SURPRISING RESULTS: Portable SSD vs USB Stick vs USB HDD vs Internal SSD

Are portable SSD's any good? That is the question we answer in this video. We benchmark several Portable SSD's and USB sticks and compare them to old school USB HDD Hard Disk Drives... remember those old spinning disks.

We also explain why external SSDS are so much slower than Internal SSD's.

You will be very surprised to see how much faster and old USB HDD is compared to a new Portable SSD connected on the same USB port.

Is this the best portable ssd? How fast are USB sticks? Is this the best USB stick? What is the best thumbdrive? How fast are portable ssds? How fast is a USB spinning disk drive? Are external SSD's any good?

[RaduRadonys]

I have an external SSD that is way faster than the HDD in your video. It's a Samsung T7 external SSD. So please, don't say "Are portable SSD's any good?" but "Are ultra cheap fake no name portable SSD's any good?".

[gnomevoyeur]

Is this all about going for cheap? The HDD looks like a normal price but the others look ridiculously underpriced. 15.99 for a 2tb flash drive? What would you expect?

[peterandro]

Fake. My SSD is 500 MB/s while my traditional spinning disk is 20 MB/s

[cookreviews]

Samsung has a T7 Shield that is advetising 3.2USB with 1000/s speed. Can you review and compare to internal SSD again using USB 3.2 I would also like to see how well with a USB 3.1 as I have two computers, one with the older USB 3.1 Thank you. I also feel you are leaving out a lot of info here. Your USB version and the brand or specs of the hard drives you are using. Thank you.

[WolfsHaven]

Probably the best thing I've found for portable drives are the enclosures that use NVME sticks. Still not as fast as using internally or even some NAS systems but decent.

Sticking to reputable vendor's helps but the point is portability not necessarily the top speeds. If your workflow doesn't require portability, great. For those that do, SanDisk has never failed me.

[pmehta]

This is a very interesting video! I ran into a client who bought one of these 16T SSD (no brand from Amazon) drives to backup about 200 gig of data. You are right it was slow as a slug. Also it doesn't have the capacity that is advertised. I looked into this a little and apparently its a total fake product! In one of the Amazon customer comment, this person pulled it apart and found a micro sd card interfaced to a USB!! Please buyer be aware! Also if you think about it, why doesn't Samsung, Sandisk, and others alike have versions with 16 terabyte! Because 16T SSD external does not exist in reality today in 2023! If there is I am not aware of one. They do have traditional spinning drives up to 20 TB or so. Actually I am surprised how many "fake" products are advertised on Amazon! I am not anti Amazon but please just be aware.

[ettoreatalan]

The Toshiba HDD is faster than no-name storage.

[KomitLive]

This is odd... I did a similar test for gaming (Diablo 3)... The game ran so much smoother when it was downloaded and installed on an external SSD than it did on the HDD internal it was on originally... >_>;

[supdan]

Well, the port it transfers data with is also a VERY important detail. USB is as fast as a snail in comparison to SATA or PCI-E.

[veredictum]

This is good info. You're right - we see "SSD" and automatically assume it is faster. And it should be. The only way to know, is what you've done - a speed test with numbers.

[adigreen]

U did not mention the read and write speeds of the SSDs

[esotericjahanism]

interesting video. i was honestly shocked. I'm curious how a standard Sata SSD would perform over USB via some type of USB enclosure. Would it be better than the purpose built External SSD?