Up to three-meter drop protection and IP65 water and dust resistance 5 mean this durable drive can take a beating. However, while speed is important, it’s not the only consideration. We also look at the price of each drive, its TBW rating, and any bonus software or accessories that come with it. For external drives we also consider the physical design, particularly the portability and toughness, before arriving at our recommendations.

We devote hundreds of hours of rigorous testing to help make sure your drive is worthy of your best work — and so you know your precious files are in good hands. With internal drives, we similarly use the fastest connection available: SATA SSDs are connected to a 6Gbits/sec SATA connector, while NVMe drives are installed in a dedicated slot with support for the relevant PCI-E version. That might be PCI-E 3.0 for older drives, or PCI-E 4.0 or 5.0 for the very latest models. Flash memory based drives have now implemented a special "wear" algorithm, such that new data is written on cells that are not progammed with data, and so files are moved continuosly across the drive to mentain a balance of erase/program for all the cells, otherwise if a file is continuously written and modified on the same memory cells, these will wear after those few hundred of cycles and not be able to be used anymore. That is why a worn out SSD drive, that has reached a TBW spec, will not retain the information for long.

Game Faster

Nonetheless, the 870 QVO could be the first step towards a purely solid-state future. It’s the first-ever 8TB SATA SSD on the consumer market (and joins an exceedingly small pool of 4TB models), employing QLC memory instead of the 860 Evo’s TLC to increase density and thus storage space. For all these reasons, an SSD is the ideal upgrade for an old PC or laptop. Even if you already have a solid-state drive, the latest models are faster than ever – and prices have tumbled over the past few years so, if you’re running short on space, you can upgrade to a larger model without breaking the bank. It’s up to you whether you choose an internal drive, to provide a speed boost to your OS and applications, or whether you opt for an external model that connects by USB and lets you conveniently carry your data around.

Get fast NVMe™ solid state performance featuring 1050MB/s 2 read and 1000MB/s 2 write speeds in a portable, high-capacity drive that’s perfect for creating amazing content or capturing incredible footage. SanDisk Extreme Pro leverages our lightning-fast in-house NVMe technology to dramatically increase transfer speeds to up to 1050 MB/s 6 and fully saturate the USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface. 6 So you’ll be able to edit right from the drive – providing full-frame editing with little interruption while saving you time and keeping your computer’s internal storage free.

The Extreme PRO® SSD works with PCs and Mac™ computers right out of the box and connects with USB Type C and Type A, 3 making it easy to start and keep working in almost any situation. Of the models on offer, Samsung’s 860 Evo is our favourite. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s one of the fastest SATA drives available, with performance that hits the very limits of the SATA connection’s capabilities. In CrystalDiskMark’s sequential read test, the 860 Evo averaged an unbeatable 563MB/sec, with equally impressive sequential write speeds of 532MB/sec. It also achieved an average of 479MB/sec in the large-file read test, which again puts it in the very top rank of SATA drives. But how fast is it? We measured a decent read rate of 912MB/sec in our test, which is slightly down from the promised 1,050MB/sec. Write speeds were lower, but they still exceeded anything you’ll get from a SATA connection. It lagged behind SATA rivals when it came to random-access performance, though. Aunque para equipos de gama alta de última generación no recomiende este tipo de discos a no ser que se requiera la interfaz SATA obligatoriamente (M.2 es mucho más rápido), como técnico puedo decir que para el usuario medio estos discos aportan una solución más que aceptable que aumentará el rendimiento del equipo exponencialmente, de hecho, muchos clientes han quedado asombrados con el antes y el después de la actualización.