I find it unfortunate that neither manufacturer found a way to integrate at least a few inches/centimeters of cable with USB connector into the case. You could still have another port/connector for an actual cable, but having let's say 6 inches/ 15 cm of cable with plug always attached (cable stored in a groove around the case) avoids the situation when one really needs to back up or save some larger files in a pinch, but then the cable is MIA. That's one of the reasons why USB sticks are so handy (can't lose the connector, you either have the stick or you don't), but they don't reach the speed or capacity of these external SSDs.
cables can snap off, break etc. Then again so can the connector. I'd rather buy x3 cables for a sensible price. one at work, one at home, one to travel.
ew, no, that's disgusting Integrated cable is easily the worst and cheapest way to design things. Cables are, easily, the most likely connection to fail, and you want to integrate that?
The only thing worse is a micro USB3.0 connector
USB 3.0 A or USB-C, male, with a dust cover is an acceptable alternative, but female USB-C connector is so convenient, why would you use anything else?
I think thermal capacity is the major bottleneck. You either live with slow USB stick which is cool and light, or PSSD with seperate cable, since the increased weight makes the connector more vulnerable.
It seems both products are priced reasonably. It's rare that I really need a portable drive to be Tesla quick, so I think the Crucial drive is a great deal for me, perhaps for most people.
It performs great for up to 800GB of continuous traffic. Can't imagine a casual user transferring that much amount of data in one go. As I mentioned in the concluding section, power users with such demanding requirements have to be ready to fork out a premium for the full-capacity consistency that the SanDisk Extreme PRO v2 provides.
@ganeshts why aren’t the results from your recent review of the Silverstone MS12 and Yottamaster HC2-C3 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps enclosures included in these charts?
I’d be very interested to see how a roll your own solution with SK hynix Gold P31 fares against the SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme PRO V2. This would be especially useful at the 2TB capacity level, as WD seems to be charging a $100 premium for the 4TB models, and the Gold P31 maxes out at 2TB now.
Yes, valid question. I thought about it a bit while preparing the graphs, and finally felt that the gulf in the capacity points (1TB vs. 4TB) could lead to readers misunderstanding the relative merits of the two platforms. So, decided to focus on the 'high-capacity' aspect alone.
I do have the review of the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSD (20Gbps) 1TB coming up soon, will be including the storage bridge results in that for comparison.
As you mention, 2TB is fast becoming the mainstream offering in terms of capacity as 3D NAND layer counts keep going up. I will try to add the new testbed results from the old 2TB samples in future reviews.
Nicely written blog on SanDisk Extreme PRO and Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSDs comparisions. for data recovery related issued in SSD can reach out to lifeguard data recovery services
I'd like to correct a major error in this review: The X6 does not have 800GB of SLC cache.
Instead, it just uses empty QLC cells as cache and writes only 1 bit to them instead of 4. So it effectively has a big SLC cache as long as it is <20% full. But the fuller it gets, the less cache it has!
So basically it's a nice and fast drive as long as you only use 800GB. If you use more than that, performance craters.
If you buy this drive to store a lot of data, it will never perform as well as in the tests. I assume most of the tests (except the worst case test) were done with an empty drive, so they are pretty much useless. It would be interesting how the drive would perform if it is 50% full or 80% full.
If you actually need 4TB of capacity, don't buy this drive.
In order to make these tests as real-world as possible, you should first add files to the disks until they are about 50%-60% full (as opposed to running them on empty disks). Do you do that?
I bought the x6 2tb last month, a return item for 110€. Some 500gb write on disk. I loved it. It Use very little power. I don’t think you test on the new firmware. Plugged in iPad Pro all day forgot to unplug. Didn’t even use 1% of batterie. I guess host device sleep, x6 drove no power. Great product for its targeted users environment.
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eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
I find it unfortunate that neither manufacturer found a way to integrate at least a few inches/centimeters of cable with USB connector into the case. You could still have another port/connector for an actual cable, but having let's say 6 inches/ 15 cm of cable with plug always attached (cable stored in a groove around the case) avoids the situation when one really needs to back up or save some larger files in a pinch, but then the cable is MIA. That's one of the reasons why USB sticks are so handy (can't lose the connector, you either have the stick or you don't), but they don't reach the speed or capacity of these external SSDs.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
cables can snap off, break etc. Then again so can the connector. I'd rather buy x3 cables for a sensible price. one at work, one at home, one to travel.meacupla - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
ew, no, that's disgustingIntegrated cable is easily the worst and cheapest way to design things. Cables are, easily, the most likely connection to fail, and you want to integrate that?
The only thing worse is a micro USB3.0 connector
USB 3.0 A or USB-C, male, with a dust cover is an acceptable alternative, but female USB-C connector is so convenient, why would you use anything else?
flyingpants265 - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
Integrate a removable cable. Problem solved.watersb - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
Better: integrate a microUSB 3.0 cable. Now you have two problems.whatthe123 - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
or you could just have a slot for the removable cable instead of adding another point of failureaparangement - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
I think thermal capacity is the major bottleneck. You either live with slow USB stick which is cool and light, or PSSD with seperate cable, since the increased weight makes the connector more vulnerable.Sivar - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
It seems both products are priced reasonably. It's rare that I really need a portable drive to be Tesla quick, so I think the Crucial drive is a great deal for me, perhaps for most people.evanh - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
The X6 fails in the sequential bulk copy dept. That's a primary use case for external storage devices.ganeshts - Friday, August 20, 2021 - link
It performs great for up to 800GB of continuous traffic. Can't imagine a casual user transferring that much amount of data in one go. As I mentioned in the concluding section, power users with such demanding requirements have to be ready to fork out a premium for the full-capacity consistency that the SanDisk Extreme PRO v2 provides.arashi - Friday, August 20, 2021 - link
That's for the 4TB one, but for the 1TB variant it's still 200GB, which is plenty big.repoman27 - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
@ganeshts why aren’t the results from your recent review of the Silverstone MS12 and Yottamaster HC2-C3 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps enclosures included in these charts?I’d be very interested to see how a roll your own solution with SK hynix Gold P31 fares against the SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme PRO V2. This would be especially useful at the 2TB capacity level, as WD seems to be charging a $100 premium for the 4TB models, and the Gold P31 maxes out at 2TB now.
ganeshts - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
Yes, valid question. I thought about it a bit while preparing the graphs, and finally felt that the gulf in the capacity points (1TB vs. 4TB) could lead to readers misunderstanding the relative merits of the two platforms. So, decided to focus on the 'high-capacity' aspect alone.I do have the review of the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSD (20Gbps) 1TB coming up soon, will be including the storage bridge results in that for comparison.
As you mention, 2TB is fast becoming the mainstream offering in terms of capacity as 3D NAND layer counts keep going up. I will try to add the new testbed results from the old 2TB samples in future reviews.
flgt - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
I’ve been really happy with my 2TB SanDisk. It breathed new life into my Xbox One X when I realized I’d be stuck with it for the foreseeable future.COtech - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
How often do these portable SSDs need to be powered to reliably retain data ?Are they a good archive solution?
Tams80 - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
Unless you're moving them at lot (or will take them on a rough journey), then I think it's a toss-up.As always, redundancy is important and for that Blu-ray archival disks are a great choice as one of the back-ups.
data21 - Tuesday, September 14, 2021 - link
Nicely written blog on SanDisk Extreme PRO and Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSDs comparisions. for data recovery related issued in SSD can reach out to lifeguard data recovery servicesjabakobob - Wednesday, November 3, 2021 - link
I'd like to correct a major error in this review: The X6 does not have 800GB of SLC cache.Instead, it just uses empty QLC cells as cache and writes only 1 bit to them instead of 4. So it effectively has a big SLC cache as long as it is <20% full. But the fuller it gets, the less cache it has!
So basically it's a nice and fast drive as long as you only use 800GB. If you use more than that, performance craters.
If you buy this drive to store a lot of data, it will never perform as well as in the tests. I assume most of the tests (except the worst case test) were done with an empty drive, so they are pretty much useless. It would be interesting how the drive would perform if it is 50% full or 80% full.
If you actually need 4TB of capacity, don't buy this drive.
Source: https://www.computerbase.de/2021-03/crucial-x6-por...
chemist1 - Friday, August 26, 2022 - link
In order to make these tests as real-world as possible, you should first add files to the disks until they are about 50%-60% full (as opposed to running them on empty disks). Do you do that?yifu - Monday, October 10, 2022 - link
I bought the x6 2tb last month, a return item for 110€. Some 500gb write on disk.I loved it. It Use very little power. I don’t think you test on the new firmware. Plugged in iPad Pro all day forgot to unplug. Didn’t even use 1% of batterie. I guess host device sleep, x6 drove no power. Great product for its targeted users environment.