Over the years I’ve had to buy numerous external SSDs for myself, and my wife, who is a video professional. You’d think that one external SSD is pretty much like the next, but as I’ve learned the hard way, there’s more to it than just picking the fastest or the cheapest drive.
In fact, the key specs written on the box or the online listing are often not that relevant or important to your needs. They tend to focus on maximum burst speeds, for example, that rarely matter for an external SSD. So these days I’ve boiled the most important criteria down to three key factors.
Real-world sustained speed, not theoretical maximums
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We tend to use internal and external SSDs differently. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using an external portable SSD for the same things you’d use an internal drive for. For example, I use external SSDs with my laptops to hold Steam video game libraries. It works just fine, but it’s obviously not as performant as an internal drive.
For most people, however, what matters is fast sustained performance. How fast does the drive run when you’re transferring 100GB of data to or from it? Because if it starts slowing down after a few minutes due to heat or a drive controller that can’t keep up, or a lack of DRAM cache then those peak numbers didn’t mean much. Of course, the only way to know if this happens is to find a good review, which would include a sustained large file transfer as part of assessment.
Apart from having a sustainable performance level necessary for your needs, I think write endurance is a key spec for external drives in particular. More so than a system drive. That’s because SSDs mainly wear down while erasing and writing to memory cells, and external drives are used to transfer files, then are erased, then used to transfer files again. SSDs aren’t suitable for long term backups. For that, external mechanical hard drives are much better. So it’s a good idea to spend less on speed, and more on a higher-quality drive with a longer TBW (TeraBytes Written) figure.
Hardware encryption that doesn’t get in the way
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I don’t care about keeping my Steam game installs private, but portable drives are used for moving confidential or sensitive information all the time. If I’m looking at a drive to actually travel where it might get lost, or seized by airport security, then having built-in encryption is pretty important.
Then you’re looking at something like the Samsung T7 Touch, which has onboard 256-bit hardware encryption. This means you don’t have to worry about OS support, or decryption overhead. You can still just encrypt any drive using something like BitLocker to Go, but having hardware-based encryption in the drive itself means you can use the drive with more devices without any sort of hassle.
Ruggedness that matches how you actually use it
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I like to buy external drives that match the job they’re meant to do. So a tiny metal SSD that goes into my MacBook’s sleeve pocket doesn’t have to be waterproof or ruggedized against drops. The SSD that I connect to a camera or that my wife might use to capture and store footage in the field could end up drenched or dropped.
I’m a big fan of buying cheap enclosures to convert internal SSDs that I’ve replaced with faster models, and here you also have the option to opt for a ruggedized case if you need one without breaking the bank. Reusing old internal SSDs is a great idea anyway if they haven’t had much wear, because the bottleneck for many NVMe drives over USB is still around 1GB/s (though the latest gear and ports can double or triple that) and external SATA SSDs can stretch their legs and often get close to the theoretical 600MB/s limit for that interface.
8/10
Storage capacity
2 TB, 4 TB
Compatible Devices
Windows, Mac, Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 5, a range of other USB-C devices
Brand
SanDisk
Also, if you’re getting an external NVMe case to turn an old M.2 NVMe drive into an external, you need to use a model with a heatsink. Even if the actual metal body of the SSD acts as the cooling system. This isn’t just important to maintain performance, but to avoid toasting the drive into an early demise.
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Now, there are also a few features that are on my list of things that I either ignore, or will actively dissuade me from buying a drive. Any frivolous stuff like RGB lighting seems like a waste of budget that could have gone to something useful like speed or longevity. Likewise, paying for fancy designs and form factors isn’t something I’d personally do for a portable SSD. I need it to work and last, not look like a fashionable accessory!
9/10
Storage capacity
1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB
Hardware Interface
USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×2
Brand
Crucial
Transfer rate
2,100MB/s
