Best Small External Ssd

The best portable SSD you can buy right now is the $149 CalDigit Tuff Nano (512GB). It was one of the fastest performing SSDs we tested, beating out most of the competition in read and write. About as long and wide as a credit card (although obviously thicker), the fast and super-compact Samsung T5 external SSD is our favorite external hard drive thanks to its speed and size. Those were the best external SSDs you can buy right now. There are some others you can check out as well, including the Seagate Fast SSD ($169), and the WD MyPassport ($149.99) both of which are SATA based SSDs that offer speeds up to 540MB/s. When comparing size, the Atom SSD may be a small SSD, but it isn't the smallest because the PNY Elite SSD still manages to have the best possible size out of all the SSDs in the market. However, you should keep in mind that this one comes with USB Type-C support for blazing fast performance right out of the box. See full list on arstechnica.com.

What's the best external hard drive for photos for photographers? An SSD (solid state drive) hard drive, of course. It's an improvement version of the HDD (hard disk drive). Why do photographers should adopt this new SSD hard disk technology? The reason is simple: just like a memory stick, there are no moving parts within an SSD hard drive. So you've got both reliability and high performance for photo and video editing. I'll go through some of the best portable SSD hard drives by looking into two main factors, speed and reliability. Top rated external SSD external hard drives for photographers should be:

• USB-C compatible for fast data transfer
• Shock, dust, and water resistant
• Small and lightweight
• Compatible with major operating systems like Mac, Windows, and Linux

A List of Top 10 Best Portable SSD Hard Drives for Travel Photographers in 2020

SanDisk Extreme 900 portable SSD

Top of the notch SSD hard drive from global brand SanDisk, the Extreme 900 portable SSD is unbeatable in term of speed. This is amazing. Photographers with high end DSLR camera love this kind of high-performance portable SSD hard drive. You don't even need drivers when connecting your computer to the hard drive. The other important feature we should not overlook is temperature and impact resistant.

Pros

• Read up to 850 MB/s and write up to 850 MB/s, using USB 3.1 Gen 2
• Compatible with PC & Mac computers

Cons

• Speed not matched as mentioned
• Not for running operating system

Samsung T3 Portable SSD

Second after SanDisk, I'd recommend Samsung T3 Portable SSD. The Samsung SSD T3 works well with PC, Mac, and even Android operating system. It's very compact and lightweight. This sleek SSD hard drive fits well in your pocket, so you can take all your photos with you anywhere you go.

Pros

• Read-write up to 450 MB/s
• Achieve the best performance with USB-C cable (make sure you have a USB-C cable support at least 5Gb/s transfer speed)

Cons

• Not friendly with Apple devices

VectoTech Rapid 2TB External SSD USB 3.0 Portable Solid State Drive

This portable SSD hard drive is a great addition to your storage needs. It's easy to use; it's plug and play. The SSD drive offers fast transfer speeds. Slick and lightweight is usually preferable by travel photographers. In addition, VectoTech Rapid Portable SSD is shock and vibration resistance, so it's a plus when you move around a lot.

Pros

• Super fast Read/Write speeds up to 450Mb/s
• Shock and vibration resistant
• 2-year manufacturer warranty

Cons

• Need driver installation with Mac OS powered devices

PNY Elite Portable SSD

This external Solid State Drive is ideal for photographers, videographers, graphic designers who needs to back-up or transfer large files. It was built with performance and reliability in mind. It's also probably one of the most compact SSD hard drives in portable SSD class. It works on MAC and Windows out of box. Plug and play. The down size is storage capacity available, unlike the above reviewed portable SSD hard drives, which offer more capacity.

• Read up to 430 MB/s and write up to 400 MB/s
• Great look, feel and quality of materials

WD 2TB My Passport SSD Portable Storage – USB 3.1

What I really love about this WD My Passport SSD hard disk is its shock-resistance, compact storage in a durable design. The automatic backup feature is useful for most photographers. Overall, it's the best SSD portable hard drive for Macs.

• Read speeds up to 540 MB/s
• USB Type-C and USB 3.1

U32 Shadow External 2TB USB-C (3.1 Gen 2) Portable Solid State Drive SSD

The Thunderbolt 3 compatibility makes the U32 Shadow External SSD drive outstanding for its speed and performance. On the other hand, this SSD hard disk is quite portable, which makes it easy to pack and travel.

• Compatible with USB 3.1/3.0 and Thunderbolt 3
• Durable build and design with aluminum housing

LaCie Rugged 1TB Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 SSD Portable Hard Drive

If you travel a lot for photography purpose, LaCie Rugged Portable Hard Drive will survive extreme data security in most circumstances.

• Shock, dust, and water resistant for all-terrain use
• Speeds of up to 387 MB/s

Seagate Portable 4TB External Hard Drive USB 3.0

Seagate has been popular for years as a hard drive maker. This external SSD hard drive is quite affordable for most photographers. What's more? You won't sacrifice the reliability with this Seagate brand. Overall, it's the best cheap external SSD hard drive everyone can buy.

• Lightweight and compact design
• Plastic top cover
• Mac compatibility

Samsung T5 Portable SSD

Download pdf to go.

With read and write speeds up to 540 MB/s, it's a great travel hard drive for photographers. It's compact and lightweight.

• Compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Android devices
• Metal design
• Read-Write speeds of up to 540 MB/s
• Comes with USB Type C to C and USB Type C to A cables

SanDisk Extreme 500GB Portable SSD: The Best Waterproof

If your ultimate choice is the best water-resistant external SSD hard disk, you should not look further. The SanDisk Extreme 500GB is my favorite.

See Full List On Arstechnica.com

• Up to 550MB/s read speeds
• IP55 for water and dust resistance
• Shock-resistant (Shock-resistant (up to 1500G)
• Vibration-resistant (5g RMS, 10-2000 HZ)
• Non-operating temperature
• For PC and Mac users

Toshiba Canvio Advance 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0

Compatible with Mac and Windows, the Toshiba Canvio is a USB 3 portable hard disk made for storing photographs. It's quite easy to use with a MacBook laptop to backup photos. Overall, it's very reliable.

For those photographers with a massive collection of photographs, I'd recommend that you should either buy a few of the Toshiba Canvio external hard drives or get the 4TB capacity.

• Slim design
• Toshiba Storage Backup Software (downloadable)
• Automatic backup and password protection

Good to Know

Of all the digital storage, the SSD technology is a good investment. For most travel photographers, what we need most is digital storage to keep all their photographs. Having the best SSD hard drive is essential for most of us. I chose the to best portable SSD hard drives over normal external hard drives because of these two factors: reliability and speed.

These features are what we need to pay attention to before buying an external hard drive to store and backup our photos. The top rated external hard drives will make photographers and videographers easier for use in the home studio or travel, especially for backup large photo files. There are times we our normal external hard disks are having issues due to its old technology. With the best portable SSD hard drives you'll feel more comfortable storing your valuable photos.

What's else? If you're looking for a gift idea for your friend who's a passion photographer, giving the best external SSD hard disk is a great choice. The list above gives you a variety of options for either Windows or Mac users.

Best Bets From Amazon's Electronics Gift Guide

Portable SSDs are a good way to increase the amount of storage you have to preserve digital data and take that data with you wherever you go. These powerful accessories let you pack a huge amount of storage in your daily bag, giving you a place where you can offload files from your computer or smartphone, access files you only need in certain circumstances, and backup important information on the go.

But the world of portable SSDs is a large one, and choosing the best device for your needs can be a challenge. It's not just about how small the device is, how durable it is, or how many gigabytes of storage it has—the speed of a portable SSD can heavily influence your satisfaction with it. SSDs in general promise better read and write speeds than HDDs, so you'll see a general increase if you're going from one to the other. However, not all portable SSDs perform the same—even if they advertise similar maximum speeds.

To help you decide which portable SSD might work for you, Ars put some of the newest and most popular portable SSDs on the market to the test and judged them on speed, design, durability, compatibility, and price. Here are our findings:

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Best Small External Ssd Drives

The short version

• The best portable SSD you can buy right now is the $149 CalDigit Tuff Nano (512GB). It was one of the fastest performing SSDs we tested, beating out most of the competition in read and write speeds. It's one of the most portable drives as well, with a metal body that has dimensions smaller than the size of a typical credit card. The device is IP67 water- and dust-resistant, and it has a special USB-C port that has its own waterproof rating. We only wish it came in more capacity variations, but for now, the CalDigit Tuff Nano portable SSD in 512GB is well worth its price of $149. Buy now: CalDigit Tuff Nano (512GB) at Amazon.
• Our runner-up portable SSD is the Samsung T5 (500GB). This palm-sized drive has been very popular over the past few years as a drive that's as reliable as it is portable. It's not as fast as our top pick, but it was one of the fastest among the average performers in our benchmark tests. We also appreciate that it has AES 256-bit hardware encryption and optional password protection to provide even more peace of mind that your data is secure. The Samsung T5 is a good choice if you want a reliable portable SSD that's reasonably fast and slightly more affordable than our top pick. Buy now: Samsung T5 (500GB) at Amazon.

• The most durable option is the SanDisk Extreme portable SSD (1TB). We like this drive for its tiny size, shock-, vibration-, drop-, and water-resistant body and its read and write speeds that are nearly identical to our runner up. It also has AES 128-bit hardware encryption for an additional level of data security. If you're frightened of dropping the Samsung T5's tiny, all-metal body or just want a drive that has a few more physical safeguards, the SanDisk Extreme is a good option. Buy now: SanDisk Extreme SSD (1TB) at Amazon.
• Our best luxury pick is the OWC Envoy Pro EX (2TB) thanks to its blazing fast read and write speeds and slick design. It outperformed almost every other portable SSD we tested, reading and writing even the largest files with ease. The OWC Envoy Pro EX starts at $129 for a 240GB model and costs a whopping $499 for a 2TB model. Those who need a portable SSD for their daily workflow that can handle nearly anything they throw at it will find the OWC Envoy Pro EX a good investment. Buy now: OWC Envoy Pro EX (2TB) at OWC.

Best overall

CalDigit Tuff Nano

CalDigit's Tuff Nano (512GB) portable SSD surprised from the very beginning of our testing. Most of the other SSDs we tested have been around for some time—CalDigit only just released the Tuff Nano less than a year ago, so there isn't a lot of historical data to illustrate expected performance. But it proved to be one of the fastest portable SSDs we tested, blowing almost every other device out of the water when it came to read and write speeds.

CalDigit advertises read speeds up to 1088Mb/s and the Tuff Nano either surpassed that or came quite close to it in all of our tests. However, read speeds are not the most accurate way to judge an SSD's performance—the really telling data lies in write speeds.

Download windows image tool. Most of the devices we tested were high MLC (multi-level cell) performers, which means that they do not rely on a small amount of cache to buffer write speeds. That's a good thing because it means that performance won't plummet after the cache is full.

However, that doesn't mean that all of the drives we tested performed similarly across the board. As we increased file sizes in our testing, CalDigit was one of the stand-out drives that didn't slow down significantly under heavy, concurrent access. It handled writing large files better than the majority of the competition, and those that did beat the $149 Tuff Nano are much more expensive SSDs. As a rule of thumb, we recommend the Tuff Nano or our luxury pick (the drives that stood out in our testing in terms of write speed) to those who intend to do heavily work directly on their portable SSD rather than using it as a dump drive.

The performance is impressive not only in a sub-$200 SSD, but also in such a small device. Measuring 2.99 x 2.14 x 0.57 inches, the CalDigit Tuff Nano fits comfortably in the palm of my hand and can easily disappear in a deep pocket. The metal rectangle has an IPX67 rating, meaning it can withstand being submerged in one meter of water for 30 minutes and it's resistant to dust. The USB-C port on the SSD has its own waterproof rating of IPX8 as well.

The Tuff Nano also comes with a rubbed edge case that gives it a bit more drop protection. Available in red, blue, green, and black, the case acts as a bumped of sorts that will take the impact of a fall better than the cold metal of the SSD's body. The case includes a tiny flap that can cover the USB-C port on the SSD as well, and while it's a bit finicky, it'll give the device even more protection when not in use.

While CalDigit pre-formatted the Tuff Nano for macOS, it can be reformatted to work with Windows and there are instructions included with the SSD that explain how to do so. Those come in the form of a small piece of paper in the box rather than a digital document stored on the SSD, like many other SSDs have. I make note of this because you could easily miss the instructions while unboxing the device, but also because if they were only included as a digital file on the drive, Windows users wouldn't be able to access them at all. Also included in the box are USB-C to C and USB-C to A cables, allowing you to use the Tuff Nano with older machines.

Aside from possibly losing it in the depths of your backpack, there aren't a lot of cons to the Tuff Nano. My biggest complaint about it is that this device gets quite hot after long-term use. After running all of our benchmark tests, the metal body of the Tuff Nano measured 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

I also wish the Tuff Nano had more capacity variants. Currently, you can only buy a 512GB model of the Tuff Nano. Hopefully CalDigit will expand the device and add at least 1TB and 2TB options in the future. At $149 for 512GB, it's admittedly more expensive than some of the more popularl competitors, but we think its above-average performance is worth the extra money.

The Good

• A faster than average portable SSD with a compact design and a good price.

The Bad

• Gets hot after long-term use.

Ssd External Drive

Runner up

Samsung T5

The darling of portable SSDs made it onto our list for good reason. Known for its small size and reliable performance, the Samsung T5 (500GB) portable SSD is a solid alternative to our top pick thanks to its relatively fast read and write speeds, its simple design, and its decent price tag.

Aside from the few stand-out SSDs we tested, most devices performed relatively similarly. None of the drives we tested were particularly bad (which is a good thing), and that means that their benchmark scores all landed in the same range on most tests. The Samsung T5 always produced scores that were in line with, or better than, the rest of the competition. And, interestingly enough, the T5 performed slightly better than the new Samsung T7 Touch on almost every test (it was bested by the T7 once).

That's not to say the newest version of Samsung's portable SSD is bad—quite the contrary. The T7 Touch is just about as good as the T5 in nearly every way, and it has a built-in fingerprint reader in addition to the standard AES 256-bit encryption and password protection that the T5 has. However, the new fingerprint reader is the only reason why it would make sense to pay for the T7 Touch—otherwise, you're essentially getting a newer version of the T5 that doesn't offer much in the way of performance gains.

The Samsung T5 has a decent design that's attractive thanks to its minimalism. The aluminum body is slightly wider than a credit card and takes up only a bit more space in width. Available in blue, red, gold, and black, it's a tiny storage companion that is shock-resistant and can withstand drops up to two meters.

So let's talk price: a 500GB Samsung T5 will cost you $94. Of the other portable SSDs we tested that performed similarly to the T5, most had 500GB models that were also priced between $90 and $95. It's the average price for a portable SSD of this size and speed, which means you won't be paying extra for the Samsung name like you may do if you buy a different drive (or any number of other consumer electronics that up-charge for a hot brand name).

Best solid state hard drive for desktop pc. Overall, the Samsung T5 lives up to its hype. If you don't want to spend the extra money on our top pick, the T5 is a good alternative with its simple yet attractive design, fast performance, and optional password protection.

The Good

• Fast portable SSD with a pocket-size profile and optional password protection.

The Bad

• Doesn't come in a 250GB model.

Best Small External Ssd - Image Results