Thunderbolt 3 and the newer Thunderbolt 4 (almost exactly the same thing with stricter implementation requirements) are the highest-performing interfaces for external storage. Although far faster than 5/10Gbps, there still aren’t a lot of USB 20Gbps/USB4 ports out there.
A 10Gbps Samsung T7 Shield can be had for $80 in a 1TB capacity.įaster USB 20Gbps (Gen 2×2) basically doubles speed but moves you into a higher-price bracket, with the Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSD costing $100 for only 500GB of storage. USB 10Gbps is fast enough for most users, and getting cheaper by the week. Where SuperSpeed 10Gbps/20Gbps, USB4, or Thunderbolt are of value is with the aforementioned RAID hard drive setups, or more likely-an SSD. Because of that, you’ll never see one rated higher. No hard drive, unless combined with other drives in RAID 0 or above, can saturate even the 5Gbps interface (roughly 500MBps real-world after overhead). For the sake of brevity (and our sanity), we generally shorten those to, for example, USB 10Gbps, 10Gbps USB, 10Gbps etc.Īll USB hard drives use a slower standard, typically USB 5Gbps. The USB Forum has changed its nomenclature to indicate throughput speed-SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps (formerly USB 3.x gen 1), SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps (formerly USB 3.x gen 2), and SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps (formerly USB 3.2 2×2). Ignore the version number (3.x) and look for the speed. However, USB comes in many speeds: 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20GBps, and-eventually with USB4-40Gbps as with Thunderbolt 3/4. The vast majority of external drives today are USB drives. Then again, if you really want rugged–go the SSD route. The latter is designed to take bumps in a laptop, even when powered up. While a desktop hard drive (read 3.5-inch) provides far more capacity (up to 26TB currently if you’re a data center), it also requires a power cable, weighs more, and generally won’t be as shock resistant as a portable 2.5-inch hard drive. I.e., the larger the capacity, the more backups over a longer period of time you can keep, or the more PCs you can back up to the same drive. If you have 1TB of storage in your PC, a 2TB drive allows you to make a full backup while keeping previous versions, as well as additional differential and incremental backups. So how much storage do you actually need? For backup, we recommend a drive that’s at least twice the capacity of the total amount of data residing on your PC’s internal storage. But it also means higher total cost, and not everyone needs maximum capacity. The best “value,” as you can see, typically means the most capacious hard drives. The worst value for an external hard drive is typically the lowest-capacity drive. Overall, this sleek storage system is a great option for organizing your storage and for those who need ultimate flexibility. Also, this is something that SanDisk should be able to fix with a software update and it wasn’t a major issue anyways. These only came about during rigorous testing scenarios and aren’t likely to affect day-to-day usage.
We did notice a few hiccups though when the drive’s system would lock up and we needed to manually reboot it to fix the issue. In our speed tests, the Pro-Blade’s cartridges did well in both synthetic benchmarks as well as real-world transfers, with good sustained speeds throughout both the shorter 48GB and longer 450GB read/write tests.
The cartridges come in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities and are all capable of transferring at speeds of 20Gbps.
The SanDisk Pro-Blade Transport’s modular design allows users to expand their TB count over the same connection and keep everything together and organized in neat, handsome cartridges. Additionally, it’s a good way to organize projects by their own media as well. It comes with easy-to-use removable storage cartridges for fast rotating backup. The SanDisk Pro-Blade Transport is a portable SSD dock that can be thought of as a cross between removable media and high-speed NVMe. And in that respect, too, the SL600 is neck-and-neck with the Crucial X10 Pro, and priced slightly to significantly cheaper than some of its competitors, at least as of this writing - particularly at the 2TB level. When performance is this closely matched among products, the determining factor should be price. The drive comes with the standard five year warranty. You can even take the highly portable drive’s design a step further by opting for the SL660 variant that comes with RGB lighting around its miniature handle. On top of that, it comes in a uniquely shaped form factor, complete with an opening to accommodate a lanyard, if that’s how you roll. The upshot is that you can expect excellent performance from the Lexar SL600. Nevertheless, a winner is a winner, and cumulatively, the Lexar nudged out our previous champ, Crucial’s X10 Pro, even if only by a hair. Let’s face it, the competition is very close in the top tier of 20Gbps external drives, with name-brand contenders trading wins up and down the benchmark charts.