Samsung has unveiled its latest storage product, and it can carry up to 1TB of data inside a sleek, portable device that is only as big as a business card.
At this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) currently being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, Samsung is showcasing its SSD T1, a small metal chrome black solid-state drive that doesn't weigh more than a few grams more than an ounce.
One would think such a miniscule device is unable to pack the punch that power users require, but this pocket-sized SSD has an impressive read-write speed of up to 450 megabytes per second, making transfer speeds on the device up to four times faster than on an external hard-disk drive (HDD). Samsung says it takes only eight seconds to transfer a 3GB movie file on the SSD T1 compared to the 26 seconds it takes to transfer the same file to an HDD. For a 10GB movie file, it would take 27 seconds on Samsung's new device and nearly three times that speed on an HDD.
"Our digital lives demand storage that surpasses the limits of existing options, which require consumers to compromise, when it comes to mobility, capacity, security or performance," says Unsoo Kim, senior vice president of branded product marketing at Samsung's memory business. "The Portable SSD T1 overcomes the drawbacks of alternative options on every major pain point, making it the next external storage device of choice."
Although more and more companies are urging businesses to move their storage to the cloud, Samsung's external SSD is still an attractive option for businesses that have massive storage needs and would like to have a physical unit for storing their files. Moreover, moving large amounts of data to the cloud via Wi-Fi or data often takes a lot of time, much more than it would take transferring the same data to the SSD T1.
The bus-powered SSD T1 is compatible with USB 3.0 and older standards. It comes in three configurations, the $180 250GB, $300 500GB, and $600 1TB. The device measures three inches tall and two inches wide and less than half an inch thick, which means one can squeeze in as much as 1TB of data in a device that is no bigger than two USB flash drives placed next to each other.
This is possible through the use of Samsung's 3D vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology, comparable only to Intel's 3D NAND flash memory device, which is still in the prototype stage. Compared to the 2D planar-type technology used in traditional SSDs, where the memory cells are laid out on the surface of the silicon wafer, V-NAND has the storage units stacked up one on top of the other to reduce each unit's footprint and increase power efficiency. The result is a device that allows for more storage for lesser cost.
The only limitation of the SSD T1 is its lack of compatibility with Samsung's Magician software, which means users will not be able to customize their SSD's features in the same way as they can tweak the SSD 850 Evo, Samsung's high-end internal drive using V-NAND technology. However, Samsung says it is considering working on a new version of Magician to provide support for the SSD T1 in the future.
