There are more and more solid state drives in stores — it cannot be said that they are replacing traditional HDDs, but they are gradually occupying their niche in the market. SSD is actively used, first of all, as a system disk, while hard drives are more often bought for data storage.
What about external devices? Here, too, SSDs are just starting to gain a place in the sun. HDDs are noticeably cheaper, they are about the same in size … But there is one caveat. Still, hard drives are mechanics, that is, physically rotating disks and heads for reading information. Solid-state drives have no moving parts, so they are much more resistant to vibrations and other external influences. And for an external device, this is very important.
Shockproof Drive
SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable is just one such solution. The word «Extreme» in this case implies a durable aluminum body and impact-resistant construction. This SSD can operate in the temperature range from -20 to +70 ° C, withstands drops from a small height. Just what you need for a mobile device. In terms of capacity, such drives can be from 480 GB to 2 TB.
The drive is made in a 2.5-inch form factor, slightly larger than a modern 6-inch smartphone, and weighs even less. The aluminum panels with bevelled, shiny in the light, are painted with high quality: after a week of use, no scratches or scuffs appeared.
The device comes with two cables: one to connect to a standard USB port, the other to USB-C. On the SSD itself — just USB-C.
Theoretically, the data exchange rate should be up to 850 Mb / s, that is, almost an order of magnitude higher than that of the HDD. But even here there is a nuance: if you have an old hardware, you cannot see cosmic speeds. As an example, we connected this SSD to a USB 2.0 port on an office computer. Here is the result:
The HDD can also deliver the same speeds — it’s just that the standard itself supports a theoretical data transfer rate of up to 48 Mb / s. Now we connect to the desktop computer via USB 3.1. Recall that this standard allows you to work with speeds of 1250 Mb / s. The measurement illustrates the difference well, and regardless of .
Note that the actual speed may depend on a number of factors: for example, the implementation of USB ports on the motherboard, the operation of drivers and firmware. This is the answer to the question why the speed in our test did not reach the maximum. And, of course, you can only experience all the benefits of an SSD with USB 3.0 ports and older.
One of the nice features of SanDisk storage media (including the Extreme 900 Portable) is the ability to protect files using proprietary SanDisk SecureAccess software. With it, you can solve a popular problem: for example, you already have personal files on the drive, you need to add a video there and transfer it to a partner. Naturally, it is not desirable that he gain access to all content. To do this, a separate storage is created on the disk, the files in which undergo 128-bit AES encryption. All personal content can be downloaded to this “safe”, the rest can be made available to any user. This way, even if you lose your SSD, no one can get to your files.
Bottom line: do you need an external SSD?
If you are dealing with large amounts of data (such as video content), an SSD will significantly speed up the process of transferring files. All modern motherboards support USB 3.0 / 3.1, or USB-C, but for older computers they can only have version 2.0, then the advantages of the same SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable come down to greater reliability due to the lack of mechanics inside the device.
More interesting things about fast SSDs:
- Western Digital Black SN750 NVMe SSD Review: Designed for Gamers
- Test of the new SSD ADATA Ultimate SU635: at the limit of SATA
