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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
As much as one might think that it not be the case, finding just the right approach in a report analysis is very hard when there just don’t seem to be any shortcomings in the product reviewed. This is just that scenario with the Samsung Portable SSD T1 which has now joined my few other tech favorites that are with me always. Let’s start with what I believe are the absolute best consumer attributes for this drive:
DATA SECURITY
This is by far the simplest form of data security we have seen yet for an external SSD and it is literally foolproof. The consumer has the choice to password protect their data or not, but if they do, it is 100% secure and the only way that data can ever be accessed is with that password. As much as one doesn’t like the thought that they will lose their data if the password is forgotten, the drive can still be reset to new by Samsung and can still be used.
EASE OF INSTALLATION AND USE
I have been using the Samsung Portable SSD T1 on several systems in the last week and its setup and use, whether on a PC or Mac, is easier than one would ever expect. Samsung hit a home run with this point in particular as transitioning to SSD for the consumer needs to be as simple and easily understood as possible. I have plugged he T1 into 5 systems today alone and the Password Menu has popped up each time.
CAPACITY AND SIZE
There isn’t another 1TB external SSD on the planet that is this small and this light. At 3/4 the size of a business card and as heavy as two tablespoons of flour, it is really unbelievable as to how much we can keep on the T1. The only concern that we might have with size is that things this small are so easily misplaced.
PERFORMANCE
The Samsung Portable SSD T1 comes in at above 400MB/s USB 3.0 UASP speeds and you just don’t get much better than that. The important thing to note for those interested in the T1 is to understand the performance your system is capable of. Understand whether you will be plugging it into a USB 2.0, USB 3.0 or USB 3.0 UASP capable system and the maximum speeds that will result.
PRICING AND WARRANTY
Amazon has listed their pricing
right along with MSRP at $179.99 (250GB), $299 (500GB) and $599 for the 1TB version. Granted these are not quite the low prices we are finding in typical SSDs, these prices are dead on for an external SSD of this caliber, and with a 3 year warranty to match. We wouldn’t be surprised whatsoever if the Samsung Portable SSD T1 corners the external SSD market.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As necessity has dictated through my outside employment, I typically have with me a secure flash drive for work, along with my improvised Samsung 840 EVO 1TB external SSD for website business; at least up until the Samsung Portable SSD T1 arived on the scene. The T1 has replaced both and is now used exclusively. Quite frankly, I can’t speak enough to the benefits of this external SSD and it wouldn’t escape this report without garnishing an Editor’s Choice!
Check Out Samsung Portable SSD Pricing at Amazon
If only it was the new USB 3.1 🙂 Damn that would be awesome!
David you are right. Time is over for the 3.0. Too late for these devices. 3.0 was announced in 2008 and they offered 10 MB write 40 MB read drives for years. Still more than half of the 3.0 drives are 10 – 15 MB write 70 – 80 MB read. 3.1 was announced in 2014 and when 3.0 died producers started to offer 400 MB drives. Patriot renewed Supersonic Magnum series with 300 MB write 400 MB read speed. Corsair renewed Voyager GS and GTX. Lexar renewed P10 to P20 with 270 MB write 400 MB read. I do not care any of them. Also I do not care Samsung T1. It is high time for 3.1. Remember CES 2015. ADATA SE700 portable SSD with USB 3.1 interface. The drive offers sequential transfer rates of up to 819 MB/s read, with up to 839 MB/s writes. https://www.techpowerup.com/208746/adata-se700-offer-scorching-fast-transfers-mobility.html
It would be interesting on these portable SSDs to do real stress testing to see what kind of speed drops occur during heavy write IO. I know with some high-end USB thumb drives heat is a real problem during heavy write IOs that result in the USB throughput dropping.
why the use of mgx controller instead of mex which is being used in 850evo 1tb model?
Do all the msata 1tb models use the mgx controller?
I was hoping for a 70 dollar terabyte one lol
Hoping or dreaming 😛
Why not both?
😀
Haha, well, even most HDD’s aren’t at that price range, let alone regular SSD’s so expecting (correction, “hoping” 😉 that from a portable UASP SSD is a bit…too optimistic.
Don’t buy it anyways (IMO), as it’s not performing that well compared to even regular SSD’s (which you can put in a case and with an adapter you can achieve the same external portability).
Little patience and we’re going to see more and better of these coming up 🙂
You’re right.
Upvote for you!
Just curious … how does this compare with the Freecom mSSD (which I note is not mentioned or reviewed on this website, perhaps because they didn’t wish to sponsor the site?)? I measured the mSSD back in September and it showed very favorably compared to this Samsung device (I used Xbench, so not the identical test conditions). It’s also a lot smaller. But (1) it’s quite expensive (over US$300), (2) only 256MB, and (3) doesn’t have any on-board security (but, for reasons I can’t determine, it performs nearly as fast under Apple’s CoreStorage encrypted volume as it does native).
What we review and our review of that product has NOTHING to do with advertising and all who are familiar with the site understand that the reviewers opinion stands here.
I have never even heard of the Freecom mSSD but you are more than welcome to get them to send one along for review if you like.
Thank you, I will write to them to suggest that. As probably the premier website devoted to SSD topics, I hope that TheSSDReview will interest them enough to send a review sample or two.
You’ve never heard of FreeCom??? What sort of reviewer are you then? How lazy of you to ask a viewer to get a company to send you a sample. DO IT YOURSELF. THAT’S YOUR JOB.
Just bought a 1 TB.
Have you had any issue with exFAT formatting? Samsung talks about lockups.
Would you recommend reformatting for more stable use on just one OS? User manual recommends reformatting to ONE OS – (NFTS for PC) to avoid write ‘lock-ups’ if you’re going to use only on PC’s.
I can’t find any instructions from Samsung to reformat the T1 though. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks
If I remove the mSATA drive from my 1TB T1 and use it as the main drive in my laptop (the one I install Windows on), will Samsung Magician recognize it as an 850 Evo and allow firmware upgrades on it?
Were you able to get the answer to your question? I also want to do that and want to know if it possible.
Hi, Do you know if this drive will work with OTG android phones? Many thanks.
Haven’t a clue sorry.
https://ausdroid.net/2015/05/19/put-samsungs-t1-portable-ssd-to-work-with-your-android-devices/
Thanks, just found this link. My next question was if the password secured function will work with Android enabled OTG phones.
Hi, can you eliminate the bridge from SATA to USB to use it from SATA as Internal SSD?
Yes you can.
Are you sure? It looks like it has custom firmware that requires the drivers.
And by are you sure I mean did you actually try, or are you just assuming it.
Nice review. I have a question on using it for Video editing, I have a regular USB 3.0 on a 4 year old Dell PC (Windows 7 12 GB memory). External HDD is a bit slow, also it often gets failure due to the frequent use of the moving parts on the HDD, Will this SSD solve the problem with no moving part. I do not need a big space for editing as long as it is fast and durable for frequency read/write. Thanks -George
Can I take it apart and replace the external ssd with the internal ssd i have on my laptop? The internal is also a samsung msata ssd with the same size.
Just bought a 1TB one and had plans to use it as a super-fast TimeMachine Backup for my MacBook Pro running El Capitan. However, the formatting of it didn’t allow Time Machine Back-ups, so I decided that I could at least use it as my archival hard drive for 20 years of data. Last night I transferred 700GB+ onto it, erased the old external HD, and took it to work.
However, when I arrived at work, I set up my laptop and plugged in the T1 SSD into the USB keyboard which also had other USB peripherals attached. Imagine my concern to discover that nothing mounted on the desktop when I did so. I unplugged the SSD and tried the USB in the laptop directly as I remembered that some hard drives don’t like to share power with other USB devices from the same port. This is when real horror took hold as only a small partition mounted with only the Samsung software. NO OTHER DATA!
I logged out and back again and I had trouble holding panic back as I scrambled for the Samsung webchat support. This is when despair set in when they started to ask if I had tried troubleshooting steps including running ANTI-VIRUS software (seriously?) and trying 3rd party data recovery tools. THAT WAS IT – no other data recovery tools recommended. Confidence in Samsung support now completely destroyed and I vowed to never trust Samsung with my data again.
It was only when I restarted that the SSD data miraculously re-appeared and am now transferring my precious data back to my old HD. I will try to reformat the SSD using the Mac defaults and leave the shonky Samsung encryption to evolve outside my experience.
Hope this helps somebody else out there.
How the heck do you open this fandangled thing?