USB 3.0
The market for portable SSDs (PSSDs) has seen rapid growth over the past decade. Samsung is one of the active tier-one flash vendors in the space, with their popular T-series PSSDs servicing a range of target markets in terms of performance and price. Today, the company is introducing a new category in PSSDs - high-capacity flash storage limited to entry-level speeds. The company is using QLC flash for this purpose. While this is not the first PSSD in the market to use QLC flash (and it will definitely not be the last), the company is not repeating the mistakes of its predecessors by promising the moon. Instead, the company's first product in this category - the T5 EVO Portable SSD - is limited to...
Seagate Unveils FireCuda-Branded External HDD Solutions
Seagate has been marketing their gaming-focused storage products under the FireCuda brand over the last few years. With a focus on performance, these products have typically been flash-based and/or...
23 by Ganesh T S on 4/21/2021Toshiba Updates Canvio Portable Storage Lineup with Flex and Gaming HDDs
Hard disk drives still rule the roost when dealing with bus-powered portable storage devices that are economical on a $/Gb basis, particularly at higher capacity points. Seagate and Western...
12 by Ganesh T S on 8/31/2020WD My Passport 5TB DAS Review: Compact and Consistent Capacity Champ Gets SMR Right
Cost-conscious consumers with bulk storage requirements need to rely on hard drives. On the portable front, HDD vendors have been using 2.5" drives in external bus-powered enclosures to serve...
27 by Ganesh T S on 10/3/2019Seagate Backup Plus Portable 5TB & Backup Plus Slim 2TB Review: SMR for the Consumer Market
Hard drives continue to remain the storage media of choice for cost-conscious consumers with bulk storage requirements. HDD vendors have typically used their 2.5" drives for bus-powered high-capacity models...
65 by Ganesh T S on 6/18/2019ADATA Unveils Ultra-Compact UE700 Pro External Flash Drives: Up to 360 MB/s
ADATA has released a new lineup of USB flash drives that combines compact dimensions, high capacity, and high performance (in case of high-end models). The UE700 Pro drives come...
9 by Anton Shilov on 12/12/2018Kingston DataTraveler Elite G2 and HyperX Savage USB Flash Drives Capsule Review
Thumb drives are the most commonly used flash-based storage devices, thanks to their compact form factor and affordability. In our series of direct-attached storage reviews, we have taken a...
7 by Ganesh T S on 10/25/2017Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy and EDGE diskGO Secure Pro Secure USB Thumb Drives Review
Thumb drives are the most commonly used flash-based storage devices, thanks to their compact form factor and affordability. In our series of direct-attached storage reviews, we have taken a...
19 by Ganesh T S on 8/25/2017CES 2017: GIGABYTE’s Thunderbolt 3 to 8x USB 3 Dock
In some ways, Thunderbolt 3 is opening up a new world of connectivity. Having 40 Gbps of bandwidth to play with, along with a number of key mobile devices...
15 by Ian Cutress on 1/12/2017ADATA SE730, SV620 and SC660 External SSDs Review
We have seen rapid developments in flash technology over the last few years. Performance has been going up at one end (with various new options for interfacing with the...
10 by Ganesh T S on 11/4/2016Inateck FE2010 and UA1001 SATA - USB 3.0 Storage Bridges Review
Storage bridges come in many varieties within the internal and external market segments. On the external side, they usually have one or more downstream SATA ports. The most popular...
14 by Ganesh T S on 10/21/2016Western Digital My Book 8TB and My Passport 4TB External HDDs Review
Western Digital has a number of direct-attached storage (DAS) products based on hard drives. They cater to different market segments. These DAS units usually employ a USB port to...
35 by Ganesh T S on 10/16/2016SanDisk Extreme 510 Portable SSD Capsule Review
Rapid advancements in flash technology has coincided with the rise of USB 3.0 as an ubiquitous high-speed interface on computers. This has led to the appearance of small and...
7 by Ganesh T S on 6/23/2016Drobo 5D with BeyondRAID - Protected Direct-Attached Storage Made Simple
Drobo's direct-attached and network-attached storage units are quite popular in the market, but we have never had the opportunity to evaluate them on AnandTech. At CES 2016, we met...
74 by Ganesh T S on 4/25/2016LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Type-C External HDD Capsule Review
Seagate launched a host of direct-attached storage products under the LaCie brand name at CES earlier this year. Though the LaCie Chrome USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C external SSD...
12 by Ganesh T S on 3/31/2016Mushkin Impact 256GB and Atom 128GB USB Flash Drives Capsule Review
Flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, and most of them carry uninteresting specifications. In particular, flash drives advertising smaller physical footprints have tended to carry disappointing...
11 by Ganesh T S on 2/24/2016SanDisk Ultra +Cloud 64GB + 64GB Flash Drive Review
USB flash drives (UFDs) are a dime a dozen in the current market. In order to stand out in the crowd, manufacturers have adopted a two-pronged approach. While one...
23 by Ganesh T S on 2/18/2016StarTech Standalone Hard Drive Eraser And USB 3.0 Dock Capsule Review
When StarTech.com first offered up their USB 3.0 Standalone Eraser Dock for review, it took me a little while to really figure what it was for. The name is...
38 by Billy Tallis on 2/16/2016G-Technology Demonstrates G-SPEED Shuttle XL Thunderbolt 2 DAS at CES
As part of every CES trip, I make it a point to visit G-Technology and see what they are introducing into the DAS (direct attached storage) market. This year...
5 by Ganesh T S on 1/17/2016SanDisk Updates DAS Lineup at CES
Billy and I met with SanDisk at their CES 2016 suite. While Billy talked to them about their internal SSD efforts, I checked out the updates to their direct-attached...
2 by Ganesh T S on 1/12/2016