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 Armor A66 is the first portable hard drive I’ve reviewed in a long time — since the WD My Passport in September 2019 — and it might be my last. With solid-state drives (SSDs) getting more affordable, there are fewer and fewer reasons to get hard-drive-based portable storage. On …
The SanDisk Professional G-Drive SSD is the latest in Western Digital’s large portable family, including the previous SanDisk Extreme/PRO and WD My Passport brands. But it has some minor novelties of its own: The look and the HFS+ pre-configured file system — it’s ready for Time Machine backup right out …
In many ways, the new diskAshur M2 portable drive is an upgrade to iStorage’s datAshur PRO2 that came out in 2019. It’s larger, faster, but the impenetrable security concept remains. In a nutshell, this is a tiny portable SSD with an integrated keypad that works like that of a safe. …
The OWC Envoy Pro SX is the second Thunderbolt-exclusive portable SSD I’ve reviewed, long after the Samsung X5. Part of the reason is that the Thunderbolt has become a bit of a mess, with Thunderbolt 3 merging with USB4 and Thunderbolt 4 having almost nothing to call its own. So, …
The WD Black D30 Game Drive SSD, first announced in May 2021, is both more and less versus the previous WB Black P50 that came out in late 2020. More because, well, it’s significantly thicker and now includes a nice stand. And less because it houses a slower MVNe SSD …
The Apricorn Aegis Padlock SSD is a niche product that doesn’t apply to general use. But if you have it, chances are you’ll find it super useful anyway. Indeed, this little portable drive is a lot more than regular extra storage space. It’s an impenetrable digital storage vault, complete with …
Western Digital’s second go at super-fast portable SSD, the SanDisk Extreme PRO, is not to be taken lightly. It’s the first in the SanDisk Extreme family (including the PRO and non-PRO lineups) to support the venerable USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) standard. As such, it’s a direct replacement for the …
The 2020 SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD is a clear improvement over the previous 2018 model. While sharing the same name and design, on the inside, it’s a new drive entirely with more features and much faster performance. Considering the drive’s support for USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), which is getting …
