SanDiskExtreme Portable SSD 1TB up to 550MB/s read Solid State Drive

The first thing you notice is this drive is very small and lightweight. In the picture that's an iPhone XS Max for scale. An old school external HDD is easily double the size, triple the weight, a quarter of the speed at best and much less reliable. And the price is excellent: at the time of writing I paid £79 for the 500GB model with 550MB/s speed.However it also feels rugged as the description advertises. I could probably drop this and not damage the actual flash storage.It comes formatted as exFAT which is what you want. It works on every major OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) and handles large files and external flash storage well. Other formats I've found only work properly on one OS and especially with FAT32 don't accept large files. Don't reformat it unless you have to but if you do have to I recommend formatting it again as exFAT unless you're doing something very specific that needs a different format (e.g. backup software that takes "snapshots" of your OS and data usually require specialised formats).I originally got this to backup my laptop but since the internal storage on my laptop is almost full I've ended up filling this drive with media instead and honestly might just buy another one for backups. And I would have no problem buying this exact drive again too.The only downside is the short cable and awkward adapter. It's easy to buy a third party one of course but the included cable is awkward to have plugged into a laptop as it just hangs off when you lift the laptop up. To be fair though it does stay plugged in just fine while hanging which is good because it could corrupt data otherwise. Oh and if you don't have a spare USB-C port and need to use the adapter for USB-A (regular old USB) make sure you put the adapter on the right way around! Yes there is a right way with this. If you put it on upside down it'll keep unplugging itself from the computer and you'll get data corruption. When fitted the right way it's solid. And again you can cheaply buy long high quality USB-C to USB-A and USB-C to USB-C cables right here on Amazon. I got a pack of three for under a tenner. Bargain.Oh one more small complaint. It came with some encryption software on it. This seems to be closed source and I can't see much info on how it works. I wouldn't trust random closed source software with encrypting my data personally. It's nice SanDisk is clearly taking encryption somewhat seriously at least but I recommend using some tried and trusted open source encryption software like VeraCrypt instead.Overall highly recommend this drive. Light, durable, fast, probably going to be very reliable (it's an SSD made by experts in memory), great build quality especially for this price, has USB-C which is good future proofing even if you don't use it right now. Only warnings I'd give are buy a better cable for it and don't use the included encryption software.

I bought the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 1TB for my games degree at uni, and it was hands down one of the best purchases I made with my student loan.The speed is impressive—up to 550MB/s read speed means transferring large game files, projects, and software is super fast and efficient.It’s lightweight and compact, so I can easily carry it around in my bag without worrying about space or weight.Plus, the rugged, water-resistant design gives me peace of mind that it can handle the bumps of student life. Even more so if you can grab a case for it too, double peace of mind.It was a lifesaver for storage and performance, and I can’t of imagined managing my coursework and projects without it.This is 1 of 3 I bought because I was so impressed. One for Unreal projects and another for Unity projects.

This is the only external hard drive I'll probably never bother putting in a case. It's small, light, but incredibly durable. I wasn't actually expecting it to be as small as it is, which is a plus in my opinion. One of the main reasons I wanted this drive was that it is USB-C – having moved over to the new MacBooks in 2017 I wanted to go some way to leaving the clumsy adapters behind.The drive comes with a very short USB-C cable, with a small adapter if you're using on a device with standard USB-A ports. The build itself is very good, it's amazing how far USB devices have come even in five years – this isn't much bigger than about three of my old Kingston drives put together, and is about 60 times the capacity. The design is modern and a bit funky, and the firm rubber edging makes it bounce when dropped and provides good protection, though it is a magnet for dust. Even though this is a rugged drive, it would've been nice to have even a small slipcase included, considering the price.As for speeds, I'm not one to meticulously get into the nitty gritty and measure them on these fancy pieces of software. I preferred to test it in a way which would produce real world numbers, so I just transferred some files. I saw a file of 5 gb transfer in 9 seconds, a file of 15gb transfer (from my USB-C MacBook Pro) in 28 seconds, and a group of files totalling 38 gb transfer in two minutes. That, to me, is incredible. Every time I transfer a video file or a collection of RAW photos files I'm amazed at the speed, compared to my old HDD which took an age to transfer, with the frustration and clunkiness of adapters on top.This is a drive that would be perfectly suited to being used as a video or photo archive, which is what I am using it for, and obviously it's ideally suited to be a Time Machine or any other back up drive. The speed and ease of transferring, through a cable my Mac is designed for, makes my work flow so much better. In the end, even with the 'deal of the day' I got, this was triple the price I've ever paid for an external hard drive, but I'm so glad I dove in.

Ordered this SSD to backup important files from my laptop. The drive is very small, about the size of a credit card (though obviously thicker) and extremely lightweight. It has a small cut-out in one corner that you can use to attach the drive to a bag, although there is no clip or cord provided for this.Included in the box is a usb-c cable with a usb-a adapter, so you can connect the SSD to your machine whether you have only usb-c or usb-a ports. The drive itself feels very sturdy, with a plastic front face and rubbery edges and back.The drive works perfectly on linux (I am running Ubuntu 20.04.1), and was detected by the file manager as soon as I plugged it in. I was easily able to format the drive using the GNOME Disks Utility, and found that the size of the drive shows as 500Gb, which is how much was advertised. The drive automatically mounted at /media/username/ and I was able to copy all of my Documents over in a couple of minutes.Would highly recommend this drive for its size and ease of use.