Samsung T1 500GB USB3 SSD Review

 

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Review: Samsung T1 USB3 SSD

Reviewed by: Wendy Robertson

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Provided by: Samsung

Model: MU-PS500B/EU

In this day and age, everyone who uses a computer will
require a way of getting data from A to B. For just a few megabytes, or
gigabytes of data, a USB pen drive, or cloud storage will be sufficient. But
what if you require to move around large amounts of data?

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You can of course use an external USB HDD to store and
retrieve the data. An external USB HDD is cheap, and can have a large capacity,
but they are quite slow when tens of gigabytes of data needs to transferred to
and from the external HDD. Not only that, an HDD is quite a fragile piece of
kit. You certainly won't want to drop it, or subject it to any violent shock
while it's running.

An ideal solution, in my opinion is an external USB3 SSD.
The downside of this is they tend to be pretty expensive. On the positive side
though, they are much faster than an HDD, and much more robust. If you drop it
while data is being transferred, the chances are it will continue doing its
task without any fuss.

Enter the new Samsung T1 external USB3 SSD. Samsung was kind
enough to send me a review sample for testing, and in this article I will show
you how this tiny SSD performs. The intended use of the Samsung T1 external SSD
is different to that of the traditional desktop SSD that I usually test here at
Myce.wiki, so the tests I carry out on the Samsung T1, will be relevant to the
T1's intended use.

The T1 is available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1000GB capacities.
The version that Samsung sent me was the 500GB version.

Samsung company information

Samsung should need no introduction, but those of you who
would like to find out more about Samsung, can do so at their website.

So let's find out how this new SSD performs in our range of
tests.


The Samsung T1 500GB SSD

Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what it
came shipped with.

Packaging

 

The review sample I received was the retail version.
Included in the package was the Samsung T1 500GB SSD, installation instructions,
warranty information, and a rather short USB3 cable (13cm approximately) which supplies
power to the Samsung T1, and the USB3 data connection.

The Samsung T1 weighs in at only 30 grams, and the drive is
tiny, measuring only 71mm in width, 9.2mm in height, and 53.2mm in depth.

Inside the Samsung T1 external USB3 SSD, we find a USB3
interface board to connect the T1 to the outside world, a Samsung MEX SSD
controller, and Samsung's own TLC 3D V-NAND. The Samsung T1 also supports USB3
UASP mode, which allows NCQ (native command queuing) and queue depth scaling
with a UASP enabled USB3 port on the host PC, which is supported natively from within
Windows 8/8.1 and later.

The T1 is also supplied with software to initialise and
format the SSD ready for use. The T1 is formatted exFAT by default, so it
should be compatible with Windows and Apple based systems.

The supplied software allows the T1 to be encrypted with a
user password, and also displays information about the Samsung T1 external USB3
SSD.

Specifications

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our
testing methods and the review PC....

 

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