News Samsung announces Portable SSD T1

That is nice, but not like it's tough... I wonder what took them so long. Other brands just did the easy thing and slapped an msata / m.2 that was already in the line up in a little usb3 enclosure for something about the same size. They also could have made it way smaller like mushkin Ventura or Corsair Voyager at least for the smaller capacity model which are already cheaper. Might have been tougher for 1TB to pack it in a stick size.
I've had my diy pocket ssd for a long time, just popped my original intel x18m in a 1.8" microsata enclosure. I find it amusing that is actually my oldest longest running drive now. I guess at least I'm getting my moneys worth since they were stupid expensive when I bought it near launch.

 

Am I the only one questioning the point?

I hooked an SSD up to a USB3 controller from a Samsung external drive and saw precisely the same kind of speeds as off a mechanical drive. Unless they've created magic on the USB controller in these, I'll pass thanks..

 

You've got a mechanical external 1TB drive smaller than a business card that can saturate a USB 3.0 bus at 450 MB/s? I'll take three. What's NOT the point? It's smaller, faster and more robust than any spinning rust counterpart; the only barrier is cost.

 

Heck the cost of the 256Gb model is on par with the average 256Gb pen drive.
Seems like a win win to me, faster than pen drives and spinning rust in a pocket sized enclosure for the same'(ish) price as a equivalent pen drive.

 

Must have been something wrong there. Even my ancient intel x18m in my usb 2 enclosure goes faster than an hdd.

 

My USB 3.0 external HDD hits 130 or so MB/s, over twice even the theoretical maximum of USB 2.0, whatever drive you plug in.

I would guess the controller most bog standard USB 3.0 external enclosures the limiting factor if you install a really fast drive in one. This drive uses hardware that can utilise the full speed of the drive.

There is a huge variation in USB 3.0 drive speeds (some 3.0 USB sticks are slower than a decent 2.0 one) but in in most cases the interface itself shouldn't be the bottle neck as it's potential is not far off SATA3 speeds (in theory anyway ).

 

As a man who works in IT, and has a dedicated pocket in his work bag for harddrives and tends to carry around 2TB of storage in a various number of guises.. Why would I want a, probably £300, harddrive that you can drop occasionally (Although that'll doubtlessly break the enclosure)?

 

Please do provide us with details of these mechanical HDD that are able to hit 450MB/sec sequential reads and writes that you're using liratheal.