External SSDs

Once the domain of external, bus-powered hard drives, these days the market for external storage has been almost completely consumed by portable SSDs. Rapid technological advancements in NAND flash technology (including the advent of 3D NAND) has allowed their capacity to eclipse 2.5-inch HDDs, all the while multiple improvements in host interface speeds (such as the move from USB 2.0 to 3.0, and onwards to 3.2 Gen 2 / Gen 2x2 / USB4) has made portable SSDs faster and more reliable than the hard drives they replace. All of which has helped to make portable SSDs the go-to solution for external storage, both big and small. For our latest storage buyer's guide, we've rounded up some of the best portable SSDs we've looked at in...

ADATA Releases SE760 USB 3.2 Gen 2 External SSD: Up to 1000 MB/s

High-performance external storage devices are gaining popularity these days as many mobile PCs come with a relatively low-capacity SSD that cannot be upgraded. To that end, ADATA this week...

9 by Anton Shilov on 2/20/2020

Western Digital Starts Sales of WD_Black P50 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SSDs

Western Digital has started sales of its WD_Black P50 SSDs that were announced earlier this year. The drives are aimed at the high-performance market and are among the first...

17 by Anton Shilov on 12/5/2019

Crucial Introduces X8 Portable SSD

Micron's consumer brand Crucial is entering the portable SSD market with the new Crucial X8 Portable SSD. The X8 has a USB-C 10Gb/s (USB 3.1 Gen 2) connection and...

7 by Billy Tallis on 10/24/2019

ASUS Shows Off ROG Strix Arion: A RGB USB 3.2 Gen 2 M.2 SSD Enclosure

Having extended its ROG products family from motherboards and graphics cards to pretty much everything that could interest demanding gamers and prosumers with deep pockets, ASUS continues to find...

21 by Anton Shilov on 9/27/2019

CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD Review

ioSafe's disaster-resistant solutions cater to an important niche in the storage market. In mid-2018, the company was acquired by CRU. The Solo Hawk Rugged SSD is one of the...

19 by Ganesh T S on 9/4/2019

A USB Stick as an SSD? A New Silicon Motion SM3282 Single-Chip Controller for USB SSDs

Silicon Motion has introduced its first single-chip controller for portable USB SSDs. The SM3282 promises to enable makers of portable drives to offer up to 400 MB/s sequential read...

46 by Anton Shilov on 5/31/2019

Plugable USBC-NVME Tool-Less NVMe SSD Enclosure Capsule Review

Storage bridges are an important part of computing systems. Currently popular external bridges allow storage drives (hard drives or SSDs) to talk to computing systems over USB or Thunderbolt...

23 by Ganesh T S on 2/14/2019

SanDisk's Mainstream Extreme PRO Portable SSD Goes NVMe

At CES 2019, Western Digital demonstrated a number of direct-attached flash solutions. Out of all the showcased items with imminent retail availability, one deserves separate mention. Under the SanDisk...

8 by Ganesh T S on 1/8/2019

Seagate at CES 2019: LaCie Mobile Drive and SSD External Storage Solutions

Seagate has made it customary to launch a few external storage solutions at CES each year. This time around, the LaCie brand is getting a couple of newly designed...

4 by Ganesh T S on 1/7/2019

MyDigitalSSD M2X M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Review - A PCIe to USB Storage Bridge

Storage bridges come in many varieties within the internal and external market segments. USB has become the de-facto standard when it comes to external mass-market storage enclosures. But while...

39 by Ganesh T S on 10/31/2018

MyDigitalSSD Introduces M2X USB Enclosure For M.2 NVMe SSDs

MyDigitalSSD is now shipping one of the first USB enclosures for M.2 NVMe SSDs. The new M2X enclosure is based on the JMicron JMS583 USB 3.1 Gen 2 to...

17 by Billy Tallis on 9/18/2018

TEKQ Shows Off Rapide TB3 SSD, Preps More TB3 Storage Devices

The Thunderbolt 3 technology has gained ground on the markets of premium as well as special-purpose hardware and is enjoying its dominance there. Yet when it comes to more...

2 by Anton Shilov on 6/5/2018

AKiTiO's Node Lite Optane Drive: An External Intel 905P SSD in Exclusive Red

AKiTiO and Intel this week announced plans to release a special product bundle consisting of AKiTiO’s Node Lite Thunderbolt 3 box and Intel’s Optane 905P SSD. The Node Lite...

6 by Anton Shilov on 5/3/2018

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