Samsung T1 Portable SSD Review (1TB) – Price, Speed, Capacity and Security

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

Samsung Portable SSD T1 Crystal DiskMark NTFS

Performance is just below listed specs which is nothing to worry about but let’s take a closer look at the low 4k write performance of 39MB/s.  If you are familiar with SSDs, you would know that we are seeing performance up around the 140MB/s mark these days, at least when we are looking at system SSDs that are connected to the PC via SATA or even PCIe.

External SSDs are significantly lower and all are similar to this because of the mechanics of being a USB3.0 connection.  Where internal SSDs are intended to run operating systems, the low 4K write is very important, whereas, when we look at external SSDs that are typically used for the transfer and storage of large files, the random performance is less important and high sequential performance is prefered.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.7

The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance.  For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

Samsung Portable SSD T1 AS SSD NTFSSamsung Portable SSD T1 AS SSD IOPS NTFSUnderstanding that AS SSD is a program that is created for system SSDs, it is understandable that we would see lower performance with this benchmark.  I high of 32K IOPS was actually a pleasant surprise for the T1.

Samsung Portable SSD T1 AS SSD Copy Bench NTFS

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today.  The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

Samsung Portable SSD T1 AnvilNTFSAnvil Storaghe Utilities also confirms much of what we are seeing, providing additional data such as disk access times (Resp. Time) which are actually much better than we might expect for an external solid state drive.

OSX PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK

As the Samsung Portable SSD T1 is fully compatible with both PC and Mac systems, we thought it important to get a benchmark in with performance as shown on our 2013 MBA:

Screen Shot 2015-01-15 at 5.36.38 PM

As we can see with QuickBench 4.0, performance for the Samsung Portable SSD T1 remains above 400MB/s for both read and write data transfers.

TRUE TRANSFER COMPARISON

In the chart below, we compared the 1TB Samsung Portable SSD T1 (UASP) against our 1TB Monster OverDrive 3.0 (USB3.0) and then threw in our OS SSD, the Intel 730 (SATA) for good measure.  The sample files were 3GB of music, 3GB of pictures and 10GB of HD movies and the speed was measured by transferring the data to the external device from the OS SSD, or to a separate folder in the case of the system disk Intel 730.

Transfer Comparison

As much as we can identify that the system disk (Intel 730) is still top dog as it has true SATA 3 speeds, the Samsung Portable SSD T1 displayed some pretty impress transfer speeds, almost bettering the system disk in moving video files.  Conversely, we can clearly identify the difference between USB 3.0 and UASP when comparing the T1 to the Monster OverDrive which was much slower.

26 comments

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    If only it was the new USB 3.1 🙂 Damn that would be awesome!

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      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

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    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.

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    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?

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    I was hoping for a 70 dollar terabyte one lol

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    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).

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      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.

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        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.

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        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.

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    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

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    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?

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    Hi, Do you know if this drive will work with OTG android phones? Many thanks.

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    Hi, can you eliminate the bridge from SATA to USB to use it from SATA as Internal SSD?

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    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

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    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.

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    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.

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    How the heck do you open this fandangled thing?

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