We’re seeing a lot of movement in the external hard drive part of the market this year at CES, and it’s probably because data is so important, but if you’re over conventional drives and prefer solid state media, Samsung has something coming for you.
The latest from a company that makes practically everything in the electronics world is an external storage solution reliant on solid state technology rather than the conventional moving part hard drives most other companies are using.
It’s one of the first portable SSDs we’ve ever seen, and Samsung is calling it the Samsung Portable SSD T1, a slim black portable drive launching in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB options, and sporting very fast read and write speeds thanks to the use of the flash media technology used over a drive that needs to spin up and down.
“The Portable SSD T1 allows users to store their entire digital portfolio locally in one place, take it with them anywhere and have blazing fast access to their data, all without worrying about reliability or security,” said Samsung’s Unsoo Kim.
“Our digital lives demand storage that surpasses the limits of existing options, which require consumers to compromise, when it comes to mobility, capacity, security or performance. The Portable SSD T1 overcomes the drawbacks of alternative options on every major pain point, making it the next external storage device of choice.”
While there’s more to hard drive speeds than the type of drive being used, most external hard drives typically rely on a 5400RPM drive, which produces read speeds of under 120MB per second, and generally close to 100MB/s, but this is also dependent on the drive itself.
Contrast this to solid state technology, and with the Portable SSD T1, Samsung is talking up speeds up to 450MB/s, with the USB 3.0 interface apparently making the drive as fast as an internal solid state drive.
Neither pricing nor availability has been announced for Australia, but this country has certainly seen its fair share of Samsung external drives, so we’d say it’s likely that our region will see the external in the months to come.
