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The latest in greatest in portable media storage this season is the implementation of USB4 and it’s 4GB/s transfer speeds. Without a doubt, this is a breath of fresh air for the media professional and the storage industry as a whole. Somewhat overlooked, USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 has become a very affordable, speedy and high capacity solution for those having USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 ports in their PCs. After all, 20Gbps Type-C ports have become the standard in most PC cases these days.
Most recently, we put out word to Crucial in our report of the Crucial X10 20Gbps 2TB Portable SSD, that we simply wouldn’t believe that Crucial could manufacture an 8TB version of the X10 without having one in hand. This would most definitely be the smallest 8TB portable SSD on the planet. And they took up our challenge, sending us the Crucial X10 Pro 4TB Portable SSD we are testing today (above center) as well as that 8TB X10 (above right) which should reach the Guiness World Book of Records soon enough.
It was actually rather fitting that we pictured that Crucial X10 Pro SSD, along with the 8TB and 2TB versions of the X10, with our newest LG Gram Pro 16″ 2-in-1 Ultrabook. This laptop is in the Guinness World Records as the lightest 16-inch 2-in-1 laptop at just over 3lbs…or 1399 ‘grams’.
Even then, we still didn’t think we had effectively demonstrated just how small the Crucial X10 was so here is a shot next to a regular teaspoon. The X10 8TB will be the subject of its own report soon enough, but for now, let’s take a closer look at the Crucial X10 Pro 20Gbps 4TB Portable SSD. After all, this SSD is meant for media professionals and one intended to enable media manipulation right from the X10 Pro itself.
The Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD is a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20Gbps device that is available in 1, 2 and 4TB capacities. It has advertised performance of 2100GB/s read and 2000GB/s write, includes a USB 20Gbps Type-C cable, and is compatible with Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, PC, IPAD, Playstation, XBox and select cameras. The beauty of the Crucial X10 Pro is that it can be connected to media equipment for direct storage, only to then be connected to the PC or Mac for direct media creation. This eliminates the additional step of having to transfer large files needlessly to complete ones work.
The X10 Pro is of a 65 x 50mm unibody anodized aluminum build with rubberized soft touch exterior and is a re-run of the virtually exact older model with some updates. This version has an updated IP65 rating for water and dust with a 3m drop guarantee and has a loop at its corner with a white LED within which flashes with disk access.
There are differences between the X10 and X10 Pro, the first of which is the upgraded 5-year limited warranty, vs the 3-year of the X10. The X10 Pro also has 256-bit AES hardware encryption which provides added security as everything coming on and off the drive is automatically encrypted or decrypted. This also provides for software based password protection which can be downloaded here and is not available with the base X10 version.
The Crucial X10 Pro also includes added software unavailable with the base model to include Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps Plan and Hedge File Transfer utilities. So to be perfectly clear, that few extra dollars is getting you a better warranty, full disk encryption, password protection, better software and we might believe a bit better sustained write perfdormance which we will get to.
Checking Amazon, we can see pricing of $109.99 (1TB), $172.99 (2TB) and $261.99 for the 4TB capacity. We have received comments that the newer version of the X10 Pro is identifiable by the ’02’ at the end of the model number (ie. CT4000X10PROSSD902).
Let’s get to the performance results…
Just a quick question: Without enforcing that a password be set on the drive, does the automatic encryption at rest actually do anything for security? Or is it just a marketing checkpoint?
If plugging in/powering on the drive automatically enables encrypt/decrypt silently in the background, the data is not in any way protected that I can see.
I like the idea of encryption at rest, but if it’s security theater, then it is the same as any other drive.
To be clear, this isn’t specific to this drive, just the call out in the article made me wonder more about its usefulness.
One of the most important considerations of self-encrypting drives is that they are hardware and not software based, providing little if any performance lost in the encryption process. Does this mean that if I remove my SSD and place it in another PC it can’t be read? Absolutely not, however, when combined with programs such as BiLocker, SSDs comply with TCG Opal 2.0 and FIPS 140-2 standards and cannot be compromised. TCG Opal compliance also enables companies such as MacAfee, Symantec etc to take advantage of the encryption. An example of this is specific to the X10 which does not have AES 256-bit encryption like the X10 Pro. It is this encryption that allows Crucial to provide software for the extra password security of the X10 Pro. Very very important consideration is that, if you lose the password, you will not gain access to the protected data. Period. It is lost.