Samsung's new portable hard drive is almost as small as a flash drive and twice as fast
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The cloud may be one of the most convenient places to store your data, but it's not always the best solution.
You may find yourself needing to transfer data quickly with a less-than-ideal internet connection. In that case, your valuable files are as good as trapped.
I've traditionally recommended using a standard flash drive instead, but I've been spending some time with Samsung's new portable SSD, the T5, and it's an even better solution depending on your needs.
Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the T5 transfers data and draws power through a single USB-C port. You can connect it to your computer through a USB-C to USB-A cable, or a USB-C to USB-C cable, and I was surprised to encounter a difference during one of my tests.
If portability is your highest priority, a USB 3.0 flash drive is still the way to go, but if you don't mind carrying around an extra cable, you might find this option well worth your while. The reason why is simple: raw performance.
Using a third-party benchmarking tool, I clocked my flash drive at a respectable 112mbps (megabytes per second) write speed and 181mbps read speed. For most people doing most things, that's perfectly fine. I store a 150+ GB iTunes library on one so I can listen to music at work, and only notice some stuttering when I first boot up my computer.
But the T5 is on another level; it had a 407 mbps write speed and 420 mbps write speed using the same test when connected to my computer through a USB-C to USB-A cable. When the tests were run using a USB-C to USB-C cable the performance jumped even higher, with a read speed of 479mbps and a read speed of 509mbps. That's a pretty substantial increase over the flash drive.
I should note that these tests were conducted on a 2017 iMac, which has Thunderbolt 3 ports instead of standard USB-C ports. Your read and write speeds could differ if your computer only has standard USB-C ports. Either way, having read and write speeds that exceed 400mbps is very impressive.
To put this to the test, I transferred a 36GB file from my computer to the flash drive, and then the T5. Both had been recently formatted and were empty when the test took place. The transfer to the flash drive took a respectable 4:39, but seemed sluggish compared to the T5's 1:12 time. That's a big difference if you're trying to create a quick computer backup, or move large project files from one computer to another for work.
Samsung's T5 is the fastest portable hard drive of any kind I've ever tried, and given its fast speed and small size, it's definitely worth picking up. How much of a benefit you'll gain from the speed bump will depend on what you do, but if you truly believe time is money, this may be your best tech purchase this year.
Samsung T5 Portable SSD, [250GB], $127.99, available at Amazon
Samsung T5 Portable SSD, [500GB], $197.99, available at Amazon
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