external solid state hard drive for long term storage

What’s more, in our testing, the Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD 1TB couldn’t even deliver its modest claimed performance, clocking just 306MB/s for sequential write performance. The Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD 1TB is essentially a SATA SSD behind a USB bridge, which means performance is limited to 6Gbps despite the drive’s 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface. Moreover, a great deal of that increased performance isn’t available on most PCs and all consoles due to limited interface support.Ī great deal that is. Then again, that fancy WD Drive with its NVMe SSD and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps interface costs roughly 75 percent more for the same 1TB of capacity. However, while the Crucial X8 does drop down to 380MB/s with sustained traffic, in our testing, it maintained that level for many tens of GB, which puts it on a par with the more expensive WD drive.īest gaming laptops | Best gaming keyboards | Best gaming mouseīest gaming motherboards | Best graphics cards | Best gaming monitorsīest gaming motherboard: the best boards aroundīest AMD motherboard: your new Ryzen's new home

Given the use of QLC NAND, one big question mark is sustained performance. 4K random performance is decent, too, for this class of drive, with reads of 27MB/s and writes just over 40MB/s at QD1. That’s over $150 less than WD’s Black P50 Game Drive in 2TB trim.Īnd so it proves in our testing, with the Crucial X8 good for just under 1GB/s for sequential transfers in both directions.

In fact, right now, it’s available at Best Buy for $239. It’s built into a really solid-feeling metal case. It’s not the absolute fastest external SSD on Earth. So, sometimes it makes sense to compromise. If you want it all, you’re going to have to pay for it.

External solid state hard drive for long term storage