Samsung Portable SSD T1: A rocket in your pocket

Flash in your pocket

Samsung is one of the biggest manufacturers of SSDs and NAND memory. Most recently, the company made headlines for being the first to release SSDs using new 3D V-NAND. We wrote about 3D V-NAND extensively in our review of Samsung SSD 850 Pro - the first SSD to use 3D V-NAND - so if you are scratching your head about 3D V-NAND, you might want to read that first.

But to put it very briefly, 3D V-NAND stacks memory cells on top of each other in order to overcome the problem of squeezing cells closer and closer together, as is the case with existing 2D planar architecture and technology. Samsung then followed up the SSD 850 Pro with the SSD 850 Evo late last year, which uses 3D TLC (Triple Level Cell) NAND. We wrote about TLC NAND in great detail during our review of the older SSD 840 Evo, but again to be put it briefly, TLC NAND increases memory density but at the cost of performance and endurance. However, TLC NAND is much more cost effective and affordable, which makes it good for mainstream consumer applications.

This brings us neatly to Samsung’s new portable external hard disk, the Portable SSD T1. It’s a portable SSD that comes in an extremely compact form factor that is smaller than name cards and credit cards, and measures just 9mm thick. It is featherlight too, weighing just 30g or so. It is attractively styled too, featuring a mix of textured and smooth surfaces. Unfortunately, the supplied USB ribbon cable is clumsy and makes the Portable SSD T1 less portable than it would have been. An integrated retractable USB connector would have been a much more elegant solution.

Inside, users will find a drive that closely related to the SSD 850 Evo. As a result, the Portable SSD T1 uses the same MGX controller and features technology like TurboWrite. TurboWrite dedicates a small portion of its TLC NAND to work as an SLC write buffer. This helps boost its write performance to make up for the shortcoming of TLC NAND, which typically suffers from inferior write performance. Judging from our past experience with the SSD 850 Evo and SSD 840 Evo, TurboWrite does significantly boost write speeds, so we can't wait to see what kind of effect it will have on the Portable SSD T1's performance.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 uses a SATA to USB bridge for USB 3.0 functionality. USB 3.0 offers a maximum data transfer rate of 5Gbps or 625MB/s, slightly lower than that of SATA 6Gbps, so we are expecting performance to suffer a bit, especially after factoring overheads, when compared to the SSD 850 Evo. But even so, it should still be miles faster than any other mechanical portable external hard disk drive.

The Portable SSD T1 also supports UASP (USB Attached SCSI) protocol, which is a often overlooked standard aimed at improving USB 3.0 performance by transferring data and commands in separate "pipes" and executing multiple commands in parallel. So if you have a compatible system (most modern systems running Windows 8 and Mac OS X 10.8 and above should support UASP), one can expect better performance.

The issue of UASP compatibility is a little complicated and we would like to refer you to this article. The gist of it, however, is this: UASP compatibility is dependent on a few hardware and software factors:

• Hardware support (your system)
• Device support (the USB drive in question)
• Driver support (your OS)

If any of the above is not met, the UASP mode will not be enabled in the drive. That said, the benefits are only appreciable in random reads (that's where commands and data gets queued) and it varies quite greatly because so much of its performance potential is dependent on firmware and drivers, so there's no need to get overly worried or flustered if your system doesn't support UASP or you cannot get UASP to work.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 is PC and Mac compatible, although Mac users will have to download a SCSI ATA Transition driver for the drive to work. Upon attaching the drive, a 128MB partition will launch itself with two setup files for Windows and Mac machines. Run it and you will be prompted to input a password to secure the drive. You will be prompted for this password in future whenever you attach the drive. Without it, you will not be able to access your files and the drive will not work. It's worth noting that the password cannot be reset. If you forget your password, you will have to bring the drive in to the service center where they will have to reset your drive. It goes without saying that doing so would also mean losing all data on the drive. It sounds a bit drastic, but it is a price that we will gladly pay for utmost security.

Test Setup

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 will be tested using our regular storage benchmarking testbed which has the following specifications:

• Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P8Z77-V Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
• 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
• MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
• Windows 7 64-bit

To test the drive, we will be putting it through some of our usual storage benchmarks. We will also compare it against other portable external hard disk drives we have reviewed. The most interesting match up here is arguably against the Transcend ESD200, which is a portable SSD just like the Samsung Portable SSD T1. The full list of benchmarks and drives tested are as follows:

List of benchmarks tested:

• AS SSD
• CrystalDiskMark
• PCMark 7

List of drives tested:

• Samsung Portable SSD T1
• Transcend ESD200
• Seagate Backup Plus Slim
• WD My Passport Slim

AS SSD Results

AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. This takes away the advantages of SSD controllers that compress data before moving them, such as the old SandForce SF-2281 controller.

Samsung’s controllers have always been adept at handling non-compressible data and so it should come as no surprise that their performance on AS SSD has always been stellar. And here we can see that it absolutely blitzed the competition. Read performance was consistently 20% to 30% faster than the Transcend ESD200; and thanks to TurboWrite, its write performance could be as much as 10 times as fast the Transcend ESD200. Needless to say, the two mechanical portable external hard disk drives stood no chance at all, especially when it came to handling small 4K data blocks.

CrystalDiskMark Results

CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 continued its strong showing on CrystalDiskMark by easily surpassing the Transcend ESD200. On average, its read performance was about 25% greater than the Transcend ESD200; while its write performance, thanks to TurboWrite, was anywhere from 80% to 500% faster. It goes without saying that the mechanical portable external hard disk drives were not competitive at all, especially when it came to handling small 4K data blocks.

File Transfer Timings

The File Transfer test is a measure of how fast the drive took to copy a 1.72GB movie file. It’s a measure of sequential transfer speed and it should be interesting to see how this plays out as mechanical portable external hard disk drives are quite competitive when it comes to sequential read and write performance. Unfortunately for them, the Samsung Portable SSD T1 copied our movie file in just 18.91 seconds, which almost 8 seconds or 30% faster than the Transcend ESD200. The two mechanical portable external hard disk drives were no match for the Portable SSD T1 at all.

PCMark 7

On PCMark 7, the Samsung Portable SSD T1 blitzed the competition by recording a score of 4759. This was 658 points or 16% more than the Transcend ESD200. It was also over 300% more than what the WD My Passport Slim and Seagate Backup Plus Slim could manage. Looking at the breakdown of the score, we can see that the Portable SSD T1 was clearly superior across all workloads. 

Pocket Rocket

As we discovered in our review of the Transcend ESD200 two years ago, portable external SSDs are indeed many times quicker than traditional mechanical portable external hard disk drives. Two years on, portable external SSDs have only became faster and more compact.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 is a speedy external portable SSD. In our benchmarks, it easily blitzed the competition and was many, many times faster than typical mechanical portable external hard disk drives. For the mechanical portable external hard disk drives, it was like bringing a plastic knife to gun fight - that’s how wide the gulf in performance was.

For the techies, some of you might question the  effectiveness of USB 3.0 and the gulf in performance over a native SSD - are you paying for something you can't fully realize? Perhaps, as can be seen in our Samsung SSD 850 Evo internal SSD review, the internal native SATA 6Gbps drive is roughly twice as fast as the Samsung Portable SSD T1 running on USB 3.0. Does that mean you're being short-changed? Not really since USB is the most used interface for peripheral connectivity across various devices and systems. According to our recent USB 3.1 performance review, the latest USB standard might be just what the Samsung Portable SSD T1 drive requires to unleash its potential and it's a pity that the drive wasn't equipped with it. Nevertheless, the figures from the Samsung external drive are in the ballpark of a 2013 mainstream internal SSD, which is still miles ahead of any mechanical hard drive as well as older external SSD drives.

Besides performance, we also like the Samsung Portable SSD T1 for its extreme portability. It is incredibly small and weighs next to nothing, and would be even more portable if not for its clumsy USB cable. Perhaps for future versions Samsung could integrate a retractable USB connector into the drive itself? That would definitely make for a sleeker and more portable drive.

Performance and portability aside, the Samsung Portable SSD T1 also deserves props for its ease of use. It works without a hitch on both Windows and Mac OS X systems and it was easy to secure the drive with a password.

Unfortunately, such performance and portability comes at a rather high price. The Samsung Portable SSD T1 is available in three capacities points - 250GB, 500GB and 1TB - and the 250GB model that was reviewed here costs S$299. There's no sugar-coating this, it's a lot of money for 250GB of storage. It's also quite a bit more expensive than an equivalent internal SSD drive. At this price, it's enough to get you a 2TB mechanical portable external hard disk drive and with enough spare change for another 1TB drive. And if you want a 1TB version that will rival most mechanical portable external hard disk drives for capacity, it is a whopping S$899. If capacity is your priority, mechanical portable external hard disk drives are still the way to go.

On the bright side, prices of flash memory has been falling and the Samsung Portable SSD T1 is actually quite affordable in comparison to the Transcend ESD200 from two years ago. Back in 2013, the the 256GB variant of the Transcend ESD200 would set you back an eye-watering S$408! Prices will still continue to fall, but flash storage is still a long way from being as affordable as mechanical hard disk drives. Speedier flash drives still command a considerable premium, so drives like the Samsung Portable SSD T1 are really only suitable for those who have a real need for performance or if you just happen to have really deep pockets.

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