An extensive collection of hands-on, no-nonsense reviews on portable drives — external storage devices that connect to a host via USB or Thunderbolt standards. Hint: You can’t have fast speed via USB 2.0.
The SanDisk Creator Phone SSD, part of the new SanDisk Creator Series unveiled at the beginning of the year, is an excellent add-on storage device for those with a USB-C-based smartphone who want to shoot a lot of 4K videos. For others, it’s a simple backup drive. Here’s the bottom …
The Crucial X10, first announced on May 19 together with the Crucial T710, is Micron’s latest portable SSD. If the name rings a bell, that’s because the company had the Crucial X10 Pro back in late 2023. So, what’s the point of this new drive? Despite being very similar to …
Western Digital’s SanDisk Professional 26TB G-Drive is totally different from the SSD version. It’s a much larger external drive, uses a traditional (enterprise-class) hard drive as storage, and is not bus-powered. In return, it has much higher capacity and much lower cost-over-storage ratio. This 26TB version is the latest variant …
The Extreme Pro with USB4 is SanDisk’s first major portable SSD since the split-off from Western Digital. It’s a clear upgrade from the previous 2020 Extreme Pro. As the name suggests, the new drive is one of a few portable SSDs that feature USB4. It is the second I’ve tested …
The ASUS TUF Gaming is an interesting portable SSD lineup. For one, it comes in the Plus and A2 segments, with the former being ready-made drives and the latter being more of an enclosure that you’ll need to install your own NVMe SSD before it becomes a portable drive. Secondly, …
The Silicon Power DS72 portable SSD stick looks like a thumb drive and works like one, too. However, it has the performance of a portable SSD. Most importantly, it comes with both USB-A and USB-C connectivity to work with virtually all modern host devices. Here’s the bottom line: While the …
OWC has been known to be the make of prosumer storage devices, and at CES 2025, it showed just that. The company demoed the real-time performance of its latest Thunderbolt 5 devices. “Latest” because its first TB5 portable drive, the Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5, was released back in Sempter 2024. …
