centered around the Phison PS6103 PMIC. The lack of a bridge chip tells us that this controller is an embedded hybrid design that manages both the interface and flash.

The original Phison PS2251-17 controller was used for USB flash drives with a USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 interface and a Type-A connector. It’s often speed- and capacity-limited when utilized for that application. Phison more recently developed the U17 from this basis, with the same interface but a Type-C connector. The controller is also capable of managing up to 4TB of flash and can reach higher speeds. The U17 is a native UFD controller in the same vein as Silicon Motion’s SM2320, which is used in the Kingston XS2000.

In this case, we have a USB-C connector and speeds up to 800 MBps — less than what the 10 Gbps interface and 1 GBps U17 can handle — coupled with QLC at up to 4TB. This two-channel controller typically manages up to sixteen dies, so this capacity pushes the controller a bit. We previously reviewed the Inland Platinum External SSD, which uses the same controller and QLC flash but is rated for higher speeds and comes only at lower capacities.

The flash modules are labeled NY165. These are 8Tb (1TB) modules, for a total of 4TB. Each of the four modules has eight 1Tb (128GB) QLC dies in an 8DP/ODP configuration. This is a newer QLC flash, specifically Micron’s 176-layer QLC (N48R), based on the same architecture as its 176L TLC (B47R). We suspected this during testing, then later confirmed with Crucial, who stated that the updated drive with the U17 launched with 96-layer QLC but may now come with the newer flash.

This is a departure from the floating gate (FG) QLC that Micron made in partnership with Intel at 64 and 96 layers. Micron previously used the 96L QLC on the original X6, coupled with Silicon Motion’s DRAM-less SM2259XT SATA controller with the 5Gbps ASMedia ASM235CM bridge chip. This newer QLC has appeared on some of Micron’s OEM drives and should be in the P3 and P3 Plus. We'll cover the deeper technical aspects of the flash in the latter’s review.

The SSD market should see more 176-layer or equivalent QLC from multiple manufacturers in the coming months. This is relevant as it suggests that QLC may finally grab a decent market share while being performant enough to replace TLC in many cases. It also means we'll get larger drives with a lower cost per gigabyte, especially as NAND prices continue to plummet. Products like the 4TB X6 will become more common, particularly with new UFD controllers, so use this review as a baseline.

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We put the 4TB Crucial X6 against a variety of other portable SSDs, including Crucial’s own X8 and the original X6, both at 2TB. We also included the 2TB Samsung T7 Shield and SanDisk’s Professional G-Drive. The remaining three drives — Kingston’s XS2000, WD’s Black D30, and the Inland Platinum Internal — are 1TB.

These drives use different controllers and approaches to bridge chips. For example, the XS2000 has a hybrid design, so we can see differences in approach. The choice in flash also varies, so we’ll see how much of an impact QLC flash has on performance.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Having 4TB of portable storage could be nice to haul around your games. Unfortunately, the new X6 doesn't do very well in this test. Most likely, it’s still close enough to other SSDs in game loading times that it will be just fine for this type of usage. It’s not a surprise it comes close to the Platinum External as the drives have similar hardware - the U17 controller with QLC flash. The older X6, which had a separate SATA controller and bridge chip paired with QLC flash, is significantly faster.

Other drives with normal controllers also fare well and perform relatively close to each other. The Kingston XS2000, which uses SMI’s UFD design, is a big surprise. However, that drive uses TLC rather than QLC like the new X6.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The new X6 does better here, beating the old X6 and the Platinum External. The uplift over those two drives may come from Micron’s newer 176-layer QLC. We haven't seen this flash used much yet, but expectations are that it will match or exceed Intel’s 144-layer QLC. That QLC is used in Intel’s 670p, while most other QLC drives on the market use 96-layer QLC from the time of Intel and Micron’s cooperative efforts. For you, this means more consistent performance with the new X6, all else being equal. The extra dies in the 4TB X6, as opposed to the 1TB Platinum External, can also help sustain bandwidth.

We nevertheless see better performance from the rest of the drives, although these have TLC or, as in the X8’s case, a faster controller and interface.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The new X6 also does better in DiskBench, where its faster interface propels it above the old model. It also beats the WD_Black D30, likely thanks to its large SLC cache. It’s unable to keep up with drives with faster interfaces and higher maximum bandwidth, though. This drive is clearly more about capacity and portability than raw performance.

Synthetic Testing - CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tool that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

In CrystalDiskMark’s sequential tests, the new X6 again does better than the old X6. It has a faster interface than the original design, so that’s not surprising. However, it does remain a bit behind most of the other 10Gbps options, which, while matching Crucial’s 800 MBps specification, has it fall below what the U17 can do, as demonstrated in our Platinum External review.

Performance in random workloads is a bit better, thanks to the use of a hybrid controller. Of course, you will still be constrained by the USB interface and, in some cases, the QLC flash, but these are reasonably good results.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 4TB X6 writes in SLC at a bit more than 800 MBps until its SLC cache is full. As with the 1TB Inland Platinum External, all of the QLC flash can run in this single-bit mode. For a 4TB drive, this comes out to around 1TB — a massive amount. After the drive exhausts the cache, it is forced to copy back incoming data to QLC at a bit below 60 MBps. You don’t want to run out of cache on this drive.

The massive cache allows the drive to out-write the old X6, and, if given enough runway, it does well against every other drive in the list except the T7 Shield. This is not surprising as the T7 Shield was designed for consistent write performance, with fast TLC and a relatively small SLC cache. The X6 is more reasonable for the type of use such a capacious drive would see: bursty file transfers, with more reads than writes. The X6 would work nicely as a backup or archival drive, although SSDs should be plugged in and read at least once a year to ensure data retention.

As with the Platinum External, the X6's cache recovery was relatively quick. This type of design makes sense because the drive is trying to hide its poor QLC performance and needs to free up its “real” capacity as quickly as possible. This could cause issues in some edge cases, particularly with a fuller drive, although this is not a new caveat for DRAM-less QLC SSDs.

The X6 runs relatively cool, idling at 30C as measured by the temperature gun and 40C via SMART. The drive saw no throttling even after writing 1.2TB of data with a surface temperature of 39C and a SMART reading of 53C. Portable drives may have to face hotter environments outdoors, and you also need to be able to handle the drive’s case — therefore, the low drive and surface temperatures are in the X6’s favor.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The new Crucial X6 offers greater speed and larger capacities in an extremely portable form factor. The drive is diminutive and basic but designed to survive a two-meter drop. We had no issues with overheating. The drive is also priced right if you need this much capacity. It would work well as an external archival or backup drive and is easy enough to carry around in a pocket to be useful on the go. However, it’s designed to be cheap, which has some significant drawbacks.

The drive’s performance in sequential workloads is lackluster, trailing other 10 Gbps USB drives, including ones like the Inland Platinum External with similar hardware. Drives with a 20 Gbps interface and/or TLC are simply faster and more consistent. Random performance is better than one would expect, thanks to the hybrid controller, which should also be more efficient. However, on the whole, this is not a very performant option and power draw is often a secondary concern.

The X6 only comes with a three-year warranty and lacks a Type-C to Type-A cable out of the box, both of which could be limiting. The optional cable adds to the potential overall cost. Still, the X6 is a better option than an HDD and it’s not from an unknown manufacturer. Crucial/Micron makes its own flash with generally decent quality standards. We would have liked to see more out of this product, though, even if it’s positioned at the low-end.

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Kingston's IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD is a portable SSD with an attractive full-featured touchscreen that controls many customizable options that keep your data safe. The drive comes with up to 1.92TB of QLC flash storage backed by hardware encryption, conveniently includes Type-A and Type-C cables, and like the drives on our list of best external SSDs, is compatible with most operating systems and devices. However, because this is a specialized device that's focused on data security, these advantages come at the cost of performance and a thick price tag.

The IronKey may be up your alley if you want secure storage in your pocket that’s faster than a hard drive or slower forms of flash storage, such as SD cards and USB flash drives. It’s certainly attractive, and the built-in touchscreen makes the drive’s security functions easy to use. However, such convenience comes at a price, as the drive will run you several hundred dollars at any capacity. Kingston also made some compromises in the performance department.

Most other portable SSDs don’t offer built-in security functions, aside from perhaps Samsung’s T7 Touch, and software-based solutions remain a viable option. Of course, the whole idea is to have reliable and portable storage, but performance can vary widely depending on the interface.

The IronKey relies on the slowest USB 3.2 Gen 1x1 connection, but just how far does it fall behind the competition? Encryption comes with a performance cost, but ultimately Kingston made design decisions that may have you reconsider the value of the added security.

Specifications

The Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD is available at 480GB, 960GB, and 1.92TB. These capacities suggest additional over-provisioning, reducing available user space to leave extra for the controller to improve write performance and flash endurance. This makes sense given the purpose and characteristics of the drive. The IronKey is a bit heftier than many portable SSDs, in part because it has an embedded touchscreen for its security functions. Kingston backs this unit with a three-year warranty, which is a bit anemic given the price.

Speaking of price, you'll pay significantly more for the security options, like the FIPS 197-compliant 256-bit XTS-AES encryption. This encryption meets the Common Criteria EAL5+ standard (Evaluation Assurance Level 5 with one or more additions to the base rating). The randomizable, color touchscreen has a multi-password option with PIN or passphrase, from 6-64 alphanumeric characters, with a configurable amount of access attempts and an auto-timeout. The drive also supports a dual read-only mode for write protection to protect against compromised systems and malware, plus the ability to Secure Erase the drive by wiping the encryption key.

You might be dismayed to see the performance limitations — the drive offers up to
250 MBps for sequential reads and writes. This makes sense for a variety of reasons. One is that on-the-fly hardware encryption does have some overhead and performance limitations, even with the dedicated encryption microcontroller. Because performance is already limited, Kingston can save cost when selecting the SATA-to-USB bridge chip, which in this case has a hard limit of 3Gbps SATA. We’ll look at these respective components a bit below. Due to these limitations, the USB interface is USB 3.2 Gen 1, or 5Gbps.

Given all these considerations, the price-per-GB is best at 1.92TB and worst at 480GB. Based on this ratio, we would recommend the 960GB and 1.92TB SKUs.

Software and Accessories

The IronKey comes with both Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A USB cables. The drive comes with a nice carrying pouch made of neoprene, which does offer some protection. The drive has built-in software, accessible through the touchscreen, for its various functions and settings. Unfortunately, while Kingston does offer downloadable SSD Manager software on its website, it doesn't support USB enclosures/devices.

A Closer Look

The front of the IronKey has a nice color touchscreen. The blue case color is attractive. The USB-C port resides on the bottom, which is convenient. On the backside, a label lists pertinent specifications about the drive: model, capacity, power draw, etc. There’s also a screw that allows for opening of the enclosure, covered by a “warranty void if removed” sticker.

Inside we have what appears to be a Kingston A400 SATA SSD attached to a SATA-to-USB adapter, with a USB-C output and PCB beneath the drive. There are four screws to hold the bay in place and another four for the drive cover — including another warranty warning sticker. The touchscreen has a ribbon connecting the screen to the board, and we can see a few prominent integrated circuits (IC) on the PCB.

The first chip is labeled MB86C311A, which is a Fujitsu MB86C31 USB 3.0-SATA Bridge IC. This bridge chip is USB 3.2 Gen 1, or 5Gbps, on one side and SATA 2.0, or 3Gbps, on the other. Actual throughput on the SATA side is significantly lower than 3Gbps due to encoding and transfer overhead, with an approximate maximum of 270MBps. This chip does support the USB-attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) for better performance and other functions. The chip is based on an ARM Cortex-M processor, specifically the M3, a processor that's also used for offloaded functions in Crucial’s custom SSD controllers, like the Crucial P5 and P5 Plus SSDs. The -1A model of this chip has integrated AES encryption hardware.

The other IC is an STM32L, or STMicroelectronics STM32 microcontroller. The STM32 is based on Arm’s Cortex-M series of processors, designed to be low-cost and low-power for various applications. In this case, it’s likely used to manage the integrated touchscreen. 

Self-Encrypting Drives (SED) have an encryption module as part of the controller ASIC while the IronKey has a separate chip for AES - a chip that also acts as a SATA-USB bridge. Unfortunately, this chip introduces a performance bottleneck in the drive.

The flash is labeled FB51208UCN1, indicating these are 8-bit, 512GB NAND modules (two for a total of 1TB). We recognize this designation as similar to the flash used in Kingston’s NV1, which used 64-layer Intel/Micron QLC. We suspect that Kingston uses QLC here as well, which is not egregious as the drive is bandwidth-limited from the get-go. Verifying this flash with a utility is possible, but looking at the sustained write response can also be informative. This and other drives may utilize the 96-layer variety depending on supply.

The DRAM-less Silicon Motion SM2259XT SATA controller manages the flash. This SSD controller is found in many popular drives, like Crucial’s BX500, as an update to the original SM2258XT. The primary difference is improved LDPC error correction, which improves performance and endurance. This first showed up when Crucial added QLC SKUs to its BX500 lineup as it’s a good pairing to get more out of 4-bit flash.

This four-channel controller is best with at least two dies per channel, so we recommend the 960GB or 1.92TB SKUs. This is especially true given the pricing we covered earlier. 

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compared the 960GB Kingston IronKey to other popular portable drives at the same relative capacity. This includes drives with QLC flash, like the Inland Platinum External SSD and the Crucial X8. Samsung has its own security-focused portable SSD in the T7 Touch, but we’ve also included the newer T7 Shield. We also use the Kingston XS2000 to show what a hybrid controller with a 20Gbps interface can do. Finally, we also included the WD My Passport SSD and the SanDisk Extreme v2.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Unsurprisingly, the IronKey doesn't do too well in this test, although it still manages to beat the Inland Platinum External. The Platinum External uses a hybrid controller (flash controller and bridge, all in one), which is intended to be cheaper and more power-efficient. It also uses comparable QLC flash.

The drives with TLC and/or faster controllers do better in this test than both drives. This is one place where Kingston's XS2000 does quite well.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The IronKey does not do well in PCMark, limited by its lack of bandwidth, the use of QLC, and possibly encryption overhead. Its latency is even worse than the Platinum External’s, which scored poorly due to the embedded controller QLC flash. The X8, which uses a dedicated controller with DRAM, stands on top.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The IronKey is doomed to do poorly in DiskBench as it is bandwidth-limited by its bridge chip and USB interface. It finishes dead last, and not by a small amount.

Synthetic Testing - CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tool that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The IronKey has no hope of keeping up in CrystalDiskMark’s sequential read and write tests as, again, it’s inherently limited by the 3Gbps SATA bottleneck. You probably aren’t purchasing this drive for speed, though. The IronKey's performance in random workloads is also poor due to overhead — encryption likely adds to the latency — although it's certainly better than lesser forms of storage such as USB flash drives. It’s good enough for occasional transfers where security is paramount.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The IronKey writes at its maximum possible speed, around 260 MB/s until it runs out of pSLC cache. This appears to be one-quarter of the drive, implying QLC, meaning that all of the flash can run in single-bit mode with a corresponding loss of capacity. After this, the drive performance declines to about 40MBps on average, which is certainly slow enough to suggest that the drive is folding data from pSLC to the native QLC. Considering the drive is slow to begin with, you really don’t want to hit this performance state. It’s the slowest drive in the round-up for sustained writes.

Drives with large SLC caches usually have fast cache recovery, particularly if the cache is hiding poor native performance, like when the drive uses QLC. A large, dynamic SLC cache with fast recovery can have additive wear as blocks are necessarily rewritten when moved from pSLC to QLC. The IronKey’s large cache should be enough to absorb typical write workloads, but you should be aware that it’s not made for constant writing at full capacity like the T7 Shield.

Temperatures were not something to be concerned with, as the drive proved to be too slow to generate sufficient heat to get anywhere near throttling limits.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD has two things going for it: portability and security. The problem is that you'll pay a lot for those privileges, in money and other ways. The IronKey is very expensive when looking at its cost-per-GB, particularly at its lowest capacity; this is a drive you should only get at 960GB or 1.92TB. Even then, you’re making a lot of compromises for what is admittedly fairly robust and customizable data security.

These sacrifices come in the form of performance and, to some extent, endurance. Performance is hampered by the use of a DRAM-less controller, a SATA-USB bridge chip that's limited to 3Gbps, a 5Gbps USB interface, and the use of an older QLC flash. While all of these design decisions make sense given the bridge’s bottleneck, which may be due to encryption overhead, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re paying this much for the drive. Endurance is also likely hurt by using QLC and a DRAM-less controller, not to mention the massive SLC cache.

The IronKey is attractive with a nice touch-screen that is full of functionality. The drive has a carrying case and both types of USB cables, which is nice, and the on-drive controls improve compatibility. There are myriad security options and protections for you to dial in to your liking, and it’s all supported in hardware. This makes it a bit of a unique device, so you have to personally decide if it’s worth all the drawbacks of increased price and lacking performance. 

MORE: Best External SSDs and Hard Drives

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

China-based Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) has announced the latest iteration of its Xtacking NAND technology (now in its third generation), ushering in a new era of speed, density, and improved power efficiency. According to the company, its latest NAND chips (X3-9070) improve performance by 50% over previous designs (based on its 128-layer Xtacking 2.0 tech), while doubling density to 1TB per chip. Paired with a 25% reduction in power consumption despite the improved speed, it seems that Apple might find even more reasons to adopt the company's tech.

"The advent of YMTC's self-developed Silicon Stack 3.0 architecture is an important breakthrough in the 3D NAND track," said Gregory Wong, founder and chief analyst of Forward Insights. "It has been proven that the hybrid bonding of storage arrays and peripheral logic circuits is essential to drive the development and innovation of 3D NAND technology."

YMTC's Xtacking 3.0 tech brings about a claimed 50% performance improvement over the previous generation, achieving 2,400 MT/s over the previous gen's maximum of 1,600 MT/s. The company pins both the performance and power efficiency improvements on its adoption of a 6-plane NAND design, instead of the more traditional 4-plane of the previous generation. The doubling in density is nothing to scoff at either, and is a required development in a world with ever-increasing data storage needs. 

Interestingly, YMTC doesn't yet seem to have deployed its 196-layer NAND design with the announcement of the X3-9070 NAND chips. The company's next-generation NAND tech was slated to enter production sometime in the second half of this year, but any references to it in volume production are still absent. It may be that the company encountered difficulties in the transition, or perhaps it's just a case of it adopting a tick-tock like manufacturing and research process — first figuring out the new 6-plane design, improving yields, with a later introduction of their new layer density.

Despite its technological advancements, YMTC is still trailing Micron and other NAND manufacturers around the world. Micron has announced volume production of its 232-layer NAND tech for later this year, with some impressive density and performance characteristics, while SK Hynix is hot off our own presses with its 238-layer designs. YMTC's battle continues to be an uphill one, but it's impressive what the company has achieved while fielding only two 300mm wafer fabs for its actual production runs. The company will have to scale further in order to capture any sizable market share, but it seems its R&D investments have been paying off - despite continuing US pressure — the latest of which specifically addresses NAND technologies.

China specifically possesses one of the biggest addressable markets across the globe, and companies worldwide look at it — and the potential earnings — with a certain twinkle in their eyes. The increasing pressure on China's technology imports imposed by the United States has led the country's leadership — and its companies — to focus on developing domestic technology that is able to not only serve its market, but the various billion-dollar tech markets. NAND is but a slice of it — but a significant one, valued at $66.52 billion in 2021 (expected to reach $94.24 billion in value by 2027).

Inland's Platinum External SSD looks to put the company's stamp on the portable drive market. This drive from Inland, Micro Center’s in-house SSD brand, is another “P” model, as in Platinum, but it diverges from the company's typical drives by being particularly portable, making it a contender for our list of best external SSDs.

We’ve reviewed plenty of Inland drives over the years, with varying results. The drives do have some common themes, though: no frills, competitive warranty, and cheaper pricing. Inland often uses the same hardware as other manufacturers but offers no software. However, you can pick up their drives in a physical store — if you happen to live near a Micro Center — which can be convenient for many PC builders. This drive is more oriented at laptop or portable users who need a quick, efficient way to transport data, basically serving as a more substantial USB flash drive.

It will be interesting to see how this drive holds up against traditional portable SSDs, like the Samsung T7 Shield, as well as other embedded solutions like the Kingston XS2000.

Inland Platinum External SSD Specifications

The Inland Platinum External SSD comes in 500GB and 1TB capacities. Speeds stretch up to 1.1/1.0 GBps of sequential read/write throughput, matching the 10 Gbps interface. (Micro Center’s site has it the other way around, different than the Amazon listing, but reads are typically faster than writes.)

The Platinum's pricing is actually pretty good compared to other portable 10 Gbps NVMe SSDs. However, the hardware is devised to offer a budget solution, so temper your expectations if you’re looking at this product. It’s likely good for basic storage and decent in read workloads and bursty write workloads, but not much else.

Inland offers a four-year warranty with this drive. The drive is small and bus-powered; the former characteristic is a nice bonus if you really need portability. That’s especially true as Phison has designed the U17 controller to be low-power, making it nice for use with battery-limited laptops.

Software and Accessories

The SSD comes with short USB Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A cables. This allows the device to be used with pretty much any system under the sun. Obviously, speeds will be reduced with a 5 Gbps host port. As with Inland’s other drives, there are no frills here. Some users might get this drive for archival use or backups, requiring them to grab free software.

A Closer Look

Internally, portable SSDs are normally an entry-level NVMe drive coupled with a USB interface thanks to a separate bridge chip. However, hybrid controllers are becoming more common, like the Phison U17 solution in this device and the SMI SM2320 that we recently examined in the Kingston XS2000. Of course, a 20 Gbps Phison variant — using the faster U18 sibling of this drive’s controller — would be better for comparing sequential performance.

This type of configuration has benefits as the design is streamlined. The drive will pull less power and can be less cumbersome in size, although it can no longer be used internally in a PC. This does mean that a failure will render the entire thing inoperable versus just having to replace a drive or an enclosure. These solutions are, of course, also DRAM-less and may not be as generally performant as traditional drives. Therefore, these designs are specialized, but this is not a new concept as with client BGA SSDs.

The Inland Platinum External’s case is plain, but at least it is easy to open. The LED indicator on top flashes white to show I/O activity. You’re just four screws away from the inside, which unfortunately means there’s no real cooling to be had. We’ll see later if this is an issue. Internally, the 1TB model has two NAND packages — one on either side — plus the DRAM-less Phison U17 controller. The interface is USB-C. As this controller is embedded, meaning there is no separate bridge chip, so the drive is not shuckable.

The Phison U17 controller is a single solution for portable SSDs. Its sibling, the U18, has a faster 20 Gbps interface. Both controllers are 2-channel, but bus speeds are 800 MT/s and 1400 MT/s for the U17 and U18, respectively. We can picture these as similar to SMI’s SM2320, a controller we have reviewed in more than one product. Phison emphasizes that this native UFD controller is far more efficient than having a separate bridge chip. This makes sense since that latter configuration tends to come with a beefier 4-channel controller as well.

Looking at the bus speeds, we can translate 800 MT/s into 800 MB/s per channel, although this will be considerably lower after overhead (addressing, commands, etc.), especially for write traffic. Nevertheless, the two-channel design is sufficient to reach the maximum speeds as limited by the USB interface with 1TB or less of capacity. That also applies to the U18 with its faster bus speed, which additionally allows for higher capacities because the flash will often run at a lower rate. However, sustained performance might be worse for wear on a two-channel design, as we will test.

The flash is labeled IA7HG67AWA, which appears to be 96-layer QLC from Micron. This flash is popular on some drives driven by Phison’s E12S and E16 controllers, and it is also prominent in Intel’s 665p. Intel has since released 144-layer QLC flash with its 670p and, moreover, flash manufacturers are all working on their own 176-layer QLC, including Crucial/Micron which already has products on the market. Clearly, this is a budget-oriented device using older flash.

Micro Center lists this drive as coming with TLC. When asking an Inland representative about the flash, they quickly confirmed my suspicions that it was QLC. This may seem like an egregious mistake particularly as QLC is best at higher capacities. However, this is a two-channel device and QLC is more than adequate at 1TB. It may be a worthwhile trade-off for the tiny size and cheaper per-GB price.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compare the 1TB Inland Platinum External SSD to the Samsung T7 Shield and T7 Touch, the WD Black P50 and My Passport SSD, the Crucial X8, the SanDisk Extreme v2, and the Kingston XS2000. All of these are at 1TB of capacity. We already mentioned that the T7 and XS2000 are interesting drives to compare as they let us see what Phison can do with an integrated controller design.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The Platinum External comes in dead last when it comes to FFXIV loading times. This isn't surprising given the two-channel controller design and QLC flash. The XS2000 with SMI’s four-channel design and TLC flash takes first place. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

In general, performance is pretty poor here. The Platinum External again lands in last place and can’t even catch the 10 Gbps Samsung T7 drives. This is a limitation of the internal hardware.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

This bandwidth-heavy test essentially measures the sequential interface speed. As such, the Platinum External falls in line with the other 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2x1) portable SSDs.

Synthetic Testing - CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tool that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

CrystalDiskMark’s sequential tests perform as expected. Similar to the DiskBench tests above, the interface speed limits the drives. Inland could release a 20 Gbps variant of this drive, if it so desired, to compete with the products using SMI’s SM2320 hybrid controller, albeit with half the channels.

The random I/O results are more interesting, particularly in regard to write performance. While neither the Platinum External nor XS2000 do well with high queue depth random reads, the former performs adequately at queue depth 1. That does tend to be an important metric for general use. Moreover, both drives have strong queue depth 1 random write performance. This is due to a lower base latency as the controllers do not have to go through a separate bridge chip.

Considering these controllers are also more power-efficient, this is of interest to those who may need to copy a lot of small files on the go. Generally, the SLC caches are sufficiently large on these types of drives and can absorb that type of incoming workload without issue.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The Inland Platinum writes at around 1.08 GBps for almost 250 seconds, suggesting an SLC cache size of up to 266GB. All of this drive’s native flash is likely being used in pSLC mode - meaning a quarter of the total capacity. After the SLC runs out, the sustained write performance goes as low as 50 MBps or below. This is not unexpected with a 2-channel design utilizing QLC given such a large, dynamic SLC cache. This drive is clearly better designed for reads and bursty write workloads rather than sustained writes.

The Samsung T7 Shield was designed for sustained write performance, clearly shown here. The XS2000, on the other hand, has a faster interface and, therefore, a higher maximum SLC write speed, which is followed by very poor TLC write speeds. These embedded, portable SSD designs naturally have this type of performance. It is a weakness but also a reasonable compromise if the user never sees the edge cases in normal use.

SLC cache recovery was relatively rapid. Phison states that the U17 controller has a built-in thermal sensor with 70C being the upper boundary during operation. After sustained writes, we saw a high temperature of around 66C with the surface hitting 38C, both within reason. This drive could use better cooling, though, perhaps with thermal padding and a more thermally-conductive surface material.

Samsung designed the T7 Shield to remain within specification even in hotter climates, whereas this drive may have more serious concerns in such an environment. That being said, it’s unlikely to be used for sustained writes where the temperature becomes a problem, and once it exceeds the SLC cache, it will be too slow to throttle anyway. Therefore, adding thermal padding is more of an option for DIY users who want extra security.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

Perhaps it would be better to see this drive as kind of a chunky USB flash drive. In fact, there are flash drive-sized SSDs on the market, including some that use the same controller. Some USB flash drive controllers are also two-channel, of course. The U18 simply offers better peak performance and is paired with better-quality flash than what you find on USB flash drives. That makes this even more of a niche product, but one that can find limited use - perhaps as part of a wider toolbox for on-the-go users.

The first thing we have to mention is errors in this drive’s product listing. The sequential read and write metrics do not seem correct, even if we had no trouble pushing the limits of 10 Gbps for both during testing; they’re listed differently on Micro Center’s site and Amazon. Further, and more seriously, Micro Center lists this drive as coming with TLC flash. This is more common than some users might realize — it’s not uncommon to find drives that say they have TLC or DRAM when the internal hardware varies.

This is disappointing coming from Inland. The representative was quick to confirm our QLC suspicions, and the use of QLC is not generally detrimental given this drive’s intended use. The overall design is, at least, conducive to using QLC at 1TB. This drive is especially small, power-efficient, and cheaper, which makes QLC a fair compromise, although buyers may not be happy about the NAND mixup.

That said, this is a bit of a niche product. It’s perfect for someone who is doing mostly reads with some bursty writes. Or someone who needs something small and efficient. This is particularly true for laptop and mobile users. Videographers will want to step up to the T7 Shield for ruggedness and sustained performance, and those wanting higher performance need a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or Thunderbolt portable SSD instead. This drive is minimalist and cannot be shucked, so be aware of what you’re getting with it.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Lexar’s SL660 Blaze is the company's latest portable drive for gaming and comes in 512GB and 1TB capacities. The drive comes with resplendent RGB lighting and includes software support combined with a selection of materials and styling to sell as a 'gaming' drive that will compete for a spot on our list of best external SSDs. 

The SL660 Blaze reminds us a lot of the Kingston XS2000, they share the same hardware, but it comes with some additional features. It also competes with the ADATA SE900G, which also comes with RGB lighting but has a bulkier package. 

As with the XS2000, SE900G, and other portable drives, convenience is the name of the game. Alternatively, you could purchase your own drive and enclosure independently and save money by combining the two yourself. Of course, SATA-based options of both types also often remain viable, but sometimes it’s nice to have 2GBps of bandwidth at your fingertips.

Let’s see how that works out here.

Specifications

The Lexar SL660 Blaze has just two capacities: 512GB and 1TB. The price per gigabyte at the time of writing, which is for pre-orders, is around $0.20 per gigabyte. This is more pricey than the Kingston XS2000, which has fewer frills while being smaller and weighing less. The SL660 Blaze is rated for up to 2.0/1.9GBps for sequential reads and writes, in line with the XS2000. We would expect these write speeds to dip with extended writes once the SLC cache is exhausted.

As with the XS2000, the SL660 Blaze has a five-year warranty and is rated for shock resistance. In addition, the controller itself has typical data protection with SMI’s NANDXtend, a patented technology that has similarities to techniques used on other controllers. This gets the most endurance out of the flash through LDPC error correction and can correct errors through RAID parity. Lexar also offers 256-bit AES encryption, but this is software-based, so it won't be as performant.

Software and Accessories

The SL660 Blaze comes with more than a few items. It has both Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A USB cables and a detachable stand. These are both convenient as you can dock the drive when near your computer, and the drive will be compatible with two common types of USB ports. The drive also comes with a nice pouch for added convenience and protection, although this may increase overall bulk. The competing Kingston XS200, for its part, did include a rubber sleeve.

The drive also comes with an SSD toolbox, the Lexar SSD Dash, and support for software encryption through Lexar’s DataShield. We have previously stated that hardware encryption with a Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) tends not to be a priority for consumer drives and is otherwise potentially inconsistent. Lexar offers a software solution as a checkbox for their feature list, but it is actually usable and useful even if it’s something you could do yourself on other drives with the appropriate software. Likewise, we like to have a SSD toolbox even if it’s generally unnecessary.

A Closer Look

The USB interface can also be its own bottleneck regardless of the internal SSD. Portable drives are also usually streamlined and made to be efficient, which in other words means they often have a DRAM-less design that would benefit from the performance-boosting Host Memory Buffer (HMB) tech — but that doesn't work over the USB interface. Both of these issues present challenges for external drives: Most users use these types of drives for large files or image backups, which are essentially large, sequential file transfers. This type of work can be limited by the interface or by the sequential write speed of the drive, with the latter being impacted by the lack of HMB.

Most previous portable drives came with ASMedia’s bridge chips, such as the ASM2362 and ASM2364 for 10Gbps and 20Gbps, respectively. Portable units tend to have an independent drive with its own controller and a separate bridge chip to handle communication with the host, for example, with two lanes of PCIe 3.0 on one side and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, at up to 20 Gbps, on the other. The newer SM2320 chip from Silicon Motion, as used on the SL660 Blaze and XS2000, instead provides an embedded or hybrid design with everything in one package. This pairs very well with the streamlined intentions of a portable SSD.

The SL660 Blaze has a sleek, aluminum exterior that certainly lends itself to the gaming aesthetic, even without RGB enabled. It’s otherwise clean, with the rear side listing the capacity/model and serial number. The interior shares the black coloring with a bit of protection. Of course, this is not a drive you would have to shuck, given the nature of the prominent SM2320 controller. The black PCB has no DRAM but has four flash packages with two on each side.

The controller, labeled SM2320G, looks to have been manufactured about a year ago. SMI is proud of this quad-channel design, able to manage up to 4TB of flash in a tight 9x9 mm package. While there are disadvantages to having a single chip for a portable drive, the advantages of reduced size and cost generally outweigh them. We also see the four LEDs on the edge of the board, which, as tested, were not controllable but rather just shifted between various colors.

The flash modules are produced by Longsys and labeled 29F208EMLCER. From the “29,” we can tell this is Intel or Micron flash, as in MT29 from the IMFT days, at 2Tb or 256GB per chip in an 8-bit configuration for a total of 1TB. It’s similar to the 96-layer Micron TLC we saw on the XS2000. This is an older flash but is perfectly suitable for a quad-channel portable drive.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compare the Lexar SL660 Blaze to other popular portable SSDs including SanDisk’s Extreme and Extreme Pro (both v2), the Samsung X5 and T7, the WD Black P50, the Adata SE900G, and of course the Kingston XS2000. Two of these drives are at the 2TB capacity but this should offer no advantage in this drive class.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The SL660 Blaze is marketed as a gaming drive, so it’s nice to see it delivers a very good result here. SSDs, in general, offer the best loading times, and it can be nice to have a portable option if you’re on the go or if you use a gaming laptop.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The 1TB SL660 Blaze is in the middle of the pack here, right alongside the Kingston XS2000. We see better results from the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2, which has DRAM, and the Samsung X5, which utilizes Thunderbolt 3 and also has DRAM.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The 1TB SL660 Blaze, along with the XS2000, is on top of the USB-based portable drives. It offers very fast transfer times and is only beaten by the ThunderBolt 3-equipped X5.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Users transfer files of various sizes regularly with portable drives, so it’s important to look at transfer speeds for different block sizes in ATTO. The SL660 Blaze only comes up short for sequential reads versus the Samsung X5, which again has a ThunderBolt 3 interface. It also falls slightly behind the ASM2364-based drives at larger sequential write sizes, which points to a difference in controller limitations.

CrystalDiskMark, that most popular of SSD benchmarks, just shows the interface's limits for peak sequential reads and writes. We see a bit of a different story with random performance. Random write performance is quite good, and the SL660 Blaze again matches the XS2000 while falling behind only the X5 at low queue depth. Reduced write latency may be a product of the hybrid design, as writes require acknowledgment. However, we see the SM2320 drives falling behind along with Samsung’s T7 Touch during a low queue depth read workload.

This is likely due to the controller being DRAM-less - the same is also true of the T7’s Pablo controller - which can exacerbate the limitations of the interface. Low queue depth random reads are often utilized as a guideline for general user experience, yet we saw the SL660 Blaze do quite well with the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark - at least in comparison to other portable SSDs. There is simply a performance threshold where you get most of the gains of a solid state drive, but portables are limited by interface. This illustrates why a DRAM-less design like the SM2320 can still be optimal for a portable drive, and certainly so for gaming.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

Continuing from the Crystal Disk Mark results above, we can then speculate that a DRAM-less SSD may still have significant shortfalls as a secondary effect. This is clearly the case in the write saturation test.

Our results are very similar to what we saw with the XS2000. The drive writes at maximum speed, or 1.8Gbps, for approximately 55s, for a total cache size of around 100GB. From what we understand these drives utilize a hybrid cache, with 6GB of static and the rest being dynamic.

After the cache is exhausted, the sequential write performance is very erratic. The drive is folding to native TLC which eventually frees up enough SLC for a brief spike in write throughput, before falling back down. Overall post-SLC sequential write bandwidth is around 200MBps, which is certainly not great and is reminiscent of some QLC-based desktop drives. The T7 Touch relies on a much smaller cache but then engages direct-to-TLC. For that reason, it is faster and its more consistent post-SLC performance can out-write the SL660 Blaze and XS2000.

DRAM-less drives tend to have weaker post-SLC performance due to larger SLC cache sizes, fewer flash channels, and an overall design philosophy that benefits from the slower folding state. While the T7 outpaces the SL660 Blaze and XS2000 it still falls behind the rest of the drives in sustained writes, and interface limitations squeeze it with shorter writes.

Cache recovery on the SL660 Blaze was similar to the XS2000, with the static portion recovering relatively rapidly and the dynamic portion requiring more time. However, it’s a fairly reasonable response given how this drive will be used. Those regularly doing large, sustained writes, which could include videographers, for example, might want to look at a different portable drive, but this cache should be adequate for gaming even in a fuller-drive state.

We had good thermal results from the XS2000 but we would expect them to be even better with the SL660 Blaze due to its aluminum case and interior design. This proved to be true as the surface was 5C cooler than the XS2000’s under load, at 31C, with the drive itself reaching around 7C less, or 64C, as measured by an IR gun. We certainly saw no throttling and idle temperatures were also good.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

It is difficult for us not to compare the Lexar SL660 Blaze to the Kingston XS2000 because the internal hardware is similar, and our test results point out plenty of similarities. The SL660 Blaze has a higher price point, which is sensible as it offers more than the XS2000. For example, it comes with an extra cable, a detachable stand, RGB functionality, and software support that includes encryption. It maintains shock resistance but is also larger and weighs more. In a sense, this makes it less portable, but the aluminum body and overall design make it more attractive. Plus, it remains sufficiently convenient.

This is being marketed as a gaming drive which tends not to mean a whole lot in the SSD space — for now. However, the angular design and presence of RGB are probably sufficient to match the requirements of such a moniker. The detachable stand is also a nice feature when considering the possibilities of portable gaming, even if used with a console. 

The Sl600's warranty is strong and the drive feels durable, particularly with the pouch, which we feel is a strong selling point if you’re moving the drive around a lot. Although we question the usefulness of software encryption with a gaming drive, software support is a nice touch, but there are other options available that don’t require Lexar's proprietary software. We wouldn’t mind some OEM software for drive cloning, though.

Aside from some minor pitfalls, the SL600's performance is actually not bad for a portable drive. The one area it does fall short is during sustained, sequential write workloads, which exhibit very poor post-cache performance. The cache design itself is robust even if the cache is not particularly large, but this issue will be more troublesome with a fuller drive. While this is not usually a problem for gaming, if you also want to also use this drive to transfer files, particularly larger ones, some alternatives are more attractive in terms of speed and consistency.

Therefore, the SL660 Blaze’s traits are a bit of a double-edged sword. You don’t really need anything special for gaming, so what you are really paying for — versus, say, the XS2000 — is basically aesthetics. The extra cable and the standalone dock are useful additions but may be of situational use. It’s possible to get a cheaper drive if performance is your top priority, making this a luxury item.

ADATA’s SE900G also offers RGB and the extra cable but appears to have a lower MSRP. Is it worth a premium for the dock and Lexar’s software package? Probably not, but we do feel Lexar did a good job of making a product with a premium feel, although we would have liked to see a 2TB option given the size of games these days. That being said, the dock might be useful for certain users.

If you want a portable SSD with a “gaming” feel, something that also feels a bit premium with the aluminum enclosure, pouch, stand, and RGB, then this is the ticket. We feel the market is inundated with gaming-oriented SSDs that are really an excuse to charge more for aesthetics and semi-useful features. We will say that it’s nice Lexar includes a ton of accessories, but someone willing to do a bit of legwork can likely find something just as good for less money. The Lexar SL660 Blaze is for the gamer who has everything.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Kingston's latest encrypted external SSD is designed to be as friendly for consumers to use as it is devilish for hackers to try and crack.  The new Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD VP80ES unlocks like a smartphone, with its intuitive touchscreen, and then enables simple drag-and-drop file transfers. Meanwhile, hackers face a FIPS 197 certified OS-independent device which safeguards against Brute Force attacks and BadUSB with digitally-signed firmware and XTS-AES 256-bit encryption.

Many storage devices you can buy nowadays come with some kind of encryption tools bundled, or if not you can use BitLocker (might be an extra to pay for depending on your version of Windows). However, some of the software is OS specific, or it will require you complete a number of preparatory tasks some users will be tempted to put off until 'later'. Kingston reckons its IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD VP80ES addresses all these weaknesses, and is a friction free alternative to secure data storage needs for any platform.

The first thing you will notice about the VP80ES is its handy compact shape is dominated by a color touch screen on one side. You will mostly be interacting with the touch screen to unlock the drive after plugging it into your computer or other smart device. In many of the pictures you can see a numpad for inputting a passcode or PIN. You can flip to text input to use a password or phrase instead (6-64 characters). As well as unlocking the device you will use the touchscreen for setup / configuration, and it will display useful status messages.

Some specifics about passcode and passphrase access provided by Kingston include the fact that there are multi-level password options. Specifically, you can set up admin and user passwords. It has an option to respond to brute-force attacks by crypto-erasing the drive "if the Admin and User passwords are entered incorrectly 15 times." Users can set this data destruction to kick in at their own choice of between 10 and 30 wrong password attempts.

The drive is similarly protected against USB firmware shenanigans. The publicity materials for the VP80ES mention it is protected against BadUSB, which is a computer security attack method using a reprogrammed controller, often used to inject malicious code into the victim's device.

Another nice feature of this device is that it has a read-only mode which you can toggle. This is useful if you know you are only going to be reading data from the drive and not writing / saving anything. Read-only mode is a must if you are going to use this drive on any system you suspect of being compromised.

If someone were to remove the SSD from this device, they would find all data is obscured with FIPS 197 certified XTS AES 256-bit encryption.

With the security features discussed above, it is time to mention some of the standard portable SSD specs you will be familiar with. Firstly, the Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 External SSD is being made available in three capacities; 480GB, 960GB, and 1,920GB. The best performance you can get from this device is up to 250 MBps read, and the same for writes.

The drive has a USB 3.2 Gen1 port using a Type-C form factor, and the package includes both a Type-C to C and a Type-C to A cable, as well as a neoprene travel case. Kingston's VP80ES measures 122.5 x 84.2 x 18.5 mm but we don't have a weight. Buyers get a three year warranty. The 480GB, 960GB, and 1,920GB drives are listed by BHPhotoVideo at $437, $535, and $762 respectively, but they are waiting for stock expected within a fortnight.

Update 21st May 2022: We've updated this article with new testing for the 1TB Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD on page 2.

Original Review published 26th April 2022:

It’s been more than a year and a half since we reviewed Samsung’s T7 portable SSD, and today we have the new Shield model in the lab. The T7 Shield takes the original formula and focuses on improving its physical endurance, addressing one of our complaints with the T7 that lacked the Ingress Protection (IP) rating that indicates it is shock, water and dust-resistant. This caveat also applied to the T7 Touch we reviewed way back in 2020.

The drive comes in three colors - black, beige, and blue - inside a shell that’s a bit thicker than its predecessors. This shell is made from an aluminum body covered with rubber, thicker due to the external ribbing that helps protect against drop damage. Additionally, Samsung has added two distinct barriers to protect the USB port, designed to keep out environmental elements like water and dust. Together, all of these factors enable the T7 Shield to meet IP65 certification requirements.

What else is different about the Shield? Well, a lot is actually similar to the T7. Samsung still uses the DRAM-less Pablo SSD controller paired with an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip. AES 256-bit hard encryption is, thankfully, still supported. Many other specifications, such as the three-year warranty, remain the same. The T7 Shield also comes with the same number and type of USB cables. However, Samsung has opted for a newer type of flash, and the shift towards a durable design is substantial.

Samsung also ensures compatibility with Windows 7 or higher, macOS, and Android Lollipop or higher. Compatibility for mobile devices includes the T7 Shield operating within the USB power specification, which means a maximum power draw of between 2.5W and 7.5W, depending on the port. Regardless, Samsung promises to maintain sufficient performance to meet high-resolution video recording requirements, defined as the ability to write at 900MBps consistently.

Samsung also made a concerted effort to reduce waste on this product and earned a Product Carbon Footprint label from the Carbon Trust. This essentially means that all steps involved in creating the product and its packaging were designed and verified to minimize the resultant carbon footprint. For example, Samsung uses pulp material with one-third less tray packaging. It’s hard to complain about that.

This product is otherwise not too exciting, given that it doesn’t improve much on models going back over two years. It’s probably best to focus on what it does better - the T7 Shield has increased durability and guaranteed performance. This makes it an excellent choice for photographers and videographers in the field who want something consistent and reliable. We will see if this bears out in testing.

Specifications

The Samsung T7 Shield comes in 1TB and 2TB capacities. It’s nice to see a 2TB option, and considering this drive is ideal for those who likely need capacity, the omission of smaller SKUs is not an issue. The drive is rated for up to 1,050/1,000MBps for sequential reads and writes, respectively. This is quite modest as a result of the 10Gbps bridge chip, especially considering we have 20Gbps and Thunderbolt 3 portable SSDs on the market. However, Samsung ensures 900MBps and 1000MBps sustained performance for the 1TB and 2TB SKUs, respectively, which is particularly excellent for the intended market. This is almost twice as fast as SATA-based portable options.

The T7 Shield has many features designed around security and durability, including hardware encryption. The drive is also IP65 rated and includes protection against dust, water, shock, and vibration. This includes being able to survive drops of up to three meters. Samsung additionally has a Dynamic Thermal Guard, which adjusts the drive's performance to make sure the casing remains below 57C, which is notably lower than the 60C international standard — this reduces the risk of users getting injured when grabbing the case.

Software and Accessories

The T7 Shield comes with both Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A USB cables, offering flexibility for use with multiple devices. It is also compatible with Samsung’s Portable SSD Software 1.0 and Samsung Magician. The former has editions for Windows, macOS, and Android, while the latter only operates on Windows.

The Portable SSD Software offers a streamlined UI to help users receive software and firmware updates for their device.  You can also enable a security mode with a password or password and fingerprint. Samsung Magician, on the other hand, is more robust, offering the ability to monitor and benchmark the drive in addition to the features found in the Portable SSD Software.

A Closer Look

Our T7 Shield sample is clad in a nice blue case, clearly thicker than the older T7 models. With its considerable contours, the rubber exterior helps reduce vibration and shock, including from drops. One face has the USB-C connector and indicator light, while the other has a label with a QR code and pertinent specifications, including the model and serial numbers.

The T7 Shield has thermal padding and an otherwise understated, green PCB. We can see the expected controller, bridge chip, and two NAND flash packages, with notably no DRAM on board.

Samsung’s Pablo controller, labeled S4LR033, is a DRAM-less four-channel design. This controller is also used in the other T7 models as well as Samsung’s 980 desktop NVMe drive. The bridge chip is ASMedia’s ASM2362, capable of 10Gbps transfer speeds, and Samsung uses it on the other T7 models and many other portable SSDs. The flash as labeled is Samsung K9DVGB8J1B-DCK0, which we have seen on other drives like the Samsung 870 EVO. It’s Samsung’s 128-layer TLC.

This 128-layer flash tends to come in 512Gb, or 64GB, dies, and each of the NAND packages here is 8Tb or 1TB in capacity. This suggests a 16DP (sixteen dies per package) configuration, similar to what’s in the 870 EVO, for a total of 32 dies at 2TB. Each die is capable of up to 82MBps in its native, non-SLC mode, which is more than sufficient to hit Samsung’s stated speeds. This does require the proper SLC cache design, particularly at 1TB, which is to say it should be more conservative to ensure a high level of performance.

This flash is also seen in some newer 970 EVO Plus drives — notably slower in TLC mode at 1TB than the original model that launched with less-dense, 92-layer TLC — but, if necessary for interleaving, it also appears in a 256Gb or 32GB per die configuration. Denser dies are particularly useful at higher capacities with four-channel controllers, such as we have here.

Let's see how the drive does in our testing. 

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products for 1TB Samsung T7 Shield

We compared the 1TB Samsung T7 Shield to other portable 1TB drives, including its sibling the T7 Touch, which is similar but has older 92-layer flash. We also included the Samsung X5, a drive with DRAM that communications via the Thunderbolt 3 interface. The Kingston XS2000 is notable for using SMI’s new hybrid controller. We also have a QLC drive in the Crucial X8, plus USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 and 2x2 drives with the SanDisk professional G-Drive, the SanDisk Extreme v2, and the WD Black P50.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The difference in actual game load times between various SSDs tends to be small. Nevertheless, it can be illustrative of hardware differences.

The X5 is essentially a 970 EVO in a ThunderBolt 3-capable enclosure, and it does well here. The T7 models, sporting the DRAM-less Pablo SSD controller that communications over the USB bus, do the worst. The Shield offers a bit of improvement over the Touch, likely due to the newer flash and possibly firmware optimization. The rest of the USB drives fill out the chart, with the XS2000 doing quite well.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

We see similar results here: the T7 models are at the bottom, with the Shield besting the older Touch. We see good results from SanDisk’s Extreme v2 and Professional G-Drive, both of which use 96-layer BiCS4 TLC flash. The Crucial X8 surprises, using its Micron quad-plane QLC flash and DRAM to take the top of the list. That drive is basically a P1 in an enclosure, meaning it is similar to the Intel 660p.

Many of these drives use the same ASMedia ASM2362 USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 (10 Gbps) bridge controller, so performance differences here stem more from the controller, DRAM, and flash.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

This is a bandwidth-heavy benchmark, so it prefers drives with a faster interface. This would include the Thunderbolt X5 and the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) XS2000 and P50, the latter of which uses ASMedia’s ASM2364.

The T7 Shield still edges out the Touch, particularly during write workloads — unsurprising as the T7 Shield is marketed for having strong sustained write performance.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. These tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Bandwidth limitations also impact the ATTO results, with the X5, XS2000, and P50 coming out on top. Crystal Disk Mark’s sequential tests also align here, with the X5 most obviously taking the lead during sequential read tests. The T7 Shield also improves on write performance over the Touch. Whether at 1TB or 2TB, the Shield’s sequential throughput is limited by its 10 Gbps interface. A Thunderbolt or USB3.2 Gen 2x2 enclosure/drive might be worthwhile if you want peak transfer performance.

The T7 Shield also improves over the Touch in random 4KB I/O and related latencies. However, the other drives generally fare better than the T7 lineup. The USB interface is a limiting factor for all of these drives except the X5, and it’s questionable whether, given its intended role, you need more performance than what the T7 Shield offers.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

We’re happy to confirm that the T7 Shield meets Samsung’s specifications with very strong sustained write performance. Many users want this in a portable drive, but it’s of particular importance to content creators in the field. Memory cards, for example, are designated by their performance characteristics, including sustained write throughput. Sustained sequential write performance tends to be higher with greater interleaving, meaning they’re faster at higher capacities, but the 1TB Shield gets very close to the 2TB’s performance level.

The 1TB’s SLC cache is about half the size of that found on the 2TB, although it’s easier to see on these charts because it drops down a little more when it hits the TLC portion. This smallish cache manages a bit more than 1 Gbps for around 20 seconds, which is large enough to fit smaller random writes. It’s also likely to remain consistent even as the drive is filled. There’s not much to complain about here, as sustained performance is excellent.

We saw partial cache recovery after a few minutes and full recovery after about half an hour. As with the 2TB model, this isn’t super relevant as the cache is small but sufficient for bursts of random write action. The intended workloads for this type of device would more likely be sequential and sustained, which is one reason we would have liked to see a 20 Gbps interface. However, it would not have been possible to sustain writes at that speed, so Samsung opted for ensured consistency instead.

Test Bench and Testing Notes 

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. 

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

2TB Samsung T7 Shield

RATING: ★★★★

PROS

+ Consistent write performance
+ Strong durability
+ Good support, including software and encryption
+ 2TB capacity option

CONS

- Does not bring much that’s new to the table
- Limited to 10Gbps

OUR VERDICT

The Samsung T7 Shield is a durable and reliable portable SSD that would be at home in most environments. It’s designed for content capture but is otherwise limiting for general usage, however.

Comparison Products for 2TB Samsung T7 Shield

We compared the 2TB Samsung T7 Shield to the older 2TB T7, as well as 2TB SSDs like Crucial’s X8, along with SanDisk’s Extreme Pro v2 and Professional G-Drive models. 1TB drives in contention include Samsung’s X5, Western Digital’s My Passport SSD, and the LaCie Rugged SSD. Capacity is not a huge factor here, although generally four-channel SSD controllers, which includes the Pablo used on the T7 Shield, are happiest at 1TB.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The T7 Shield beats out the original T7, possibly thanks to the newer flash, but is otherwise lackluster. This is not a gaming SSD, but the results are sufficient if a user wants to load games from the drive.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The T7 Shield performs poorly here, as well, although it again edges out its T7 peer. DRAM, or rather the lack of it, plays a role here.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

This test is largely limited by interface speed. For example, the 10Gbps drives fall behind. The T7 and T7 Shield are neck-and-neck.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The newer flash on the T7 Shield does help it outperform the T7 in the ATTO test. Otherwise, it’s mostly along with the pack, as the interface is a big limitation in these tests. We see similar barriers in CystalDiskMark’s sequential results. We see the biggest difference with random reads at low queue depth, often an important metric, where the DRAM-less nature of the Pablo controller hurts the T7 Shield. It does still manage to improve over the older T7, though.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

It would be easy to dismiss the T7 Shield, in terms of performance, up until this point. Unfortunately, many review sites do not test sustained performance, and for general consumer consumption, that’s often a valid approach. It’s still nice to see the SLC caching scheme and how the drive behaves when it hits a steady state, though. This is especially true with storage media that needs to maintain a certain speed and level of consistency for its intended usage. This is commonly understood with SD cards, for example, but the demands with a portable SSD are bound to be higher.

As promised, the 2TB T7 Shield has incredibly stable write performance, limited primarily by the 10Gbps interface speed. This makes it difficult to identify the SLC caching scheme, but a closer look shows us that it maintains around 1050MBps most steadily for a bit more than 45 seconds, putting the expected cache size near 48GB.

Traditionally, Samsung relies on TurboWrite, which is a hybrid cache — it has both a static and dynamic portion. Such a design is more flexible, and in general, static cache correlates with a better post-SLC experience. However, the cache here is much diminished in size against what we see with many TurboWrite 2.0 drives, particularly at 2TB; the cache may be even smaller with the 1TB SKU. In any case, this type of design allows Samsung to maintain high direct-to-TLC speeds even when writing the entire extent of the drive.

This puts it in a class with the fastest drives, including even the X5 (aside from the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2), for extended writes. The original T7 is left in the dust, and this likewise beats what we saw from the Samsung 980 in its respective review. This is possible due both to newer flash, in the case of comparison to the T7, and a more conservative SLC caching design in comparison to the T7 and 980.

Samsung has specifically marketed the T7 Shield towards photographers and videographers, users who have workloads that benefit from reliable and consistent performance. That is usually not something that goes hand-in-hand with a DRAM-less drive solution, aside from the original WD SN550 and its SanDisk counterpart with static-only caching. However, it means Samsung can tailor its drive to meet those needs, and the 10Gbps interface is perfect for that as higher burst performance is not required.

Cache recovery saw partial recovery after a few minutes and a full recovery after about half an hour. The cache is not super important on this drive, but it would be useful for smaller bursts of action. We expect the dynamic portion to shrink with drive usage, but there should be sufficient remainder, especially at 2TB, to cover general consumer usage.

Test Bench and Testing Notes 

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. 

Conclusion

Samsung’s T7 Shield is the kind of product you want to see, but, at the same time, it is a bit disappointing. Users will inevitably wonder why Samsung didn’t go for a 20Gbps interface on this drive, even if they accept that the X5 fills the Thunderbolt space. It is also nice to see the newer 128-layer flash, but Samsung has often introduced new NAND with their portables. Where is the 176-layer flash, given we already know 224-layer is on the way? We have already seen this flash in the 980, the 980 Pro, and even the 970 EVO Plus.

That transition may occur later, but we are still saddled with a four-channel, DRAM-less controller. It’s certainly possible to get good performance with just four channels  (look at the SK hynix Gold P31 or WD SN770), but users usually expect DRAM in a premium product. Samsung is synonymous with premium in the SSD space, although they have looked to become more competitive in the so-called budget segments in recent years. It seems as if that moniker would more apply to the T5. The jump up to eight channels with DRAM in the X5 may be a bridge too far.

That being said, this drive is well-designed for its intended workload, and we have seen drives in the past that would be quite comfortable here. The WD SN550 and SanDisk Extreme Pro NVMe come to mind, drives that have portable counterparts with solid sustained write performance. The 10Gbps limitation is fine for 8K and even some 12K workloads, and none of these drives need DRAM, instead relying on a conservative SLC caching design and high native TLC performance.

The T7 Shield also comes with very welcome durability improvements. The ruggedized design covers pretty much every angle, protecting even the usually-vulnerable USB port connector. The drive was rigorously tested to meet IP65 requirements, and it shows. We have seen the Dynamic Thermal Guard before, and it is nice to have.

Security is more of a concern with portable storage, for obvious reasons. Samsung has also kept hardware encryption functionality, something not always present in consumer retail products, and their software suite is one of the best in the business. On top of all of this, Samsung ensures device compatibility down to the power draw.

We did not yet have access to the MSRP during testing, but we were pleasantly surprised by Samsung's pricing. Samsung usually puts a premium price tag on its hardware, often justified by the well-touted reliability of its drives. In this case, the pricing is reasonable and you may able to make it even more reasonable with a Samsung promo code, and the positioning is great for a drive of this type. However, we also have to judge its hardware and the fact it’s ideal for a specific type of use.

A photographer or videographer who needs a reliably fast and durable drive does not have to look much further than the T7 Shield — it is great for that use-case. That being said, it falls short of being awe-inspiring, and it is somewhat lackluster for general use. It’s nice to see the 2TB capacity option, even if the interface is limited to 10Gbps. Ultimately, we like the overall design philosophy Samsung has instituted with this drive, particularly with the guaranteed write speeds they manage to meet, but it’s also left us wanting more.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

The WD Black D30 is simply designed external storage for your games without any frills like RGB. It will work on modern consoles as well as PC, whether macOS or Windows, but is aimed at older titles for use on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The variant we are testing today is for the Xbox and comes with a Game Pass Ultimate code to get your gaming journey started.

This drive is recommended for last-generation titles, because the current consoles have high-bandwidth NVMe drives and their recommended expansion options are also quite fast. 10 Gbps USB won’t cut it for that. On PC, DirectStorage is still in its infancy, but that API is designed for NVMe anyway. That being said, 10 Gbps is sufficient bandwidth for normal game loading, and the D30’s 2TB option is particularly compelling to hold a game collection.

WD’s original SN550 and its SanDisk counterpart made for a solid portable drive when paired with an enclosure. WD thought so, too, as they made models with this hardware and the ASM2362 bridge chip. While these drives are DRAM-less and HMB does not pass over USB, the overall design was such that sustained performance remained quite good. We will have to test the D30 to see if it holds up to that. Many manufacturers have been “nerfing” drives lately, including the SN550, so we’ll see what separates the D30 from its peers.

Specifications

The WD Black D30 is available at 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. The price per gigabyte goes from $0.16 to $0.09 as the capacity increases, making the 2TB the best value. Games are always getting larger, so that may be the best investment regardless. While internally the drive is in the typical M.2 2280 form factor, externally the drive is attached by USB via the USB-C port with an included Type-C to Type-A cable. Although somewhat bulky, the drive is a relatively lightweight 125 grams.

The drive is not rated in any special way but comes with a stand and is bus-powered. The casing does seem thick, so it should offer some protection. As the drive is limited by the USB 3.1 interface, that is 10 Gbps SuperSpeed+, it’s only rated for up to 900 MBps with regard to sequential reads and writes. The warranty is unexceptional at three years.

Software and Accessories

The D30 arrives with a stand and a single USB Type-C to Type-A cable. Software should not be required for console use. A Type-C to Type-C cable would have been a nice inclusion for PC and Mac users, although strictly speaking it is not necessary. As mentioned above, the drive also comes with a Game Pass Ultimate code.

A Closer Look

The WD D30 comes in a utilitarian (but not unattractive) black and white casing. It’s likely the casing would provide some protection to the SSD inside, but it seems larger than necessary. The case has a single USB-C port and a status indicator LED. Details about the drive, such as the capacity, are written on the side. This particular color scheme is for the Xbox version that we received for testing; there’s also a pure-black model.

The internal structure does seem to have some ruggedness to it. There is a green PCB to facilitate the M.2 NVMe-to-USB-C conversion. The internal drive appears to be a WD SN550.

A closer look at the drive confirms our expectations as we spot SanDisk’s 20-82-10023-A1 controller, which is used by the SN550 and SN570. This is a DRAM-less, 4-channel design. Besides the PMIC, we also spot the flash - SanDisk 060523, as utilized on the original SN550. This would be 96-layer BiCS4 TLC from Kioxia, with 512Gbit or 64GB dies in a 1TB package for a 16DP configuration.

The bridge chip is the ASMedia ASM2362, a popular alternative to JMicron’s JMS583 and Realtek’s RTL9210B. This bridges x2 PCIe 3.0 to USB 3.1 at 10Gbps. Most 20 Gbps portable drives utilize its faster sibling, the ASM2364. ASMedia lists the ASM2362 as USB3.1 Gen2 (USB 3.1) which is SuperSpeed+ and is equivalent to USB3.2 Gen 2x1. This has more than twice the bandwidth of SuperSpeed 5 Gbps, or USB 3.0 (USB Gen 3.2 1x1) due to improved encoding.

Basically, the chip has two lanes of PCIe 3.0 on the drive side and a 10 Gbps interface on the USB side, for a performance peak around 900 MBps in this case. The JMS583 is popular in many “DIY” enclosures but had early firmware issues, while the Realtek RTL9210B is often considered the best of the bunch. The RTL9210B, though, does have the advantage of working with SATA drives.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

The WD Black D30 1TB will be compared to other external drives we've tested, including the Samsung X5, the Kingston XS2000, the SanDisk Extreme v2, WD’s My Passport SSD, Crucial's X8, WD’s P50, and Samsung’s T7 Touch, all at 1TB. This lineup includes a variety of controllers, flash, and bridge chips.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

This is sold as a gaming drive, so loading times are important. That being said, there’s only so much to be gained by going to a faster SSD, especially once you hit NVMe drives. Of course, the external interface can still be limiting. Here the D30 does adequately, but is far from the best.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The D30 does fairly well here, sticking with the middle of the pack. The X8, which has DRAM, is on top, while Samsung’s DRAM-less T7 Touch disappoints.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

This bandwidth-limited test shows the 10 Gbps drives more or less in a pack. with the faster interface drives pulling ahead. Most notable here is that the D30 falls behind with writes, which will be investigated further below.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

ATTO mirrors DiskBench’s results, being limited by the interface. CrystalDiskMark also demonstrates this with its sequential tests. The D30 does beat the T7 Touch and XS2000 - the latter with a DRAM-less, hybrid controller - with 4K random reads. Factoring in writes though, it only beats the T7 Touch. We can assume the D30 is read-optimized and likely intended to have poor write performance given that it’s meant to be a gaming drive and not for portable transfers.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The D30 writes at around 800 MBps for approximately 16 seconds, indicating an SLC cache of 12-13GB. This matches our expectation from the SN550, which tends to have around 12.5GB of static pSLC. Static SLC usually makes for more consistent post-SLC performance, and in this case it is also very fast to recover. This cache will not shrink and 12GB should be enough for small write bursts.

After the cache runs out, the D30 drops down to around 220 MBps. This is of course far lower than what we saw with both the original and new 1TB SN550s, although direct-to-TLC performance remains consistent otherwise. This seems to indicate that, indeed, the D30 is not intended for sustained writes but is instead a drive designed to store and read games. This is therefore not a drive that should be repurposed or shucked.

The D30 only hit around 60C, by SMART, after a 350GB transfer. This should be well below throttling, which is not surprising given the environment and reduced write performance.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The WD Black D30 neither surprises nor truly disappoints. We know what to expect from an SN550 and a 10 Gbps bridge chip by now. This drive is designed to be simple, and it is. It’s designed to store games, and that’s what it does. That latter point suggests that this drive is best at higher capacities, particularly 2TB, and that’s what we would recommend. We won’t knock it at 1TB for that, but 500GB seems a bit impoverished when considering its price per gigabyte.

The performance results would suggest this drive underperforms expectations, which is true, but if you’re buying this to store games then these metrics don’t mean a whole lot. This drive would disappoint if repurposed for transfers or shucked. The write performance, particularly sequential and sustained, leaves much to be desired, especially after the good numbers we’ve seen from this hardware in the past. This means WD is selling this strictly for the gaming world and is not super concerned beyond that.

There are plenty of portable SSDs out there that will accomplish effectively the same thing and more. This is therefore a bit of a specialized SKU and it should be treated as such. There’s not a lot of frills like a five-year warranty, extra cables, RGB, etc. It’s just a basic drive designed to hold past-generation console games. The design is practical if uninspired and we have no real issues with the build quality, although it is excessively large. On the whole, this drive is unexciting, but it serves a purpose.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Seagate is celebrating "May the 4th" with three Star Wars-branded external hard drives featuring Boba Fett, Grogu, and The Mandalorian. The HDDs, which are compatible with PCs and game consoles, are essentially rebadged versions of the company's FireCuda Gaming Hard Drives released last year. They're not fast, but they are reasonably priced for 2TB of storage space. 

Seagate's Special Edition FireCuda External Hard Drives are bus-powered external HDDs in special Boba Fett, Grogu, and The Mandalorian-themed enclosures with customizable RGB lighting. Like the other FireCuda Gaming Hard Drives, these new drives feature a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 GBps) Micro-B interface and come with an appropriate cable.

Just like other external storage solutions, Seagate Star Wars-themed external HDDs can be used to store games and various content. But there is a caveat with performance of these drives. First, virtually all of Seagate's 2.5-inch HDDs are 5400-RPM drives that are rated for up to 140 MB/s — and this is the absolute maximum speed they are capable of. 

Second, Seagate's 2.5-inch HDDs with a 5400 RPM spindle speed nowadays use drive-managed shingled magnetic recording technology — with all of its peculiarities, including very slow overwriting of shingled bands (all SMR drives have both shingled and non-shingled bands) and significantly reduced performance at times when the drive moves data from non-shingled (CMR) to shingled zones. But if you're a Star Wars fan looking for a cheap 2TB external hard drive, these drives might be good enough.

These Special Edition FireCuda HDDs come with a one-year limited warranty and three years of Rescue Data Recovery Services, so you can rest assured that your data will be safe even if something happens to your hardware. 

Seagate's Star Wars-branded Special Edition FireCuda External Hard Drives are available now on Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg for $109.

Verbatim has created a new storage device category – the portable write-once SSD. Described as a "long-life SSD," the new Verbatim SWOVA128G comes packing 128GB of NAND flash-based storage, a USB 3.2 Gen1 interface (for data and bus power), and a reassuring ten-year warranty.

The design brief behind the new SSD seems worthy enough. This Verbatim WOV series device is pitched as a solution to accidental file deletion, accidental file overwriting, complex and unfamiliar backup solutions, or SSDs wearing out.

Verbatim says it uses high-quality industrial Flash NAND, which has passed strict selection standards. The NAND is good for ten years or more when stored in environments at 55 Celsius or less. Other than this single hardware consideration, the rest of the special sauce that makes this a write-once long-life SSD relies on the Verbatim software.

To use the SWOVA128G, you will perform data writes in Windows 10 or 11 (but not S-Mode versions). These are the only two OSes that support the writing of data to this device, and .NET 4.8 must be installed. Verbatim doesn't describe or provide screenshots for the process of saving your write-once data on the SSD. We think it will be accessible in Explorer; however, we can't rule out a dedicated writing app with its own interface – something like a CD burner program of old.

Reading of data from the SWOVA128G is very simple. Verbatim says that any device that can read an exFAT file system can read files and folders from the disk. This includes Macs, ChromeOS, iOS, Android devices, and Windows 8.1, 10 or 11 without the Verbatim software installed. Unfortunately, Verbatim didn't mention Linux compatibility, but we don't know if this is intentional or an oversight.

You can't benchmark this drive without errors, but Verbatim has tested it and asserts that it can read at 540MBps and write at 180MBps.

Disclaimers in the Small Print

It is natural to wonder about the robustness and durability of data on this write-once drive – and whether it is tamper-proof. Verbatim's product page has several small print disclaimers, indicating that the write-once feature isn’t intended to be tested to destruction by elite hackers but should stand up to ordinary users in an office environment.

On the one hand, the number of product disclaimers is a little worrying, but it displays honesty. However, we must point out that Verbatim admits that "we do not guarantee that files, etc. cannot be deleted or overwritten," and that "we do not guarantee that files on the SSD cannot be corrected or deleted." Moreover, the ten-year period doesn't guarantee your data, but rather to replace a faulty drive -- but this is standard for a storage device guarantee.

The Verbatim SWOVA128G looks like it will be released in Japan first. From the product page discussing example usage scenarios, it might have particular appeal in Japan, as it is said to be "compliant with the revised Electronic Bookkeeping Law" in that country. Japanese law requires electronic transactions that can "ensure truth," "ensure visibility" and be retained for at least seven years. A file system tool provided by Verbatim can verify the data on the drive with a recording log that maintains the file name, date and time, hash value (SHA-256).

At the time of writing, we don't have pricing and availability for the Verbatim SWOVA128G or information about if/when it will be sold in the west.

If you need durable and capacious portable storage in the near future, it might be worth a look at our recent review of the Samsung T7 Shield 2TB Portable SSD, with shock, water and dust-resistance, as well as encryption.

The Sabrent Docking Station comes in a variety of capacities ranging from 2TB to 16TB and comes packing copious connectivity options, including dual 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports with power delivery and a 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Type-C port, among many options.

Internally this device holds dual Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe SSDs, between 1TB and 8TB each. Since these are Sabrent Rocket Q SSDs, they each have the expected Phison E12S SSD controller with DDR3L DRAM cache paired with 96-layer Intel/Micron QLC flash, making for a potent combo that can deliver up to 1,500 MBps of throughput (and a theoretical 3,000 MBps in RAID 0).

The price per gigabyte ranges from $0.16 to $0.25 depending on the capacity, with the highest amounts coming for the 2TB SKU followed by the 16TB SKU. This makes sense as there is a static cost for the dock hardware, even at 2TB, while the 8TB drives in the 16TB model are more expensive given their high capacity. 

Specifications

Features include:

• 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports, up to 40 Gbps
• 2x USB 3.2 Type-A ports, up to 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2x1)
• 1x USB 3.2 Type-C port, up to 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2x1)
• 1x USB 3.0 Type-A port, up to 5 Gbps with BC1.2 5V@2.4A charging (USB 3.2 Gen 1x1)
• 1x DisplayPort 1.4
• 1x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45, 1x 3.5mm audio input, 1x 3.5mm microphone input
• 1x SD (UHS-II) card reader, up to 270 MB/s
• PD3.0-capability, up to 96W

The dock is rated up to 1,500 MBps for sequential reads and writes, but it can hit around twice that if the drives are placed in a striped software RAID-0 configuration. The latter performance metrics are not officially listed but reflect the nature of each drive being allocated two PCIe 3.0 lanes out of a total of four. This is thanks to the Intel JHL7440 controller that also supplies two Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) ports, rated up to 40 Gbps, and a single DisplayPort 1.4 output. One of these TB3 ports can provide power, and the other can daisy-chain devices.

The dock additionally has three USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one rated for up to 10 Gbps and two for up to 5 Gbps, and a single USB 3.2 Type-C port at up to 10 Gbps. USB terminology can be complicated, so we will outline these more precisely below. Additionally, there’s a gigabit ethernet RJ45 port, two 3.5mm ports for audio and microphone input, respectively, and a single UHS-II SD card reader rated for up to 270 MB/s. The dock can also provide power delivery of up to 96W via PD3.0.

The dock comes with a three-year warranty and an endurance rating (TBW - Terabytes Written) equal to one of the two drives. For example, as reviewed, the 16TB dock is warrantied to absorb 1.8 petabytes of write data, as would be the case with just one of its two internal 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q SSDs.

Software and Accessories

The Sabrent Rocket Dock comes with a 150W power adapter, including a detachable power cable and a single 27” ThunderBolt 3 cable. No software is included, but, as usual, we point to the myriad of free solutions available. For RAID, it’s possible to use Windows to build a software array either through Disk Management or Storage Spaces. Similar options exist with other operating systems, such as Disk Utility on OS X.

A Closer Look

Although we have already covered the available ports above, we can see that Sabrent has clearly labeled their ports for the ease of the user. We can, for example, determine which TB3 port provides power.

It’s worth pointing out again that the USB specification has been confusing for a while now - Sabrent labels all the ports as USB 3.2, indicating Gen1 or Gen2 and the speed. The USB 3.2 Gen1 ports are Gen 1x1, equivalent to USB 3.1 Gen 1 or USB 3.0, while the USB 3.2 Gen2 ports are Gen 2x1, the same as USB 3.1 Gen 2 or USB 3.1. The former is rated at 5 Gbps with 8b/10b encoding for an actual output of around 450 MBps, while the latter are 10 Gbps with 128b/132b encoding for closer to 1000 MBps.

The dock opens easily to reveal two separate boards, connected via PCIe slots in a folded manner to reduce volume, and a heatsink for the NVMe drives and structural support. There is also thermal padding and additional component protection.

Removing the heatsink shows that there is good contact with the SSD controllers and sufficient contact for the DRAM, although perhaps not sufficiently tight flash package engagement. Typically the controller on the SSD runs the hottest with regard to thermal influence - that is, the controller is the most significant contributor to throttling. We would not expect throttling to be an issue with this sort of contact, especially given that speeds will be limited by the interface.

A closer look at the main components gives us some idea about how the dock comes together. First, we have Intel’s JHL7440 Thunderbolt controller, a.k.a. Titan Ridge, which supplies the most significant features of the dock, including bandwidth and connectivity for the two internal SSDs.

The Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort video outputs support 4K displays at up to 60 Hz or 8K up to 30 Hz, with HDR, HDCP 2.2, and Adaptive Sync compatibility. TB3 also supports other devices, including four PCIe 3.0 lanes utilized by the internal SSDs. Daisy-chaining of up to six devices is supported, as is power delivery up to 96W or 15W for bus-powered devices. Thunderbolt is provided at either 20 or 40 Gbps and is bidirectional with connection support up to 10 Gbps for USB or ethernet.

The USB ports are provided by two 2-/4-port USB hub chips manufactured by VIA Labs, or VLI, with the USB 3.1 Gen 1 (USB 3.2 Gen 1x1) VL817 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 (USB 3.2 Gen 2x1) VL820-Q8. In addition, these controllers support battery charging specification 1.2 (BC1.2), which would output up to 2.4A at 5V but can scale depending on device support.

Realtek’s RTS5329 SD4.0 controller provides the SD slot. In addition, the CMedia CM6533 is utilized for the two audio ports. Lastly, the Realtek ERL8153b is the gigabit ethernet controller.

Here we have the two Sabrent-branded NVMe drives. These appear to be standard 8TB Sabrent Rocket Qs with Sabrent-branded Phison E12S controllers, Kingston DDR3L - in 512M x 16b or 1GB modules - and 8TB of 96-layer flash provided by Intel/Micron. These are solid options if your goal is to maximize the amount of storage in a small amount of space, for example with a NUC or inside a dock. 16TB of total space is a substantial amount given the small footprint. There’s also always the option for RAID, for example, software RAID-0 to double the capacity and performance. RAID-1 or a mirror is also a compelling option for redundancy.

It’s worth mentioning that RAID-0 is technically prone to higher failure rates as an issue with either drive in the array will cause a loss of data due to striping. Likewise, RAID-1 should not be relied upon to secure your data as it is a form of redundancy and not a backup solution.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We will be testing the docking station’s internal drives both in single-drive mode and in RAID-0. The competition includes other portable SSDs: the 1TB Samsung X5, the 1TB Kingston XS2000, the 2TB Adata SE900G, the 2TB SanDisk Extreme Pro v2, the 1TB LaCie Rugged SSD Pro, and the 1TB WD Black P50. Some of these drives are DRAM-less and it’s worth noting that the host memory buffer (HMB) function is not passed by USB bridge chips. It does work over Thunderbolt, but our docking station drives each has its own local DRAM.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The docking station SSDs come in last here because QLC flash can have higher latency than TLC flash. The drives are all close together, though, and all are slower than a native drive. In addition, there are no substantial gains from RAID-0 as game loading focuses on low queue depth and low-threaded random reads. This may change in the future with DirectStorage, which is officially on the way as Microsoft recently launched the API.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The Sabrent dock does well here in both bandwidth and latency, thanks to the TB3 connection. The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro, which also relies on TB3, does equally well. Utilizing RAID-0 helps eke out a bit more bandwidth. A USB connection typically has less bandwidth available as well as more overhead.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. First, we copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder, and then follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Due to PCIe lane limitations, the dock has less bandwidth available in single-drive mode. In RAID-0, this limitation disappears, and the dock comes out on top in all tests. Notably, the Rugged SSD Pro falls behind with writes and copies compared to the dock’s RAID-0 configuration as it is limited to a single drive.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Again, the dock lags behind in single-drive mode but wins in RAID-0 for our sequential read/write ATTO tests. This trend continues with CrystalDiskMark, particularly with sequential writes. The dock also does well with latency and random reads and writes, particularly writes, only falling behind in areas where the QLC is a bit of a limitation. The RAID-0 especially helps at high queue depth with high threading, obviously with writes.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The Rocket Qs utilize full-drive SLC caching, which is around 2TB of QLC for the 8TB SKUs. This cache is doubled in RAID-0 mode. This makes it particularly difficult to show how the drives perform outside of SLC mode, given that the speed is limited in both modes to about half of what the native drives could achieve. This not only spreads the writes out but also gives the controllers more opportunities to do folding in the background. For realistic workloads, the SLC cache should not be limiting, although keep in mind the cache will become much smaller as the drives are filled.

We see more typical patterns with the other drives, including the great direct-to-TLC speeds we would expect on the Extreme Pro v2. Nevertheless, if we’re looking for maximum burst performance, it’s impossible to beat the dock with RAID-0.

Miscellaneous Testing - Ethernet and SD Card Slot Speed

Also worth noting is that speeds over Ethernet should be at the maximum allowed, that is approximately 112.5 MBps. This will never exceed QLC sequential write speeds even on a single drive. The SD card slot, when tested, peaked just shy of the rated 270 MBps, which is a nice option for content creators on the go.

Temperature

As tested the Dock remained generally cool, around 40C after sustained transfers. This may be warm to the touch but is relatively cool, all things considered. The internal drives reported maximum temperatures around 60C, well below the throttling point. It’s nice not to have to worry about thermals in such a small package, but more care would be necessary from the user in super-hot climates if the dock is used outdoors.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

This is a bit of a different product from our typical SSD reviews, even if you count portable products. However, it’s a useful product with plenty of storage offered in a small form factor with lots of connectivity. However, docks, while popular, inherently confuse many buyers due to how the interlocking components work. Sabrent has labeled the ports clearly, which helps.

Intel’s JHL7440 controller is now four years old, underlining how old the technology is in this dock. That's not necessarily a bad thing on its own, as it’s mature and a step above Alpine Ridge, but it challenges Sabrent’s pricing decision. Other components could be upgraded or added, such as having 20 Gbps USB ports, the addition of Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi, et cetera. That is not to take anything away from this product, as it checks all the basic boxes and should adequately meet most needs; TB4 and even USB4 support would not add much except more cost for many users. It’s just to say that there’s room to grow in this segment, but there may be some sticker shock as-is.

As another example of a potential change, Sabrent could offer TLC-based drives, although the Thunderbolt 3 and PCIe 3.0 interfaces are real-world limitations on performance. Going for capacity was, and is, a smart move. However, there’s no doubt people will wonder why the 2TB model, for example, is QLC-based. We suspect we will see faster internal drives in the future, but the reality is, the flash in these drives is obsolete, as there is 144-layer QLC from Intel and 176-layer QLC from other manufacturers on the way, along with 176-layer TLC being ramped up.

Overall, we were particularly impressed with the design and layout, which, while simple, ensures a tight and effective package. Cooling was more than adequate. Connectivity, again, is well done, with an eye on simplification for general use. Potential compatibility issues would be universal — for instance, and issues with the JHL7440 building block would be an Intel limitation. This means that products like this have a higher support burden for the manufacturer, but from the end user’s standpoint, this particular product would have similar limitations to what you would see from other competing devices with the same hardware. 

If you’re looking for robust connectivity and storage in a portable package, given that Sabrent stands behind their products which include the SSDs, this is the ticket. It’s also possible to RAID the internal storage, which, while largely unnecessary, is a nice option not available with single-drive devices. Also, of course, performance is inherently superior to USB-based portable SSDs. Finally, this is an all-in-one design with portable SSDs and a dock, so it should be treated as such when looking at the price. With that in mind, it’s difficult not to recommend.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Orico has introduced its new inexpensive portable SSDs with biometric security in the form of an embedded fingerprint sensor. The new drives feature the performance of SATA SSDs and are compatible with all PCs and some tablets released since 2009.  ]

The key selling point of these new drives is, of course, their fingerprint scanner that works in tandem with special encryption software (which uses AES-256 technology) to prevent unauthorized access to the drive's content. The application is compatible with Windows (7 or later), MacOS, Linux, and Android, so you can use the SSD with all PCs and tablets (or even smartphones) released since 2009.

Set to be available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities, Orico's Fen 300-series portable SSDs feature a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) interface as well as a maximum sequential read transfer rate of 520 MB/s, reports TechPowerUp. 

Orico's external SSDs with a fingerprint reader come in an aluminum enclosure that not only protects the mSATA drive inside but also serves as a cooling system for the guts of the SSD. The drive measures 90×55×9.7 mm.

Nowadays there are a lot of USB flash drives with biometric or other kinds of protection. But when it comes to external SSDs (which tend to feature higher capacities and therefore may store more confidential information), there are few models with advanced security capabilities. In many cases, drive that store private data are transported without any protection, which means additional risks. Orico's portable SSDs partly solve this problem, even though some will prefer drives that don't require a program that has to be installed before using an SSD.

Traditionally, storage devices with sophisticated security come at a hefty premium, but this is not the case with Orico's SSDs — the 256GB version is $79.99, the 512GB variant should cost $99.99, and the 1TB model is priced at $159.99.

Private and corporate data is crticial to its owner, so protecting it is extremely important. But those who want to steal the data are quite resourceful, which makes physical protection of things like laptops tricky. Corporate desktops and laptops can be disabled remotely, but not all consumer laptops are equipped with this capability. To secure these machines, a group of enthusiasts designed the BusKill USB kill switch cord that disables the system if it gets disconnected.

The BusKill USB kill cord for a laptop is a relatively simple device with a USB connector on one side, a USB drive on another and a carabiner to attach it to a belt loop. The kill cable pairs with appropriate software (compatible with Windows 10, Mac OS 10.05, and Ubuntu 20.04/18.04) that continuously checks the connection to the USB drive with keys.

Once the PC is physically separated from its owner (e.g., when a laptop is taken away or stolen), a special Python script either locks the screen or shuts the machine down. It can even wipe out the drive (Linux only, deletes the LUKS header) or encryption keys of an FED drive (which will render data unusable). In fact, 'everything scriptable' can be triggered, according to the manufacturer. 

The BusKill software can be armed when using a PC outside or in places with certain risks. It can also be disarmed when the PC is at home or in a secure location. Furthermore, the breakaway connector uses strong magnets to avoid accidental disconnections.  

While BusKill adds a level of protection to laptops, the best thing it can do (at least in Windows and macOS) is to log out from the system. This forces the perpetrator to authenticate, which will still be possible with weak passwords or even copied fingerprints. 

The BusKill USB kill switch cord is completely open source in terms of software, so one could download the program and build it at home. Unfortunately, though, the cable will not have the safety magnets in this case. Those who want a prebuilt BusKill USB cord can buy it from its developer for $99 or grab a custom magnetic breakaway cable for $49.

Rostec, a Russian high-tech conglomerate, has introduced a USB flash drive with a built-in detonator that can destroy the NAND memory chips inside. The detonator can be activated manually, and the resulting destruction is completely safe for the user, the manufacturer says. 

Technodynamika, a Rostec company, has developed a USB drive that looks like a standard flash stick, but unlike regular drives, it not only contains a NAND memory chip and a USB-to-NAND bridge/controller, but also a battery and an electric detonator. When activated by a press of a button on the end of the device, the detonator 'burns down printed circuit board with a cumulative charge,' according to Rostec. 

"This message will self-destruct in five seconds," is probably the most familiar phrase from the Mission Impossible franchise. The phrase is usually accompanied by a cinematic sequence of self-destruction, which includes burning, dissolution in acid, or something else. But in the case of Rostec's drives, the case of the device remains intact, which guarantees the owners' safety. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how Technodynamika intends to protect the destruction button from accidental activation.

Modern drives that can quickly erase their contents usually encrypt the stored data with an AES-256 key, and they just destroy the key when it is time to retire the data. Unless you have a quantum computer with formidable performance, it is impossible to break a 256-bit key in any reasonable amount of time. Yet, for true paranoids who do not want to take any chances, Rostec's method is certainly the preferable one.

"We have created a new device that is able to reliably protect information from unauthorized access: the impossibility of data recovery has been proven by the expertise," said Igor Nasenkov, chief executive of Technodynamika. "In the future, the device will be tested for safety during long-term storage, resistance to mechanical impact, and climatic factors. We are also going to work on various design options for the case."

At present Rostec only has prototype drives, but it says that it can configure both the performance and capacity for custom orders. 

Kingston’s XS2000 comes with the high-powered combo of Silicon Motion’s newest SSD controller paired with Micron’s 96-Layer TLC flash, delivering big performance for its price point. This tiny but mighty SSD can deliver up to 2 GBps of sequential throughput in a compact, lightweight, and water and dust-resistant package. 

Portable SSDs have become the favorite solution for those who need fast and reliable storage on the go. But while SATA SSDs powered many of the external models for the past few years, NVMe SSDs and the latest chips from companies like ASMedia, JMicron, and Intel have opened up new performance ceilings. These products give gamers, content creators, and enthusiasts top speeds of up to 10 or 20Gbps, or faster.

Internally, most of these portable SSDs have an adapter board with the interface bridge chip integrated into its own PCB, which then connects to an M.2 NVMe SSD. However, that can require a large and heavy enclosure design to contain all the components and efficiently handle the heat output.

Kingston’s XS2000 is unique because it leverages a streamlined internal design from Silicon Motion that doesn’t need an external bridge chip; instead, it communicates with native USB. This design reduces size, weight, power consumption, and cost, all while offering high levels of performance.

Specifications

The XS2000 is available in popular capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, each priced around $0.16-$0.20 per GB. The drive is rated to deliver both read and write speeds of up to 2,000 MBps and comes preformatted with the exFAT file system for compatibility with all OSes. However, write performance may degrade during heavy use because the XS2000 employs SLC caching and will need ample idle time to recoup its full write speeds after sustained workloads.

Kingston backs the XS2000 with a five-year warranty, and like many portable SSDs, it comes without an endurance rating. Still, Kingston’s XS2000 leverages SRAM ECC and end-to-end data path protection, as well as Silicon Motion’s NANDXtend ECC technology. NANDXtend ECC is a three-level error correction algorithm that combines LDPC hard and soft decoding with RAID protection for enhanced endurance and data retention with minimal overprovisioning.

The XS2000 comes with a single 11.5” USB Type-C cable. The drive is IP55 rated and shock resistant with an included rubber sleeve. It also supports TRIM, S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, and UASP.

A Closer Look

Kingston’s XS2000 is made of both plastic and metal for a light and fairly durable design. Measuring 69.5 x 32.6 x 13.5mm and weighing in at an ultra-light 28.9 grams, the Kingston’s XS2000 is compact and ready to go wherever you need it. The included rubber sleeve adds even more durability to the mix in case the drive drops from your hands or accidentally gets kicked across the room. It also has a blue activity light next to the USB-C port.

Internally, Kingston's XS2000 sports Silicon Motion's latest portable SSD controller, the SM2320. As mentioned, this SSD controller isn't a typical model — it's built as a single chip solution for portable SSDs, so it's both a controller and USB bridge in one. The controller has a single core and four channels, with each channel interfacing with up to eight NAND dies. Our 1TB model comes with sixteen dies of Micron's 512Gb 96-Layer TLC flash. Each die has a four-plane architecture to provide fast access during both sequential and random workloads.

However, one of the drawbacks is that the drive is DRAM-less, which results in poor sustained write performance compared to many DRAM-based portable SSDs that we've reviewed. Also, while the controller supports AES 256-bit encryption and many competing drives come with support for it, the XS2000 lacks this useful security feature. 

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

We put the Kingston XS2000 against many of the best portable SSDs in the market, including Samsung’s very fast TB3-powered X5. Also rocking a 20Gbps bus, we threw in the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2, Adata SX900G, and WD_Black P50. We included a couple of comparably-priced 10Gbps SSDs like the SanDisk Extreme, Samsung T7 Touch, and Crucial X8, too.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

When it comes to game load times, Kingston’s XS2000 proved itself very capable. The XS2000 came in second place to the Samsung X5 by a fraction of a second but outperformed all the other 20Gbps competitors. The 10Gbps competition lagged the XS2000 by a couple of seconds, but Samsung’s T7 Touch proved the slowest in the group.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom dataset. We write a 50GB dataset including 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos to the SSD, copy that dataset to a new folder, and then we follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written  6.5GB zip file.

The XS2000 did extremely well in our file transfer tests. It scored second place across the board, edging out ahead of the Adata SE900G and SanDisk Extreme Pro v2. However, it fell behind the TB3 enabled Samsung X5 once again.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage: Data Drive Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. To test drives that store files rather than applications, we utilize the Data Drive Benchmark.

Due to its DRAM-less architecture, the XS2000 fell behind some of the competition in this PCMark 10 workload but still led the WD_Black P50 and Adata SE900G while maintaining close proximity to the Samsung X5.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Kingston’s XS2000 displays solid sequential performance scaling across most block sizes but lags slightly with large-block writes. Its random read latency results were very high, however, tying the Samsung T7 Touch. 

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, & Temperature

Write speed and temperature are two important and interrelated metrics for external devices. Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash.

We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds as well as the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance.

Kingston's XS2000 write performance is solid within its SLC cache, but due to its DRAM-less architecture, the drive is very inconsistent once it is full. The SLC cache features both a static and dynamic portion. Our 1 TB sample wrote roughly 103GB of data at 1,890 MBps before its write performance degraded to an average rate of 214 MBps for the remainder of the test. Furthermore, the XS2000 recovered only its 6 GB static portion within a five-minute idle window, and the dynamic portion fully recovered within a longer half-hour long idle window.

Due to such low power consumption, surface temperatures remained fairly cool throughout testing, even with the sleeve. As reported by the XS2000's SMART data, peak internal temperature measured over 72 degrees Celsius after a 400GB transfer. The surface temperature measured only 36 degrees Celsius based on our IR thermometer reading. We didn't see any throttling — just slow and inconsistent write speeds once the cache was full.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability.

Conclusion

On paper, the Kingston XS2000 is very competitive with SanDisk's Extreme Pro v2. It not only outperformed the SanDisk and most 20Gbps competitors in read workloads and managing small datasets, but it also hung fairly tight alongside the Samsung X5. Its material mix makes for a solid and light SSD design that is water and dust-resistant, too. However, it's not quite as rugged as the SanDisk or Samsung drives, and if you don't use the rubber sleeve, the IP55 dust- and water-resistant rating isn't guaranteed.

The common use cases for portables are to absorb large bulk write transfers from the host either for system and file backup, transfer around or store large datasets for content creators and data hoarders, or hold game libraries. Depending on the size of your datasets and your daily read/write needs, Kingston's SX2000 can either operate very responsively or leave you waiting much longer than expected for that system image or write transfer to complete.

Due to its DRAM-less architecture, random read performance is fairly low, but its write performance can suffer severely when hammered with large, sustained loads. Idle recovery was also a little slow for content creation workloads and those who frequently perform multi-hundred GB transfers. SanDisk's Extreme Pro v2, the WD_ P50 Black, and Adata SE900G reign supreme for those types of workloads. 

The XS2000 is well priced and a very enticing buy compared to Crucial's X8 or Samsung's T7, and possibly WD's My Passport SSD. However, it lacks AES 256-bit encryption. Adata's SE900G puts up a tougher fight and may be more attractive for the same price, but it is much larger and lacks the IP55 rating of the Kington. It also has a shorter warranty. 

Overall, gamers and performance addicts who don't necessarily need to perform massive write transfers often but require very fast read performance can benefit from the XS2000's speed.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Future AMD processors could be coming with USB4 support and DisplayPort tunneling sometime soon. According to Phoronix, AMD Linux driver engineers are working on a new AMDGPU kernel graphics driver featuring initial support for USB4 DisplayPort tunneling technology.

We don't know exactly what architecture will come with USB4, however, rumors are floating around that AMD's Ryzen 6000 series APUs codenamed "Yellow Carp" and "Rembrandt" could feature USB4 connectivity. If so, then AMD will likely be targeting laptops for USB4 adoption first before bringing it over to desktop Ryzen-based CPUs and Radeon RDNA-based graphics cards.

Tunneling is a new feature introduced to USB4 that comes from the port's Thunderbolt 3 integration. Tunneling allows multiple protocols, including USB, DisplayPort and PCIe, to all operate at the same time (albeit with reduced bandwidth per protocol). This is different from USB alt mode, which allows only a single protocol to be active at a time.

Alt mode can still be useful if you need all of your USB bandwidth targeted towards one protocol, however, tunneling could prove to be more advantageous when you don't need all bandwidth targeted towards one connection (like a USB dock with multiple ports).

The new AMDGPU kernel graphics driver is almost ready to be delivered to the public, and according to Phoronix, could be ready in time for Linux 5.16. This could very well mean that AMD is preparing USB 4 support for its next generation of CPUs or GPUs.

At Best Buy, WD's massive 14TB Easystore external hard drive just got a $130 price cut — taking it down to just $289.99.

Need a huge amount of storage for backups or archives? This is an ideal option at a bargain price.

• More: Best external hard drives and SSDs
• Best deals on SSDs and hard drives

A lot of WD’s external hard drives at this capacity and speed sell for over $400, which makes this saving extra special. All you have to do to use it is plug and play — just connect this to your computer via USB 3.0 and get up to 5Gbps of throughput.

Plus, you can make the most of your drive with a complete software package with transfer utilities and backup capabilities, which pairs with the two-year warranty for a great solution to any storage problems.

Sabrent has pushed the boundaries of fast flash and high capacity with its recent SSDs, even more so than the biggest names in the industry. We thought that 8TB of flash storage was niche and extreme enough for most prosumers and enthusiasts when we first reviewed Sabrent’s 8TB Rocket XTRM-Q, but now the company is doubling down and pushing capacity to new limits with its 16TB model.  

The new variant doubles capacity to 16TB, but it isn’t quite as portable as the 8TB model due to its larger form factor and power requirements. While the original XTRM-Q contained one Rocket Q M.2 NVMe SSD within, the new 16TB model has two of them behind a slightly different Thunderbolt 3 bridge, providing a ton of fast flash storage and potentially bus-saturating performance for those who need it. However, it comes at a high cost, tipping the scales at roughly $3,000, making it even more of a niche buy for those who can afford it.

Specifications

Sabrent’s 16TB XTRM-Q offers up sequential read performance of up to 1.4 GBps or 2.8 GBps over Thunderbolt 3, depending on how you configure the device. It lacks an official sequential write performance rating, but based on our testing, it provides the same performance during write workloads as during reading tasks. It can be configured in RAID 0, RAID 1, or as JBOD to tailor the drive for performance, data reliability, or flexibility, respectively. 

Priced at $2,899.99, the XTRM-Q isn’t cheap, and the warranty is lacking. It comes backed by a three-year warranty, which is short for a product of this capacity and price point. It’s noteworthy that the three-year warranty is longer than Sabrent’s standard one-year warranty. The SSD also lacks an endurance rating, just like most portable SSDs, but don’t expect Optane-like endurance. Each SSD within is likely limited to a similar amount of endurance as the Rocket Q drives under the hood.

Software and Accessories

The 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q comes with a long 28” USB-C Thunderbolt 3 cable and a power brick to power the unit. The power brick is not optional — the device will not power on without it. Our sample also came with a vented silicone sleeve for drop protection. In addition, the company provides Sabrent’s RAID assistant software, enabling quick and easy configuration in RAID 0, RAID1, or JBOD setups. 

A Closer Look

The 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q measures 115 x 65 x 16 mm and weighs in at 233 grams. Given its capacity, it's a small and compact storage device. It is much smaller than the LaCie 2big RAID 16TB we reviewed in 2019, but not even twice as large as the portable 8TB Rocket XTRM-Q. 

The exterior is made of solid aluminum, leading to a quality feel in your hands. It also comes with rubber feet to prevent sliding around wherever you may place it. There are two power/activity indicator lights to the left of the Thunderbolt 3 port, and the DC-in is to the right, along with a power button.

Sabrent’s Rocket XTRM-Q is fully Thunderbolt certified by Intel. Internally, it is powered by an Intel JHL6340 Thunderbolt 3 controller with two PCIe 3.0 lanes allocated to each of the SSDs. The drives support Trim and S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, but as an Alpine Ridge-based controller, the drive is only compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and will not work when plugged into a standard USB C port. That’s similar to what we’ve seen with some Titan Ridge-powered Thunderbolt 3 devices.

Furthermore, RAID functionality is not built-in via a hardware controller; rather, the SSD uses software RAID functionality built into Windows or macOS.

As mentioned earlier, the XTRM-Q is powered by two 8TB Rocket Q M.2 NVMe SSDs. Each has a Phison E12S NVMe SSD controller and a DDR3L DRAM cache paired with eight NAND packages of Micron’s 1Tb 96L QLC flash. Additionally, each quad-plane die provides better interleaving capability (and thus performance) than the dual-plane designs found in competing flash. That’s especially important when considering the normally slow program times of QLC. 

The controller operates at 666 MHz, but the flash interfaces with the controller at slower speeds than the retail Rocket Q we previously reviewed. Instead of interfacing at 666 MTps, these models operate at 333 MTps to control heat, but fortunately, this is more than enough to maintain responsive performance for its intended external application.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compared the 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q to the smaller and more portable 8TB Rocket XTRM-Q, as well as a few of the best portable SSDs on the market. These include the G-Technology G-Drive mobile Pro, LaCie Rugged SSD Pro, SanDisk Extreme Pro (v2), Samsung X5, and T7.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Samsung’s X5 and G-Technology’s G-Drive mobile Pro come out on top in the game loading test, so we can see that the QLC flash may be holding back the Sabrent a bit. The 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q fell into last place when tested as a single volume and just inched ahead of the 8TB model by less than half a second in RAID 0.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the transfer or copy performance of a storage device with real data. We test external drives with three file transfers that consist of 25GB of photos (10GB of jpgs and 15GB of RAW photos), 50GB of movies, and 25GB of documents. First, we transfer each folder from a 1TB NVMe SSD to the external device; then we follow up by reading a 3.7GB 7-zip file and a 15GB movie back from the device.

The Rocket XTRM-Q is fast during file transfers, but it isn’t enough to outperform the best. While RAID 0 provides twice the sequential bandwidth of a single volume, the drive’s RAID 0 performance wasn’t quite as fast as the Samsung X5 or the 8TB Rocket XTRM-Q. However, performance was roughly on par with the best when we read back the files.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage: Data Drive Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. To test drives that store files rather than applications, we utilize the Data Drive Benchmark.

Regardless if you configure it in RAID 0 or if you use the two SSDs within separately, the XTRM-Q should provide responsive application performance. RAID 0 gave the XTRM-Q a boost in overall bandwidth, but its PCMark 10 latency scores remained the same. 

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

Based on ATTO’s results, Sabrent’s Rocket XTRM-Q delivers responsive performance across most block sizes, but lagged slightly behind the TLC drives at a queue depth (QD) of 1. 

The SSD hit speeds of up to 2.8 GBps in both sequential read and write workloads when configured in RAID 0, and up to 1,650/1,474MBps read/write when configured as a JBOD. 

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery and Temperature

Write speed and temperature are two important and inter-related metrics for external devices. Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash.

We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds as well as the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance.

The XTRM-Q has a huge SLC cache that spans one-quarter of each drive’s capacity. Configured in JBOD, it can absorb upwards of 2TB of writes before performance degrades, and up to 4TB of writes when configured in RAID 0.

Sustained performance, in all configurations, is very low once the SLC cache is full. In JBOD mode, the Rocket XTRM-Q’s sustained performance degraded from 1,450 MBps to an average write speed of 150 MBps. In RAID 0, sustained performance averaged twice that, 300 MBps. The drive recovered roughly 400GB of SLC cache capacity after just a few minutes of idle time.  

Operating temperatures ranged from roughly 35-40 degrees Celsius at idle and up to 42-45 degrees Celsius during most workloads. When configured in RAID 0 and bombarded with over 2TB of multiple sustained writes, the top surface temperature measured 47 degrees Celsius and the underside measured 53 degrees Celsius with no signs of thermal throttling.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Comet Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and testing is carried out with write caching enabled.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Sabrent’s 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q provides responsive performance in most workloads, but it isn’t quite the fastest Thunderbolt 3 SSD to have passed through our lab. While the SLC write cache is absolutely massive, sustained write performance can be quite disappointing depending on how full the device is. However, it is the highest-capacity external flash-based SSD we’ve tested, making it a great option for the modern data hoarder and prosumers alike. 

Not only would it make for a solid, high-capacity workspace, it is also potentially great for those looking to tack on more storage to their SFF build, or even for mini-NAS applications. As a matter of fact, that falls into my exact use case. I have connected the drive to an Intel NUC 11 Pro, and together these devices shrink my active NAS down from a large and power-hungry 24-bay 4U chassis to a compact, low-power, and easily hidden combo that is perfect for storing all my media and testing data.  

We would have liked to see the drive come with USB support, but those purchasing this unit are more likely to have Thunderbolt 3 support than not. Given the eye-watering price, we also would have liked to see it with a five-year warranty instead of three years.

The 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q is priced very high with most of the cost incurred by the flash media itself, which leaves it out of the price range of your average gamer or storage enthusiast.

With an Intel Optane-like cost of $2,899.99, the massive 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q is not just one of the highest-capacity storage devices we have tested, but also one of the most expensive. At this price, nothing else compares to the sheer capacity and performance that it provides. 

If you’re looking for something more portable, cheaper, but still fairly high capacity, the 8TB Rocket XTRM-Q is a solid alternative at roughly half the cost. If you don’t need quite as much storage but still want lightning-fast Thunderbolt 3 performance can’t go wrong with something like Samsung’s X5 or LaCie’s Rugged RAID Pro. And if you just want something high-capacity and at a lower cost, Lacie’s 2big RAID may be up your alley instead, though it can’t come close to matching the speed of the Sabrent 16TB Rocket XTRM-Q. 

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Adata has announced its new SE920 external SSD, the company's first external drive with a USB4 interface. The drive promises an up to 4000 MB/s sequential read speed (with SLC caching and when working with a USB4 host), which makes it one of the industry's fastest external storage device designed for consumers. In fact, it is even going to outperform any external SSD with USB 3.x or Thunderbolt 3/4 interface as far as a sequential read speed is concerned. 

Adata will offer its SE920-series drives in different versions featuring different capacities, yet for now the company has kept details about the family confidential. Adata also hasn't talked about the architecture of its SE920 drive (which SSD controller it uses, how high is the write speed, etc.), though it says that the SSD uses the company's proprietary Heat Conduction technology that ensures appropriate cooling and consistent performance. 

Designed to compete with the best external hard drives and SSDs, Adata's SE920 drives will be among the fastest portable storage devices with a Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB4 interface when they are available later this year. This is not particularly surprising as most of external storage devices with a TB3 interface integrate a previous-generation SSD with a PCIe Gen3 interface that cannot even theoretically saturate a TB3 bus (which supports non-video bandwidth of up to 32.4 Gbps, or 4.05 GB/s). 

Furthermore, since TB3 uses an 8b/10b encoding with a rather high overhead, its actual usable bandwidth is about 25.92 Gbps or 3.24 GBps. By contrast, even an entry-level drive with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface can easily hit a 4 GBps throughput. Meanwhile, USB4's 128b/132b encoding ensures that the interface's usable bandwidth is considerably closer to the theoretical one as this method has a lower overhead. 

Typically, high-performance external SSDs pack an M.2 drive with a PCIe / NVMe interface as well as a PCIe-to-USB bridge. If this is the case with the SE920, then the drive integrates an NVMe M.2 SSD, a PCIe-to-USB4 bridge, and a USB4 chip responsible for power delivery support and orientation of the connector. Meanwhile, it is possible that Adata developed its SE920 from scratch and did not just repurpose a fast drive with a PCIe interface. 

Adata has not announced pricing of its SE920 external SSDs with a USB4 interface, but we can assume that these drives are going to be premium products.

At Best Buy, WD’s Easystore 8TB external hard drive has been given a $40 price cut — taking it down to just $179.99.

If you’ve been on the lookout for a reliable external storage solution, this is one of the best deals you’ll find right now.

• More: Best external hard drives and SSDs
• Best deals on SSDs and hard drives

Most of WD’s external hard drives at this capacity and speed sell for upwards of $200, so you can be certain of a good deal here. It’s also as easy as plug and play — just connect this to your computer via USB 3.0 and get up to 5Gbps of throughput.

Plus, you can make the most of this drive with the included software package that has utilities and backup capabilities. The drive also has a two-year warranty, making it an overall powerful and low-risk solution for any of your storage problems.

OWC has introduced a new adapter that allows you to build a 2.5-inch U.2 SSD using a mainstream NVMe M.2 drive. The U2 ShuttleOne adapter maintains key advantages that a U.2 SSD has for typical users, yet it comes at a fraction of U.2 drive pricing.

OWC's U2 ShuttleOne is essentially a 2.5-inch/15-mm metal box that can house an M.2-2280 SSD (one of the best SSDs, perhaps?). The adapter packs a rather simplistic motherboard with an M.2-2280 slot, a power management IC (PMIC), and a set of capacitors to enable hot pluggability.

The adapter essentially connects a drive to an SFF-8639 connector, supporting all speeds featured by a U.2 interface (i.e., up to 8 GB/s supported by a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface). 

U.2 SSDs are typically positioned for enterprise, mission-critical, and workstation applications, so they are pretty expensive compared to regular M.2-2280 drives. Unlike M.2 SSDs for client PCs, U.2 drives feature higher endurance, higher sustained performance, high capacity, considerably better cooling, hot pluggability, and ruggedness. 

But U.2 drives aren't only used in the data center. There are many creators (and other types of users) that need to transfer large files from one PC to another quite often and they don't need enterprise grade-endurance or extreme capacity but can appreciate all the other features, such as performance and ruggedness. The U2 ShuttleOne is designed just for this kind of user.

OWC's U2 ShuttleOne is $44.99. The price difference between an M.2-2280 and a U.2 SSD is considerably higher. Meanwhile, a U.2 ShuttleOne populated with a 480GB SSD costs $149.

A U2 ShuttleOne can be plugged into any U.2-supporting backplane, including a workstation with an appropriate slot, a server, a NAS, or a DAS. 

Note that, if you're shopping for this or another OWC product, you may be able to find savings on our curated list of OWC promo codes.

Sabrent has launched the brand's biggest external SSD to date. The new Rocket XTRM-Q (SB-DXMQ-8X2) drive arrives with a whopping 16TB of high-speed storage, twice what Sabrent previously offered.

Featuring an aluminum body, the Rocket XTRM-Q measures 6.6 x 6.3 x 3.1 inches and weighs around 2 pounds. It's a bit bigger than its counterparts due to the addition of a second SSD. The Rocket XTRM-Q 16TB houses two 8TB SSDs, which you can run independently or in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array. There's also a third configuration where you can run the SSDs in JBOD mode, where data is stored on the next drive when the current one has reached its full capacity.

Sabrent doesn't specify the model of the SSDs inside the Rocket XTRM-Q 16TB. However, like its other capacities, the 16TB model probably uses a pair of Sabrent's own Rocket Q M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs based on Phison's E12S controller and Micron's 96-layer QLC (quad-level cell) NAND flash dies.

According to Sabrent, each SSD offers sequential read speeds up to 1,400 MBps. If you want to maximize the drive's performance, you'll have to run the two SSDs in RAID 0 mode. Said configuration tops out at 2,800 MBps sequential reads.

The Rocket XTRM-Q leverages Intel's JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 controller. Therefore, you'll need a Thunderbolt 3 interface to really maximize the drive's transfer speeds.

The Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q 16TB is available for purchase on Amazon for $2,899.99. It's more expensive than your typical, high-end gaming PC, for sure. Sabrent backs the Rocket XTRM-Q with a one-year warranty, but you can extend the warranty period up to five years if you register the product within 90 days of purchase.

Data security is of the utmost importance to many professionals, especially those governed by regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, PCI-DSS, CCPA, etc. Those users must meet strict handling requirements and leverage encryption technologies to keep data away from unauthorized access. This is especially important with the precipitous rise in ransomware attacks.

Cigent is a data security company whose primary intent is to keep your data safe, and it has a portable SSD for those who not only need to securely store their data for compliance, but who also desire responsive access for a smooth and speedy workflow. Thanks to an enterprise-grade SSD controller and paired with Kioxia's BiCS4 TLC flash, the K2 offers complying performance, exceeding 1 GBps read/write in our testing.

On the security front, Cigent’s K2 Secure SSD offers a zero-trust and continuous authentication approach to defend against ransomware, placing protections as close to your data as possible. The K2 comes with special firmware and hardware-accelerated AES 256-bit encryption that works in conjunction with the company’s D3E software. Together, these technologies keep your data secure from ransomware without a detrimental impact on performance

Specifications

The K2 Secure SSD is available in capacities of 480GB, 1TB, and 2TB, carrying sequential performance ratings of up to 1,000 MBps read/write. Cigent opted to overprovision the K2 a little more from the factory than most competing solutions for reliability and performance consistency, but the company only backs the hardware with a very short one-year warranty. This is even more difficult tot ake given the extremely high price per GB. Our 1TB sample sells at $600, roughly double the cost of Samsung’s much faster, Thunderbolt 3-powered X5. To be fair though, the Samsung X5 is nowhere near as secure. 

Software and Accessories

The main selling point of this SSD is its encryption support and software management. Currently, Cigent focuses on the Windows ecosystem, securing data with what the company calls its Dynamic Data Defense Engine (D3E), but the company is also working on macOS and Linux support.

Essentially, if the software detects any foul play or the PC is power cycled, it will kick K2 and the data offline until you log back into it. It can also capture data access logs for incident response. And the drive features TrueErase, which verifies all data previously stored has been erased after a wipe attempt, if you purchase and unlock D3E premium, too.

To take advantage of the encryption, the K2’s software requires you to configure a PIN as well as a password. Also, it forces you to create a backup key, which can be vital in case you forget your password. Using the default PIN authentication method is a bit cumbersome as it won’t accept keyboard input, only via mouse clicks. Alternative authentication methods like fingerprint and facial recognition are much less of an inconvenience.

Additionally, if for whatever reason you need to open the K2, it comes with a T8 Torx screwdriver and an extra screw, just in case you strip or lose one.

A Closer Look

The hardware of the K2 drive was put together by Sabrent, which is evident in the case design and markings, as well as the company’s branding on the included cable. The cable is very long, too, measuring roughly 28 inches. It also comes with a USB Type-A to Type-C adapter.

The design is rather bland, with a low-quality printed brand label stuck on top, but is solid aluminum and has a sand-blasted finish that matches the aesthetic of most Apple computers. There is a power/activity light next to the USB Type-C port and the base features two rubber feet to keep the drive from slipping and sliding on most surfaces.

Internally, the K2 leverages an M.2 2280 double-sided form factor SSD based on Phison’s PS5012-E12DC NVMe SSD controller, and a JMicron JMS583 USB 3.2 Gen 2 to NVMe SSD bridge chip for communication with the host. The E12DC is closely related to the normal E12 that has made its way into many consumer SSDs, with a quad-core, 8-channel design operating at clock speeds of 666MHz, but differs in that it was developed for enterprise and data center applications.

Additionally, our sample interfaces with two 4Gb DRAM ICs (1GB total) at 1,600 MHz and comes packed with Kioxia’s BiCS4 96L TLC flash. These flash dies utilize a two-plane architecture and interface with the controller at speeds of 666 MTps. With a very consistent latency profile and robust AES 256-bit encryption support, the controller pairs well for this portable SSD.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compare Cigent’s K2 Secure SSD against some of the best and most secure portable SSDs available. The list includes the SanDisk Extreme Pro v2, the WD_Black P50, LaCie’s Rugged SSD, G-Technology’s ArmorLock, and Samsung’s X5. We also included the Samsung T7 and a WD My Passport SSD for good measure.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

With a total load time of 18.46 seconds, the K2 Secure SSD finds itself smack-dab in the middle of the pack on this test. It delivers competitive game load performance that isn’t too far behind that of Samsung’s much higher bandwidth X5, and nearly on par with USB 20 Gbps competitors.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the transfer or copy performance of a storage device with real data. We test external drives with three file transfers that consist of 25GB of photos (10GB of jpgs and 15GB of RAW photos), 50GB of movies, and 25GB of documents. First, we transfer each folder from a 1TB NVMe SSD to the external device; then we follow up by reading a 3.7GB 7-zip file and a 15GB movie back from the device.

In terms of writing your files, the K2 edges ahead of its USB 10 Gbps competition, offering up some very fast performance results. SanDisk’s Extreme Pro v2 and WD_Black P50 both outpace it, but only because of their higher bandwidth interface and awesome sustained write speed.c

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test: Data Drive Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. To test drives that store files rather than applications, we utilize the Data Drive Benchmark.

Cigent’s K2 delivers impressive PCMark 10 scores, ranking first place in the test pool. It not only outperformed its USB 10Gbps competition, but also the USB 20Gbps and Thunderbolt 3 competitors by a significant margin.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

Cigent’s K2 Secure SSD offers solid sequential performance across all block sizes, only limited by what its interface allows. It outperforms most of the SSDs in its class, not only delivering fast sequential speeds, but also rapid random access times.

Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature

Write speed and temperature are two important and interrelated metrics for external devices. Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash.

We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds as well as the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance.

While very small, there seems to be an SLC cache on the K2. The Cogent K2 wrote at a rate of 1,089 MBps for the first 50GB, before degrading to an average write speed of 1,049 MBps for the remainder of the test. Overall, these are solid results, offering high performance that shouldn’t slow down even after being bombarded with writes. After filling the K2 Secure SSD to roughly 50%, the SSD’s surface temperature measured no more than 44 degrees Celsius and no thermal throttling slowed it down.

Conclusion

Cigent’s K2 Secure SSD is a top-performing portable SSD that is as fast as it is secure. Powered by the enterprise-grade Phison E12DC controller, it outpaced the majority of the competition in today’s testing. It is a powerhouse that not only delivers responsive file access but also very consistent write performance when hammered. Without the alliance with Phison, it would be hard for Cigent to break into the secure SSD space as it has with this new drive.  

Cigent is primarily a software company though, and it shows. The K2 is expensive, with premium unlocks that ask for more money, exploiting a niche use to leverage its hefty MSRPs while only backing the hardware with a very short warranty. While we normally see portable SSDs backed by three-year or five-year warranties, the K2 comes backed by a measly one year of coverage. This is not indicative of a prosumer product. Not to mention, it took multiple back and forth emails to the company to attain something as simple as official performance ratings...something that should be at the forefront of a hardware vendor’s marketing.

But, while these little nuances perplexed us, the fact that this SSD comes with such robust security, capable of defense against ransomware and other data compromising threats at any given moment, is quite impressive. Cigent’s K2 Secure SSD is most definitely one of the most secure portable SSDs we’ve had our hands-on, though not always the most convenient. While it costs quite a bit up front, its high cost may be worth it for many large companies, compared to losing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars due to poor security practices.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content