Top Portable SSD in 20215 min read

Any portable drive will let you store, backup, and transport your important files. It is a pocket-friendly gadget that lets you carry huge files (or lots of small ones) between PCs and Android devices, offload footage from your DSLR or drone while on the go, and more.

Solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) are the two main storage options to consider.

If you need speedy local storage for lots of files (say,  movies you carry around, or all those pics and videos you collect on your phone or camera), you may want to consider a portable solid-state drive (SSD) rather than a normal portable hard drive (HDD).

To help you find the best portable

SSD for your needs, 

let’s continue reading.

Why SSD ?

Body

Unlike a normal hard drive (HDD), which stores data on spinning platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, a solid-state drive (SSD) uses a collection of “persistent” flash memory cells to save data. These are similar to the silicon that makes up a computer’s RAM, but they retain your data when electrical power is cut off.

Since HDDs are mechanical devices that use mature technology, If you drop the drive, you could damage the interior mechanism and make your data inaccessible. By contrast, if you jolt an SSD while you’re reading or writing data, there is no risk that your files will become corrupted and unreadable.
Because they are Solid State Drives and have no moving parts, reading and writing data to them is much faster.

They have no metal platters to spin up, nor any read/write heads that need to travel to a specific point on a platter to find the file you need. And because of their lack of moving parts, portable SSDs are usually more compact, slimmer, and better suited to frequent travel and accidental drops than even the most thoroughly ruggedized hard drives.
Also, the lack of moving parts means they are more robust than HDDs, so the odd knock or drop shouldn’t damage them – or mean that your important files are lost.

In fact, many of the best portable SSDs come with rugged bodies that have been specifically designed for resisting accidental damage.

If you carry your work around with you, then the SSDs definitely worth considering, even if there’s a bit of a price premium.

Speed

Typical throughput for consumer hard drives is in the range of 100MBps to 200MBps while external SSDs show speeds in excess of 400MBps.

Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 5GB video file, or a year’s worth of family photos) to your external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external HDD.

So, portable SSD is much faster at reading and writing lots of data.

SSD Interfaces Types

External drives use one of two internal “bus types” that, in part, dictate their peak speed: Serial ATA (SATA), or PCI Express (PCIe).

SATA-based drives tend to be a little cheaper; they’re also slower, but just fine for most users’ everyday applications.

SATA-based SSDs typically top out at around 500MBps for peak read and write speeds.

However, if you’re going to be transferring large files such as videos often, you may well want to spring for a PCIe-based external SSD.

That also ties in with the port you’ll plug your SSD into.

Sellers of portable SSDs seldom indicate if the drive is SATA- or PCIe-based. However, checking the specs can be a giveaway.

If the drive tops out at sequential read and write speeds between 400MBps and 550MBps, it’s very likely SATA-based. Speeds of 800MBps or higher indicate a PCIe-based drive.

Price

SSDs of all stripes have been falling in price over the past few years, and external SSDs have emerged as alternatives to external hard drives, delivering as much as five times the speed and much greater durability.

Traditionally, portable SSDs were much more expensive than HDDs, and that often meant that people couldn’t afford large-capacity SSDs to store all their work on.

The good news is that the best portable SSDs these days are much better value for money, and there are models out there that offer terabytes of storage that won’t bankrupt you either.

Conclusion:

When shopping for an HDD or SSD, consider the following:

• SDD or HDD?
  HDDs are very affordable, with 1TB models often selling for under $50. But they’re also much slower and more fragile than SSDs.
  If you don’t need terabytes of storage and you often travel with your drive, a portable SSD is worth paying extra for.
  But if you need cavernous amounts of external storage, an HDD is a better option for most, as multi-terabyte external SSDs sell for several hundred dollars, but 4TB portable hard drives can sell for under $100.

• Don’t Use a Portable Hard Drive as Your Only Backup.
  Portable hard drives are made up of spinning glass or metal platters, making them a poor choice as a primary backup of your data–especially if you carry them around.
  Portable SSDs are better here, but you should still keep your irreplaceable data backed up on a desktop drive and/or on a cloud service.
  Because hardware failure is always possible, and portable drives are often small enough to lose or leave behind by accident.