Gear Up
2TB SOLID–STATE DRIVES
Fast external storage for better backups, and more
GROUP TEST
REVIEWED BY HOWARD OAKLEY
ON TEST...
> CalDigit Tuff nano Plus
> Crucial X8
> OWC Envoy Pro SX
> Samsung T7 Shield
> SanDisk Extreme
> Seagate One Touch
AN EXTERNAL SSD isn’t just faster than a hard disk, it also works better with the Apple File System (APFS). Storing your Time Machine backups and large Photos or Music libraries on an SSD ensures access stays fast, instead of slowly grinding to a halt as happens on a hard disk. Going solid–state also changes the drive’s life expectancy: few hard disks last five years, and many die earlier. Invest in an SSD and it should last as long as ten years.
Picking the right SSD isn’t a matter of getting the fastest you can afford. There’s a balance to be struck between speed, capacity and cost. SSD performance is primarily limited by the interface: in reality, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) delivers no more than 1GB/s, and Thunderbolt 3 or 4 (40Gbps) in practice won’t exceed 3GB/s. That’s still much faster than a HDD at a dismal 0.1GB/s, though.
Here’s our pick of the crop of SSDs, compared not just using cost per terabyte, but also taking their performance into account, as speed in MB/s per $ per TB.
How we tested
Each SSD tested was connected using the cable supplied to a Thunderbolt 4 port on a Mac Studio Max, and formatted in APFS. Read and write speeds were measured using Stibium, with ten repeats for total transfers of over 50GB, and AmorphousDiskMark.