Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD – 10Gbps USB 3.1 performance at last!

Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD
Credit: Hardware Zone

Good:
● fast
● rugged
● runs cool

Bad:

● drive contains 2 SSDs configured as a RAID 0 array¹ – which accounts for some of the speed – but 2 drives, all other things being equal, have twice the failure rate – the “R” in RAID stands for “Redundant” – but RAID 0 doesn't have any – perhaps that’s what the zero stands for

● larger & heavier than alternatives^2,3



PC World
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046549/storage/sandisk-extreme-900-review-10gbps-usb-31-performance-at-last.html

Cnet
http://www.cnet.com/au/products/sandisk-extreme-900-portable-ssd/

AnandTech
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10245/sandisk-extreme-900-usb-31-gen-2-portable-ssd-review
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¹ Wikepedia: “Raid 0”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_0

² hhg2tech: “Small, fast, cute — Samsung T1 Portable SSD”, http://hhg2tech.blogspot.com/2015/09/small-fast-cute-samsung-t1-portable-ssd.html

³ hhg2tech: “Samsung T3 Portable SSD (video)”, http://hhg2tech.blogspot.com/2016/05/samsung-t3-portable-ssd.html / testing Sandisk new Extreme 900 portable SSD 10Gbps USB 3.1 device Extreme 900 800MBps performance specs specifications pricing Samsung pint-sized T1 T3 Extreme 900 dimensions typical external 2.5-inch hard disk drive chunky heavy slide it into larger pockets heftiness drive’s incredible performance reasons Extreme 900’s size heat dissipation shock resistance SanDisk two TLC Triple Level Cell/3-bit NAND-based 6Gbps SATA SSDs controller bridge chip running RAID 0 6Gbps SATA 10Gbps performance SATA RAID next performance step PCIe SSDs multi-lane PCIe-to-USB bridge chip Extreme 900 features USB Type C port ships Type C-to-Type C Type C-to-Type A SuperSpeed cables nice inclusion USB-C device plug storage drive support 10Gbps USB 3.1 USB-C port USB 2.0 speeds 10Gbps USB 3.1 Thunderbolt messy world of Type C ports Type C reversible connector older Type A USB connectors 50-50 chance plugging in correctly first time 50-percent happen more often Sandisk Extreme 900 available 480GB 960GB 1.92TB three-year warranty on par Samsung’s T1/T3 price-wise other external USB hard drives roughly six times the price you get roughly six times the performance performance first test AS SSD Extreme 900 796MBps reading sequentially Extreme 900’s TLC NAND AS SSD write performance 781MBps TLC-as-SLC Single Level Cell/1-bit cache 598MBps cache normal use external drive almost 400MBps faster reading minimum 200MBps faster writing closest competitor Sandisk TLC SLC cache total capacity reading/writing single 20GB file hit speeds 666MBps between 550MBps and 454MBps speed dependent whether cache consecutive operations numbers dropped real-world copy tests always slower numbers generated by synthetic benchmarks Extreme 900 formatted universally readable/writable exFAT any device USB mass storage exFAT performance kiss-of-death writing small files folders formatted exFAT Extreme 900 84MBps copy 20GB mix files folders reformatting NTFS 224MBps NTFS considerably slower sequential backup copy times drastically USB 3.1 10Gbps card Extreme 900 results reflect NTFS formatting exFAT formatted to 10Gbps USB 3.1 newer PCs benchmark SanDisk’s drive testbed Atech Flash Technology Blackbird MX-1 USB 3.1 Gen II Host Card laptop users Thunderbolt 3.0 ports 10Gbps speeds Extreme 900 good performer 5Gbps USB 3.1 3.0 write speeds 420MBps read speeds 410MBps fast faster external USB SSD speed bonus 10Gbps USB Extreme 900 bested Samsung’s T1/T3 considerable margin USB 3.1 Generation 2 faster USB 3.x Gen 1 up to 780Mbps writing slower results SanDisk first major player 10Gbps USB drive implemented it extremely well MLC Multi-Level Cell/2-bit NAND more consistent write performance TLC numbers impressive Sandisk Extreme 900 drive that can hit 10Gbps USB 3.1 speeds USB Type C USB Type A cables speed portable drive big as a portable hard disk drive not exactly cheap 10Gbps USB 3.1 port is needed to take advantage of it /