Latest external SSD recommendations

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bikescene

Roadie
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What external SSDs are you guys using these days? I finally retired my old Windows machine and have moved onto a Mac Mini. I want to get a 2TB drive for samples.

The last external drive I boughtp was a Samsung T5 in 2021. I haven’t kept up with computer storage since then.

Is the Samsung T series still recommended in the sub-$200 range? Are there other manufacturers to take a look at in 2025?
 
I have been running the 4tb version of this for the last 18 plus months on an M3 MacBook. It’s fast, reliable, and ruggedized.



There are older slower and cheaper versions but I believe there might have been some reliability issues with those. It’s been a while since I researched so I could be remembering the wrong brand.

I also have an SSK that I do not recommend because it occasionally unmounts and I am not sure why. Maybe getting warm, maybe bad firmware? It works and I use it for Time Machine backups in addition to online backup, so I am not too worried about it failing, but I don’t have the same confidence in it as I do the Sandisk.
 
Chocol8 said:
I have been running the 4tb version of this for the last 18 plus months on an M3 MacBook. It’s fast, reliable, and ruggedized.



There are older slower and cheaper versions but I believe there might have been some reliability issues with those. It’s been a while since I researched so I could be remembering the wrong brand.

I also have an SSK that I do not recommend because it occasionally unmounts and I am not sure why. Maybe getting warm, maybe bad firmware? It works and I use it for Time Machine backups in addition to online backup, so I am not too worried about it failing, but I don’t have the same confidence in it as I do the Sandisk.
Click to expand...

Which brand did you link? The Amazon link isn’t working for me. Thanks.
 
I have a couple Samsung T7 drives, and a T9 I picked up at a steep discount during a sale on Amazon. The T7 drives are right in the sweet spot for performance and reliability versus price.

The T9 drives are overkill for a typical external application unless your machine supports USB 3.2 gen 2.
 
Recently had some issues with a Samsung T7 (was getting way slow all of a sudden), which went away after I reformatted it, but I don't trust Samsung as a company at all anymore (their "Magician" SSD analysis tool is made straight in hell, it's the worst software I've dealt with in the last years by a very wide margin).
I also won't buy any of their phones and tablets anymore (same thing, most horrible software support, the phone line guys being absolutely clueless and what not...) - so I went home with a Sandisk Extreme 2TB last week and it's working flawlessly.
Going to buy another of them and a 4TB one as well the next weeks.
Same performance specs as the T7 (confirmed by actual measurements, using the Black Magic Disk Speed tool).

And fwiw, I have been running several larger sets of samples (from streaming libraries) from either SSDs, no issues. As long as you don't need realtime HD video streaming, this class of SSDs is just fine.
 
Thanks guys. I’ll take a look at the T7 and the Sandisk Extreme models. Hopefully there will be a deal or two on drives in the next month.
 
Sascha Franck said:
Nice, been considering something similar for myself, but it's kinda overkill for most common applications (including sample streaming), so I decided to rather save some bucks.
Click to expand...
Yeah I got this in 2023? Before some of these newer external drives that have decent read speeds now
 
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