Data Backup Digest

Samsung recently released their latest solid state drive, the Portable SSD T1. The drive is aiming to set the bar for modern consumers as is aimed at creative professionals, content creators and business travellers. The selling point of the drive is that it’s highly portable, meaning it can be carried around with ease, and that it is capable of storing large amounts of data.

The drive is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities and is available throughout the US and 14 countries within the European and Asian markets. The drive starts at $179.99 and is compatible on Windows and Macs thanks to the exFAT file system. All drives come with a three year warranty, which is high when the standard is becoming just one.

Samsung have said their aim with the drive was to overcome the issues that consumers have with mobility, capacity, security and performance on portable drives. They claim that the Portable SSD T1 overcomes all those issues and make it the external storage drive to choose. Of course, they would say that, so how does it really stand up?

The drive was chosen as an honouree for the 2015 International Consumer Electronic Shows Innovation Awards and has received good reviews. Samsung quotes the drive as offering sequential read/write speeds of up to 450MB/s and with random read/write speeds of up to 8000 IOPS and 21000 IOPS respectively. The write speed is 100 times faster than an external hard disk drive, which just goes to show the power of a SSD.

Data transfer speeds are also much better than a SSD. Depending on the file size, the portable SSD T1 has data transfer speeds that are four times faster than an external HDD. It’ll apparently take only eight seconds to transfer a 3GB movie.

“From a competitive standpoint the Samsung has a lot going for it, including superb read/write performance with both singular large files and complex mixes of files and folders. For people who deal regularly with very large media and other files on the go, Samsung has delivered a highly attractive mobile Relevant Products/Services storage solution,” said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT.

The drive is sleek in design and very portable due to the size and light weight. The drive is 71mm long by 53.2mm wide, which means it can fit in your pocket and be transported around with ease. The build is solid and has resistance to high temperatures – of course, since this drive is an SSD it means there are no moving parts, meaning it can take much more shock and vibration than a HDD would be able to.

Storage Reviews took a look at the drive and found the setup to be quick and easy, offering a modern interface to get the drive up and running. The drive also lets you apply a password to your data, though it warns if you ever forget this then there’s no way to gain access to your data as the drive will have to be wiped.

They also found that the performance of the drive outperformed the figures Samsung quote, which is excellent. Those who are looking for a stable, portable and high performing external SSD would do well with the Samsung Portable SSD T1 series of drives.