SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable External SSD - Up to 550MB/s - USB-C, USB 3.1 - SDSSDE60-1T00-G25

In short, I needed an SSD to back up my MacBook Pro. In the past, I used a spinning hard drive for backup using SuperDuper software and the process was painfully slow. Often, for about 500GB of data, the backup and restore took up to an hour.With an internal SSD on my MacBook Pro it made perfect sense that the destination backup should also go on an SSD drive where transfer speeds would significantly increase. One more thing to consider: spinning hards drives have a much higher failure rate than SSD drives. I can't begin to tell you how many spinning backup drives I have purchased in the past that have ultimately failed.SSD is the future and the fact that prices have dramatically decreased on these drives gives no-one an excuse for not buying them.I did a lot of research on various SSD drives before selecting this SanDisk 1TB drive. My first choice was a Samsung in a colorized metal case. The reviews, however, led me to believe that there were some major issues with the Samsung drives as they included embedded software that was difficult to remove. This is not something anyone wants when buying an SSD drive.Reading the reviews on this SanDisk Extreme, it was easy to see that this would fit perfectly for my needs. The reviews across the board were very positive. No embedded software. This particular SSD has been rated as one of the very fastest USB drives available on the market as of this date.Upon arrival, I was astonished at how small this drive actually is. I mean, it's absolutely tiny. You can fit it into your jeans pocket and you would not feel it. We really have come a long way in external SSD drive portability.I am not particularly happy with the covering on this drive. It's a dust magnet. The second I placed it on my table it had already collected airborne dog hair. However, on the plus side, this thing is so rugged that you can drop it from just about any height and it won't break. So, I guess that is more important than anything else.It was nice to see that the drive includes a USB-C cord with USB-A adapter. The cord also securely fits the drive without any wiggle. The only thing negative I have to say about the cord is that it's too short.I am including in my photos the result of a recent backup of my MacBook Pro via SuperDuper software. You can see that about 425GB of data was backed up in 30 minutes time. With a spinning drive, that would have taken 2-3 times longer. This drive is really super fast!This drive does come formatted for Windows. If you buy it for your Mac, you need to go to DISK UTILITY (in your applications folder), select the SanDisk drive, then click on ERASE. You will want to format the drive in OSX Extended Journaled. The format takes seconds to do. You are then ready to transfer data to the drive.By far, this is the best SSD drive I have ever owned. Do not hesitate to consider this above any other.

Overall great tech. The drive delivers on the claimed speeds and capacity.While not the fastest portable SSD on the market, the recent sale price is good for 2019 for a product of this class. Even with long transfers the temps stay within a reasonable expectation. The size and form factor is convenient, and the weight is lower than I thought it would be. It does include a USBC SS10 cable, and also brings a USBC to USBA adapter. The whole cable with adapter seems to achieve SS10 speeds on all capable ports I have tried.Flash drives often promise high speeds, but rarely deliver. This product is for people that want that speed and don't mind something larger than a flash drive. This product is much faster than any portable HDD (spindle drive) on the market. It is comparable in speeds to most portable SSD's, with only a select handful that are faster. However, those handful each seem to have one or more drawbacks that are significant. Usually its that they are larger and heavier, many have temperature/reliability issues, and always are more expensive.Portable NVME's are ultimately going to render this type of product obsolete, but we are not there yet. The biggest problem for NVME is heat. Those suckers get very hot, which then requires a much larger and heavier case with a substantial heatsink on it. You may consider making your own. The NVME portable enclosures are fairly cheap, and the drives themselves have gotten much cheaper 1TB and below. If you are willing to carry something larger and heavier, this is an option. I just dont think they are ready for prime time yet.I would buy this again, albeit at a much lower price and/or larger capacity. A 4TB one of these would be perfection for me.

It's very rare that I'm surprised by electronics, but the new SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD is one time that my expectations were surpassed. The drive is much smaller and lighter than I thought it would be when I first ordered it. This drive weights next to nothing and is wrapped in a durable, rubberized coating to keep it water resistant. When it was delivered, I was convinced that only the hard case, which I ordered with this drive, was in the package. That's how feather-light this drive is.More important, it is FAST! I connected it to my late-2016 15" MacBook Pro with Touchbar in native USB-c mode and this drive is instantaneous in access speed! If you ever need to boot from an external drive, this one is the one to get. It behaves like an internal drive and is almost as fast. I got the 1TB model which is perfect for me, but it's available all the way up to 2TB.My guess is that older machines would benefit less from this drive since USB 2 or 3 is a much slower interface. On the other hand, if you own a computer with a USB-c native interface, this is the drive to invest in.For the record, I own an internal SanDisk Extreme 480GB SSD that I've owned for 5 years. I've moved it from my old MacBook Pro to an older iMac and now an older Mac Mini. It has continued to work perfectly and transformed each machine where I installed it. That's why I was confident in trying the Extreme Portable, and I am absolutely not disappointed.If you need additional storage, and external is the only option (think Macs with SSDs that can't be upgraded), this is definitely the drive to invest in. Very impressive!