SAMSUNG T5 Portable SSD 500GB - Up to 540MB/s - USB 3.1 External Solid State Drive, Blue (MU-PA500B/AM)

After experiencing my 1st-ever, SSD-type hard drive failure using an inexpensive, solid state drive which remained continually plugged into a USB 3.0 slot on my primary work/personal computer (Microsoft's Surface Book w Core i7 cpu, Nv dGPU, internal SSD running 64bit Windows 10 Pro Creator's Update OS) to be utilized as a File History drive, saving my files every 10 minutes, I was shocked that it happened given the drive was an SSD & not very old. I had thought that whole point of SSD's are both that they don't fail nearly as easily or quickly as HDD type drives & usually provide much faster read/write abilities as a function of their design. However, the cheap SSD I was employing for my file history drive 1st started to have degraded read/write speeds (according to Windows task manager as well as 3rd party diagnostic software), then experienced a critical error, rendering it totally useless... I was shocked it became non-functional because the drive was not very old, but rather had been purchased around the same time as my Surface Book & while I should've done my homework on SSD's more carefully, it was still too young to fail in my opinion. That said, after digging deeper into SSD's, as you might suspect, not all SSD's are created equal- they all have a minimum, lifetime read/write value they are supposed to live up to & because this was a cheap drive, being constantly used every 10 minutes to backup files, I determined that I'd run it through it's full expected lifespan as quoted by the manufacturer. The fact that it did not last much longer than a year left a bad taste in my mouth, as I had figured any decent SSD could act as my backup drive. Yet upon doing research to purchase a new one, I found that the reason cheap SSD's are cheap is because amongst other factors, they usually have significantly shorter lifespans. So I spent a little extra cash to get a high quality drive to replace my dead backup drive & as I'm a devotee of Samsung to begin with, I looked into their drives- all of which had far superior lifetime read/write levels compared to the cheaper drives out there. Now after using it for a bit, I couldn't be happier. Quality manufacturers make a huge difference, as the read/write speeds I've clocked on this Samsung SSD soundly beat the 140-170 Mbps I was getting out of my previous drive several times over before it began to fail & the lifetime usage figures are almost double that of my previous, cheaper drive. What this means practically is that my files are backing up so much more quickly with the new drive now being used for File History, so therefore, there's less strain being put on my computer from background backups running on my system while I'm using other taxing applications (like Adobe Illustrator CC for example)- to the point that my whole system seems to be running more quickly as it runs File History on this new, Samsung drive. Also, because it has a USB C connection (it comes both with an USB C to USB C cable as well as a USB C to USB A 3.0 cable), power draw from the drive on my computer battery is negligible, but more importantly, it connects easily to my Samsung Galaxy Note 8, providing me with an easy way to directly backup files off of my phone too. So while it cost me more than I'd hoped to spend on an SSD, I'm very impressed with it's overall performance & the visible, beneficial effects it's had on my computer (have yet to benchmark it with use on my phone). Speeds quoted by Samsung on the product listing are in line with what I'm getting when I check & as an added bonus, this drive comes with hardware based encryption- so you can choose to use BitLocker via Windows still if you wish, but Samsung also provides an encryption app on the drive which turns your hardware encryption on/off via a password prompt upon swap-in (the app has a very small footprint on the drive- way less than 1 GB used by it). So overall, I'm glad I spent more money on a better drive- it's already making things better with my computer in it's backup drive role, it's built very solid physically so that it should stand up well to being stuffed into my briefcase every day, hardware encryption is an added bonus this drive offers & those benefits don't even cover the fact I can connect it directly to my smartphone to use as added storage for it or to backup my phone's files as well. So long story short, I don't think you'll be let down with this SSD- it is high quality, high speed, high satisfaction & hence highly recommended.

I bought this to put my Destiny 2 installation on for my Xbox. I wanted to get some decent raid times and apparently a USB SSD works just as well as an internal SSD (I think the difference is like 2-3 seconds or something like that, not worth the hassle). The raid community is more likely to invite you to do speed runs if you have an SSD since the load times can take a lot of time off of runs. In any case, I picked out this one because Samsung has a really good reputation with SSDs.Pros1. Worked fine out of the box. My Xbox One X recognized it immediately and formatting took moments.2. I didn't directly test the speed of this thing, but my 90GB+ installation of Destiny 2 took way less time to transfer to this than I would've expected.3. Works outstanding in game play. My load times are reduced by up to half in some cases. When I play with people who don't have SSDs, I load in a good 15-25 seconds before they do, even if I'm not party host.4. It's super tiny, easily portable, and because it's a solid state drive with no moving parts, it can handle being in a backpack a LOT better than a standard HDD external drive.5. Mine doesn't heat up when using it for my use case.6. I like blue.Cons1. SSDs are still kind of expensive. Not really Samsung's fault, but it still stings a bit buying something like this.Overall, not only did this work exactly as intended, I would strongly recommend it for folks shopping for an SSD external drive for their PS4 or Xbox One X (I hear the next generation is coming with SSDs anyway, so this will be a moot problem for people upgrading to those platforms). It really does make a huge difference in some games, especially bloated shooters like Destiny 2.The better news is when I stop using this for games someday, I can still use it on my laptop or desktop to back stuff up or use it for some other thing.

Two years ago I bought an external 500GB Samsung T3 SSD and was awe-struck at how fast and reliable it was. It quickly replaced an old platter-based drive that I had been using to store all of my most important data. Two years later and I found myself wanting to replace yet another platter-based drive with a SSD. This time I went with the newer Samsung T5. All I can say is wow. Samsung took an already fast drive and made it even faster.Once again I used the Disk Speed Test application from Blackmagic Design and a Pluggable 40Gb/s USB-C cable to benchmark each of my USB-C drives. First up was the tried and true Samsung T3. It scored a respectable 392 MB/s write and 404 MB/s read. Next, the new T5. It managed an increase of speed at 486 MB/s write and 522 MB/s read. The speed bump here might not be incredible, but hey, it's a speed bump and I'll take it! Finally, I tested my old HGST-based G-Drive and it barely managed 28 MB/s write and 24 MB/s read.Wrapping it up. These T3/T5 drives from Samsung are super fast when paired with the right cable and are great for anyone who's looking for fast read/write speeds in a small, portable, and rugged package.