Samsung - T7 1TB External USB 3.2 Gen 2 Portable Solid State Drive with Hardware Encryption - Indigo Blue

External storage primarily comes in two varieties: you get to choose between a large, hulking hard drive that sits on your desk, usually needs its own power supply, and performs just okay, or a small thumbdrive that offers a small amount of storage with poor speeds. There were few options that delivered both compact and speedy external storage, usually ringing in at exorbitant prices reserved only for professionals and extreme hardware enthusiasts. The last few years have mercifully changed the landscape as solid state disks (SSDs) became immensely more affordable and even smaller, with some of the highest performing disks fitting into a package the size of a stick of gum and coming in at palatable, even justifiable, prices. Samsung’s new T7 Portable SSD is a prime example of striking the balance between price, performance, and capacity, offering up to as much as two terabytes of storage into a “credit card” form factor with performance that puts many internal SSDs to shame. - Unboxing and Setup First impressions of the T7 are that of surprise. The portable SSD is smaller than the packaging implies, coming in slimmer and thinner than a deck of playing cards. It has the right amount of heft in the hand to feel premium, and the finish on the case is very smooth with no seams, as if milled from a single block of aluminum. The disk feels like it could take some hard drops and be none the worse for wear. Unlike external hard drives, an external SSD has no moving parts, so it can much more easily withstand bumps, shocks, and physical damage without destroying the mechanisms that let the drive function at all. Samsung includes both USB-A and USB-C cables in the packaging for use with virtually all devices on the market. The setup guide is very sparse, but as an external disk the T7 is as plug-and-play as it gets. Once connected to a PC, the drive presents a standard partition containing an installer for the Samsung Portable SSD Software - a nice touch to speed up the setup process. The software is pretty lightweight and serves to toggle drive encryption and update the firmware on the SSD. - Security & Encryption Once a password is set through the Samsung Portable SSD app and “Security Mode” enabled, the drive will encrypt all data written to it. The app acts as the decryptor to allow existing data to be read and new data written to the disk until the computer is shut down or the drive is disconnected. Upon reconnection, the drive will present just a read-only partition containing the Portable SSD Software installer, and the stored data partition will not present to the OS until the drive is unlocked in the app. The drive uses hardware-driven AES 256-bit encryption, which is the current industry standard for data security. It’s very difficult to crack besides brute-forcing the password, so the strength of your security will depend upon your password’s complexity. Don’t lose or forget it though, since there’s no way to recover the data otherwise and you’ll need to factory reset the drive to use it again, destroying all your data in the process. - Performance The drive’s performance is greatly affected by the type of connection you use. To get top speeds you will need to connect this to a USB-C port that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, which is still somewhat new and primarily featured in upper-midrange to high-end devices. A regular USB-A connection will be limited to USB 3.0 speeds, roughly half performance of USB 3.2 Gen2. I was able to test both connections using CrystalDiskMark, a benchmark application to test drive speed, and had repeatable results shown in the attached images. The differences between the two connection types were most apparent with sequential operations, where it is clear that the lower bandwidth of USB-A was the limiting factor, cutting read and write speeds by nearly half. Strangely, the older USB-A connection performed significantly better at random reads and writes, outperforming some SATA disks in that regard. I could almost see this being used as an external boot disk for a full OS installation - the performance is that good. Encryption (Security Mode) made little difference in performance, impacting the results by only a trivial amount that can be written off to standard benchmark variations. I backed up about 800GB of data to the drive in a single go to test real-world performance on USB 3.2 Gen 2, and found that performance settled in at around 500MB per second writes peak with averages lower due to smaller file sizes getting mixed in. Over the course of an hour of constant activity, the disk got somewhat warm to the touch but never got near anything that felt hot. Performance remained consistent and never fell off. - Bottom Line There isn’t much to say about external storage - when it works, it works, and Samsung’s Portable SSD T7 1TB has the performance to justify its premium asking price. The drive is consistently fast and only truly limited by the connection type used, which may be even less of a factor should the drive receive a firmware update to support Thunderbolt or newer USB types. This is a great option for computer backups, game storage for consoles, or even diagnostics and testing, as its performance is much stronger than any external hard disk drive or USB flash disk (i.e. thumbdrives) available on the market. The Samsung name does come with a price premium, but within the SSD space the brand is well-respected with its portfolio of high performing, reliable SSDs that the T7 has no trouble slotting into. Highly recommended!

Reads and writes very quickly close to advertised (averages 800mb/s). Even at near full capacity this SSD moves fairly quick at around half it's speed (~400mb/s). It's been great to edit 4k videos off of whether it be after effects or premiere. Only gripe is packaging seemed silly, the SSD sits on the very surface and not secured inside making it fall out easily and might suffer a small scratch, so unbox slowly.

I use this SSD T7 for videogames and wow! this thing even help when downloading games directly to it , love it loading times faster then ever!

Am replacing mechanical hard drive on my iMac with this external ssd drive, giving me much better performance.

The Samsung T7 is a great portable storage solution that is tiny, super fast, lightweight and most of all secure. But it isn't a drive that everyone can use; you have to have a USB 3.2 version port as well as the corresponding connector to really take advantage of the high speed transfer rates. I am lucky because I recently upgraded my desktop to a new Dell PC (which I bought from BB of course!) that included both 3.2 support and the high speed port connection on the front. You need to check your device(s) to make sure that you can use this, otherwise it would make more sense - both functionally and financially - to buy one of Samsung's previous versions. However, if you have the ports the transfer speeds are incredible. And it's hard to see from product pics just how tiny and compact this drive really is, so I included some pics with everyday common objects to provide a sense of scale. The size and durable case makes this easy to throw in a briefcase, purse or backpack. Or for that matter your pocket! And with the included and easy to use build in encryption, you know that your data is safe; something to consider if you carry sensitive data between locations. It's lighter than most phones and because it is a solid state drive, you don't have to worry about dropping it. Pretty impressive, especially for the price. The only reason I gave it a good rating instead of an excellent one is that if you don't have 3.2 ports, you'll be paying more for a drive that will only provide average performance speeds.

Purchased this to store my ps4 games to play on my ps5. Super small and fast...solid state drive not hard disc

Samsung - T7 1TB External USB 3.2 Gen 2 Portable Solid State Drive with Hardware Encryption This Samsung External Solid State Drive (SSD) has it all. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and is slim enough (about half as thick as a flash drive) that you could put it in your shirt pocket and barely see a bulge. And, despite its small size, it has a very generous 1TB of storage space. For those not familiar with solid state drives, they have no moving parts, so they are less susceptive to jolts, drops, shocks, and wear and tear. And since they have no moving parts, they run both quieter and cooler than traditional hard drives. Finally, SSDs are blazingly fast when compared to traditional hard drives. A couple of nice touches with this sleek Samsung SSD are the inclusion of both USB C to C and USB C to A cables for maximum flexibility in connectivity and a blinking blue light to indicate activity, something that’s sadly missing from some other SSD drives. This drive comes with installable encryption software for Windows, Mac and Android that allows you to password protect your data from prying eyes, or in case you should ever lose the drive. Once you’ve installed the software of your choice and connected the drive to your computer, you’ll be amazed at the speed of this small but powerful device. When backing up files, I got burst speeds over 100MB/s. Your mileage may vary, as did mine, depending on the connection and device being backed up. Suffice it to say, it’s really fast. Hopefully at some point, SSDs will come down in price. But in the meantime, IMO, this device is certainly worth the premium price.

The biggest (or should I say smallest) pro to this external hard drive is its size. It barely takes up any space at all. When I first opened the box I was more than surprised as I pulled out the drive. It's roughly the size of a credit card in length and width and not very thick either, coming in at just 5/16 of an inch. You'll have no problem slipping this into a pocket or small slot in a backpack somewhere. Being so small, and an SSD with no moving parts like the old spinner style hard drives, it's also very lightweight. I have several older external hard drives and it can be a chore storing them and moving them around. This takes the term "portable" to a whole other level. Even though its so small and lightweight, it still feels very sturdy and solid. Everything is packaged up in this little case nicely and it still feels like you're getting a very high quality product. It's a simple design with one simple led light to let you know when it's working, and that's really all you need. This drive has just a sole input, a usb-c, but it comes with 2 cords. One to connect it to a standard USB, and one for usb-c. Since I have computers with both, this is an added bonus allowing me to use it with my newer usb-c only computers out of the box without adapters. As for functionality, it performs like a hard drive should. It's an SSD, so it makes absolutely no noise at all. It doesn't get very hot either, even as I was putting it through its paces transferring half a TB of data it barely heated up at all. And best of all, it's fast. It also works right out of the box. I plugged it in to my laptop, and it popped right up and I was able to transfer data right away. But if you need to manage your drive as well as password protect it, all the software to do so is already available there inside the drive when you first plug it in, no need to go online searching for it. I do a lot of video creation and editing and depend on external hard drives because of all the data videos use up. Writing and deleting video data goes by significantly smoother and faster now compared to my old external hard drives. Reading is also really fast, I find just jumping around video as I'm editing comes with hardly any delay like my old drives had. Having used this now for a few days, I don't see how I can go back to my old external drives, and in fact won't be. I honestly didn't think I could be as excited over a simple hard drive as I am with this one, and couldn't be happier with it.