How to choose the right portable SSD drive

The price of an external storage drive depends on several factors: the storage capacity you are looking for, the speed with which the drive transfers your files and its physical size.

At this point, large capacity external drives requiring power adapters are surprisingly inexpensive. This is a great option for some, especially if carrying it is not a problem, or if you rarely feel the need to unplug it. But those looking for something smaller, especially a more user-friendly USB-C drive, that does not compromise on storage capacity or storage speed, have some routes to take. As you can imagine, it can be very expensive to find a reader who meets all these criteria. But thanks to the lower price of SSDs, you can get a fast external drive with a large storage capacity for less than you might expect.

I've tested a few 1 TB USB-C SSDs that cost between $ 160 and $ 450. This includes two Samsung portable SSDs that arrive ready to go: a Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 1TB SSD and a Samsung T5 1TB SSD. Then there is an external hard drive built with an Intel 660p NVMe 1TB SSD and a separate housing.

What you need to know before buying a USB-C SSD drive

Unlike the purchase process for most high tech products, just choose the one you use. thought This is not the end of the road – or at least that should not be the case. You must also make sure that the macOS or Windows 10 machine to which you connect it can take advantage of its speed. This means that you will need to determine the USB interface of the drive you are interested in, and then compare it to the USB-C port on your computer.

The USB interfaces are confusing in the state and with the USB 3.2 which should be launched later in 2019, the classifications listed below will change. However, you will probably continue to see the products wearing the following naming scheme for a while:

• USB-C ports with USB 3.1 Gen 1 support bandwidth up to 5 Gbps
• USB-C ports with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support bandwidth up to 10 Gbps
• USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support bandwidth up to 40 Gbps

The ports themselves are backward compatible. As a result, a Thunderbolt 3 port will work well with readers using slower interfaces. But the same can not be said of the readers themselves. For example, connecting a USB 3.1 Gen 2 drive to a laptop that can only handle USB 3.1 Gen 1 will work, but it's a recipe that will disappoint disappointments and not fast transfer speeds. If your computer has a Thunderbolt 3 port, it will work with non-Thunderbolt 3 devices, but conversely, the $ 450 X5 will not work at all on a USB-C port that does not support Thunderbolt 3.

For this comparison, I tested a 1 TB external Thunderbolt 3 SSD, a 1 TB USB 3.1 Gen 2 external SSD, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD installed in an external USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure.

As if that were not complicated enough, you will also need to determine the type of storage inside your computer. This may seem trivial, since you are looking for an external drive, not a replacement for your internal drive. However, the transfer speed of an external drive lives and dies depending on the capacity of the type of storage inside your computer. If you have a SATA drive (as do many Windows laptops), you may have trouble keeping up with a fast external drive. As is the case for most computer components, your equipment is as fast as your slowest part.

These bottlenecks appeared during my tests. One of the test machines, a Razer Stealth Blade 2019, has a Thunderbolt 3 port, which should allow incredibly fast transfer speeds. However, compared to the flash storage used in a 2016 MacBook Pro, another test machine we used, SATA storage in the Stealth had a significant negative impact on the maximum transfer speeds of the X5 Thunderbolt 3 drive.

I've tested the read and write speeds of each internal drive with Novabench, a free benchmarking tool available for macOS and Windows 10. Razer's 256GB SATA drive was running at a rate of average reading speed of 481 MB / s and an average write speed of 280 MB / s. . The MacBook Pro, with its 256GB SSD, has an average read speed of 2200 MB / s and a write speed of approximately 1300 MB / s. The bandwidth of the MacBook Pro for sending data to an external drive is much higher than that of the Razer laptop. The difference is in the types of storage used on these computers. The Thunderbolt 3 drive was the most affected by the limitations imposed by the Razer SATA drive, although non-Thunderbolt drives had the same performance on both systems.

SSD Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 1TB

Samsung's X5 Thunderbolt 3 SSD is currently priced at $ 449 and proudly carries its high-end status with a case designed as a sports car. Its design is certainly cost-related, but the main selling point of this drive is its Thunderbolt 3 data transfer speeds. This type of drive is ideal for video producers who need to minimize the time between exporting and downloading. transfer large 4K video files to a drive, or even intend to use it as a working disk. Any other passion or profession will also benefit from the speed of the X5, but at a cost two times lower than many laptops, it is perfect for those who regularly handle large file transfers.

Samsung announces a maximum transfer rate of 2,800 MB / s read, 2300 MB / s write, and the MacBook Pro on which I have tested the system has almost satisfied these claims. Using the averages of Novabench and Blackmagic Design's speed test evaluation tests on macOS, I got a read speed of 2 410 MB / s and a write speed of 1 708 MB / s. The transfer of a 13GB file from MacBook Pro to X5 took only nine seconds on average.

On the Razer Stealth Blade, I have aggregated the benchmark results of Novabench and ATTO. It handled a reading speed of 2 280 MB / s and a write speed of 598 MB / s, both on average, while being plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port. Compared to the nine seconds of the MacBook Pro, it took 39 seconds for the Blade Stealth to transfer the same 13GB file to the X5. This highlights the bottleneck that the internal drive may encounter when working with an external drive as fast as that – it is literally four times slower.

Samsung T5 1TB SSD

While the X5 is Samsung's flagship external hard drive, the Samsung T5 range is more affordable at around $ 180 for a 1TB model. The T5 is no longer a daily drive for those who need fast file transfers, but does not plan to use it as a work drive for video editing. At less than half the price of X5, its performance is impressive. In addition, I prefer its thin design, similar to a money clip, the sporty style of the X5.

This drive uses SATA storage with a USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface and, as the two test machines used in this article have Thunderbolt 3 ports, the interface will not affect the speed of the drive. The T5 interface makes it compatible with more devices: you can use it on MacOS and Windows 10 computers, but also with Android phones. I've done all the tests with its USB-C to USB-C cable, but it also includes a USB-C to USB-A cable in the box for use with older computers.

Samsung claims that this small disk can reach 540 MB / s for reading and writing data. My results were pretty close to these claims on both test machines. Using the same benchmarks as before, the T5 recorded an average reading of 518 MB / s and a write of 475 MB / s on the MacBook Pro, and an average of 508 MB / s in reading and 487 MB / s in writing on Blade Stealth.

The transfer of a 13GB file from the MacBook Pro to the T5 took an average of 29 seconds, three times less time than with the Thunderbolt 3 X5. It took 33 seconds on average to make the same transfer once connected to the Razer Blade Stealth. The reason why the T5 has exceeded the X5 on the Stealth is unclear, but it shows how paying for a faster external drive is not worth it if your computer does not have an internal drive fast enough to follow it.

Intel 660p 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD

While the X5 and T5 are pre-built and ready-to-use, building your own external drive with the help of an NVMe M.2 SSD and a case can produce surprising results. I've tested Intel's 1TB NVMe 660p M.2 SSD SSD (currently at 110 USD) with a case that has some advantages over the Samsung T5: it's a little cheaper, faster, and, finally, it's a fun little project. together.

There are several types of M.2 format drives (which refers to the physical size of the drive), and you will want to make sure that you buy a NVMe PCIe drive, not SATA. The maximum transfer speeds can vary even from one NVMe drive to another, but if your goal is to use it as an external drive, you do not need to buy the fastest drives available because you will not be able to use all their bandwidth. The 660p disk that we tested offers a read and write speed of 1800 MB / s, which is not the fastest, but enough to saturate a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection. NVMe disks faster, such as the popular 970 EVO Plus from Samsung, cost a lot more and you will not benefit from using them in an external USB 3.1 box.

Although still relatively new, there are many NVMe packages to choose from. The two I have tried come from Plugable (currently $ 49) and ElecGear (currently $ 45). Both are compatible with NVMe PCIe SSDs and each supports the standard USB 3.1 Gen 2. Depending on the enclosure you purchase, the total cost is about $ 160. That's less than the cost of the Samsung T5 and, thanks to the fast read and write speeds of the 660p, it will also outperform it. Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, which have the potential to take advantage of the fastest NVMe drives, are just starting to hit the market, but they're significantly more expensive than USB 3.1 Gen 2 models. If you want Thunderbolt 3, opt for for a pre-built player such as the Samsung X5.

Installing the SSD in an enclosure is simple: open the enclosure (Plugable's tool-less design makes it much easier, other enclosures will require a few screws to open), align the NVMe pins, and attach the drive to the drive. keep up. Since NVMe disks can generate a lot of heat, it is advisable to install thermal pads to keep temperatures to a minimum. The two boxes I've tested include these pads in the box.

Getting this DIY hard drive on your computer is a little different from the others I've tested. It's still a matter of plug-and-play on macOS, but Windows 10 will not recognize this disk once connected. you will need to install a partition and assign a drive letter to Disk Management before you can use it as a portable drive. Once you're done, it works like the T5 and is compatible with the same range of USB-C and USB-A ports.

The results of MacBook Pro and Razer Blade Stealth are generally at par with this player. Using the Blackmagic Design disk benchmark, I got an average of 933 MB / s read, 910 MB / s write on the macOS laptop, while Razer recorded slightly faster digits with the Novabench and ATTO reference tools: 961 MB / s read, 942 MB read, on average.

As far as file transfer speed is concerned, this DIY NVMe player has interesting improvements over Samsung's T5 SSD at a similar price. On macOS, the file transfer of 13 GB lasted on average 17 seconds, an improvement of about 41% compared to the time of the T5. It took an average of 29 seconds to transfer the same file from the Razer laptop to the drive (which is four seconds faster than the T5 and ten seconds faster than the X5).

Which one should you buy?

If you're looking for the absolute maximum data transfer speeds in a portable drive and you know your computer has the right port and sufficient internal storage capacity, the Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 SSD is the best choice. It's twice as expensive as the other options, but also twice as fast, which can make all the difference if you work with a lot of large files.

But if you're not a professional video editor and are just looking for a fast little portable disk for storing files or photo libraries, I recommend using an NVMe PCIe SSD and a case. The installation is not as discouraging as it may seem, and it's not only a better value in terms of performance than the Samsung T5 and the Samsung X5, but you can also insert the SSD into a compatible desktop motherboard if you decide to retire. he's portable life.

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