Portable SSDs

Crucial has introduced a new product to the SSD fold as of late, this being the Crucial X8 Portable SSD.  This SSD is available in 500 and 1TB capacities and is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-C) external SSD that contains Crucial’s most recent M.2 release, the P1 NVMe M.2 SSD.  Specifications list this SSD as being capable of transfer …

Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C portable SSDs have become mainstream as of late, the typical value product having a JMicron controller that provides data transfer speeds up to 1GB/s read and write.  This is sufficient for the typical consumer but media professionals demand faster data transfer speeds….and higher capacity.  The sweet spot for Thunderbolt 3 is 2.8GB/s and that is as …

We have looked at plenty of SSD security solutions in the past, the most recent being the Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 External SSD, or my personal favorite and constant companion, the Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3.0 480GB flash drive which had been with me for some three years now.  I prefer hardware security solutions to software, as many do, simply …

It has been some time now since JMicron released their JMS583 chip which serves as a USB 3.1 Gen 2 to PCIe Gen 3×2 Bridge Controller that enables very high speed and large volume storage in a relatively small M.2 SSD enclosure.  To say the least, this chip has done very well and we have reviewed it in enclosures to …

If you have been following us for awhile, you might remember our review of the Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3 flash drive that we did back in August of 2016.  Back then, any flash drive at 480GB was something to get your hands on, much less one that would also qualify as one of the most secure flash drives worldwide.  …

So we have been on a bit of a roll with Lexar products for the last week or so, and that is a good thing.  For those not familiar with Lexar, they had a very strong presence in the media storage world, originally a Micron company but sold to Longsys of China back in August of 2017.  This of course …

Ease of use is massive to me, and I am sure that’s  the same with most.  M.2 SSDs, as sweet as they are for capacity, size and speeds, are at the best of times difficult to install simply because of the size of the #$%&^% retainer screw. Can this be concerning?  Well, I can remember some time ago when that …

Not to often that we have to eat crow (figuratively speaking) but our review today is just that.  A few months ago, we reviewed the JMicron Type-C NVMe M.2 SSD to USB 3.1 Gen 2 adapter and quoted it as being ‘not quite ready for prime time.’  Simply, I was wrong.  As a reviewer, we sometimes get caught up in …

So we have been on a bit of a kick lately, testing as much TB3 external storage as we could find.  And things have come along.  Where we were once restricted to external storage of 500MB/s, today’s portable storage is capable of almost 6 times that with Thunderbolt 3.  Don’t jump so fast though as TB3 is still rather niche …

We have been reviewing TB3 external devices for some time now and it is great to be so far away from those 500MB/s and lower portable storage device speeds. TB3 has been a gift to media professionals, to say the least.  Up until today, however, there has only been a single device that we have reviewed that has the portability …