Well... I assume nothing. Given the cost of a capacitor all SSD should have power loss protection, but as far as I know none of the 850 EVO and Pro have any.
Power loss protection shouldn't be inside a drive. It requires batteries to be useful without degrading performance. If it's essential to you, get a SATA controller with battery backed WBC. On consumer devices, this kind of protection is usually handled by the operating system, to an extent. Like, if you disconnect a USB device from a Windows 10 device, Windows should be able to pause and resume your write jobs whenever you reconnect the USB drive.
Power Loss Protection doesn't really "require" batteries, and a few capacitors or just one is enough for a SSD and that's exactly what you get when you buy a real enterprise grade SSD. With that said, HDD with full power loss protection in servers do have a battery, which is what i think you're thinking about.
originally FAT32 had a limit of one byte less than 4GB (for some reason) but current implementations allow for up to 16TB depending on how it's formatted. (depending on sector size it is 2, 8 or 16 TB maximum)
I think you mean 2TB- not +. For 2TB+ you need UEFI BIOS and GPT partition table, with which well... you can have Fat32 partitions but each limited to 2TB (1.7TB) to be exact.
And btw, you can create bigger partitions, but from linux only. I have 4 4TB drives and could not create partitions above the said limit on them from windows (maybe it can be done in windows above 7), it always created 2 partitions on the drives. And what is worse windows would not allow me to format them in any fat system. But what confuses me in the article is that it's "force" formatted. Does it mean that formatting the drive is blocked in some way?
Android doesn't support exFAT in the default config because it has royalty requirements and they'd have to pay MS for that. Any phone that has a SDXC slot and supports 64gb+ sd cards should have exFAT support as that is what SDXC cards come pre-formatted as.
If there's no info on TRIM, what should we expect? Does the drive drop to 1/3 its original speed, permanently, after you fill it up once? By 2016 I thought this was all solved.
Agreed, if i'm going to pay extra for a high performance external SSD I want it to behave similar to an internal SSD. Lack of TRIM support just goes to show the technology is not as mature as we hoped yet... Perhaps TRIM can be added through a software/firmware updates...
"In a bus-powered enclosure, it is difficult to put incorporate PCIe SSDs."
USB 3.1 Gen 2 can provide more power (don't know if that's enough though). TB3 can go one better (up to 100W). Would be nice to see a PCIe 3 x 4 SSD in a USB 3.1 Gen 2 or TB3 enclosure that does not use SATA mode. Doubt we will ever see a bridge-chipset other than what we see here (that uses SATA mode).
It will be risky for device vendors to implement. The reason is that most PC or phone USB Type-C ports will only implement the minimum required option - which is 5V at 900mA - even with 3.1 Gen 2 ports. If you have a drive with higher power requirements, it might not be compatible with many of the USB ports out there - only those that implement USB Power Delivery (where the minimum is 5V at 2A).
Yes, Thunderbolt 3 does provide a little bit of leeway - 15W is the minimum (5V at 3A).
If we always take the lowest common denominator, we will never move forward. I see your point though, but shouldn't there be a power user option? We have the tech where a single (non-raid) PCIe SSD would be able to saturate the 3.1 Gen 2 interface, but, if We want performance, we have to make do with 2x SATA SSDs in RAID. Which is more expensive and not as fast.
Sorry but this is wrong and irks me to read again and again.
100 W is not provided by Thunderbolt 3, but by USB Power Delivery 2.0. Thunderbolt 3.0 also does not have additional protocols as the article claims but is instead one of multiple USB Alternate Modes the most popular of the others being Display Port 1.2.
So many great features of the new USB standards and the new USB connecter get ascribed to Thunderbolt 3 even though it is just piggybacking as an alternate mode over the same link.
Why do you say TB3 can go one better than USB 3.1 Gen 2? What about USB Power Delivery 1.2 which is 100W which you can get in a Type-C port without TB3 capability...
So TRIM support is indeterminate? I'd really like to know why there wasn't even an attempt to see if it could be established with this drive. As a potential buyer I would be really interested in knowing if the T3 is going to gradually turn into a paperweight just from normal use. It's kind of relevant.
Why did you not give the power required (at maximum usage, generally lots of back-to-back random writes)? This is especially important for bus-powered drives because it tells us whether the drive can (or cannot) usefully be connected to an old-style USB-2 computer, or whether we need to be especially careful in how much power we provide to a USB-3 hub.
I have the USB 2 version. I believe the accuracy will be sufficient. I want to know whether devices such as the Note 3 (900mA output current on USB OTG) can power up the Samsung T3. http://www.amazon.com/DROK-Multimeter-Capacity-Vol...
As far as Type-C, that is a great question. I am looking into whether a Type-C cable can be dissected and spliced to a USB cable which could be run through the current/voltage meter as that would isolate the Vbus pin. I just need to make sure all the power is supplied via the single Vbus pin.
Keep in mind that all phones use USB 2.0 for their USB OTG connections. The USB 2 version of the current/voltage meter is perfectly fine for testing these drives with smartphones. Even the Note 3 and S5, with their USB 3.0 connectors, do not provision their USB OTG connections at high speed (limited to approx 40MB/s transfer speeds). However, the Note 3 is the only phone I am aware of that actually supplies 900mA output current (my own testing.)
Agreed, if someone is going to buy this type of super fast external SSD they are probably going to copy very many huge files over it's lifetime... TRIM is huge deal for a device like this... not mentioning if it has support is very weird and disconcerting... I won't even consider getting this unless it has TRIM...
"The only caveat is that Android doesn't support exFAT."
Now, that's not entirely true. Samsung's Android devices support exFAT, and I'm sure most other high-end Android devices support it as well. Nexus devices does not support exFAT because Google won't license the file system for "vanilla" android. That said, the 99.9% of Android devices sold does not use vanilla android and I don't really know of any OEM who isn't in a license agreement with Microsoft about stuff like exFAT and those other 100-ish Microsoft patents Redmond has successfully managed to license to those Android OEMs.
That is the T1. I don't think there will be a issue with T3, because the security package comes for download online / is an installer present in the main partition itself.
Thanks. I purchased it. At least Samsung Portable SSD T3 500 GB is amazing. Boots Mac to work from it all day long at work and home, and does not even get hot. Not even warm. External metal enclosure remans cold. I have not seen that before. The internal Samsung 3D V-NAND is truly amazing!
RAID 0 inside as in SanDisk's 1.92TB Extreme 900 Portable SSD? That is the best way to lose data (2x probability or more). One disk fails (or controller), all lost.
I have a T1 and while small and fast, it has some quirks -- and I can't use it the same way as a Samsung 840EVO SSD inside of a USB 3 enclosure.
I couldn't format it with Disk Utility on Mac out of the box. And the only way to eject it was Force Eject on El Capitan. I had to use its janky proprietary formatting program that crashed constantly to format it.
When formatted in Windows 8 to FAT32 or exFAT, a Playstation 4 won't recognize it. Does the T3 fix these quirky shortcomings? (I'm guessing it's the hardware encryption on the T1 that makes it such a fussy devil)
As a photographer and video maker based in Paris, I bought the Samsung T3 for its compact size and high speed. Unfortunately, this drive has failed on my twice already — on the only two major trips I took it on — though it worked flawlessly at my desk and around town for months. I just don’t understand it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me on any other of the many drives I use!
The first time it failed totally — neither readable nor writable. But it did power up, and when I called my seller once I was back, he convinced me to just reformat it and it would be fine. Months later it failed again, only this time, it could be read (not all but most files) but couldn’t be written to. This is where I’m at now, just back from 7 weeks in India, and wondering what to do with this cute little treacherous gadget...
Has anyone gotten any other feedback like this? What could be happening? In both cases I had made a lot of changes to what was on the disk, deleting and adding files and folders just before leaving. But so what? That’s what an external HD is for. All I know is I can’t trust this one ever again. In both cases I was lucky to find a place to buy another drive in a faraway land, and was lucky too that no files were lost, since I never save anything in only one place. Still this is weird, and expensive.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
49 Comments
Back to Article
cm2187 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Do these things have power loss protection? That's what I would be the most concerned about with a portable SSD.darkfalz - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
You'd hope with the relatively low power requirement there'd be capacitors with power enough to flush internal RAM to NV.cm2187 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Well... I assume nothing. Given the cost of a capacitor all SSD should have power loss protection, but as far as I know none of the 850 EVO and Pro have any.nathanddrews - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
I agree that they all should, but especially an external/mobile SSD.theduckofdeath - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Power loss protection shouldn't be inside a drive. It requires batteries to be useful without degrading performance. If it's essential to you, get a SATA controller with battery backed WBC. On consumer devices, this kind of protection is usually handled by the operating system, to an extent. Like, if you disconnect a USB device from a Windows 10 device, Windows should be able to pause and resume your write jobs whenever you reconnect the USB drive.NeatOman - Friday, March 11, 2016 - link
Power Loss Protection doesn't really "require" batteries, and a few capacitors or just one is enough for a SSD and that's exactly what you get when you buy a real enterprise grade SSD. With that said, HDD with full power loss protection in servers do have a battery, which is what i think you're thinking about.vortexmak - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
How did it force format to FAT32?Isn't the FAT32 filesystem limited to 32 GB?
Maboroshi - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
originally FAT32 had a limit of one byte less than 4GB (for some reason) but current implementations allow for up to 16TB depending on how it's formatted. (depending on sector size it is 2, 8 or 16 TB maximum)hojnikb - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Thats not true at all. FAT32 was never limited to 4GB, it was always 2TB+ (depending on the secotor size).4GB is the single file limit.
GU - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
I think you mean 2TB- not +. For 2TB+ you need UEFI BIOS and GPT partition table, with which well... you can have Fat32 partitions but each limited to 2TB (1.7TB) to be exact.GU - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
Oh wait you are right! It was 2.73TB limit, sorry, my mistake.GU - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
And btw, you can create bigger partitions, but from linux only. I have 4 4TB drives and could not create partitions above the said limit on them from windows (maybe it can be done in windows above 7), it always created 2 partitions on the drives. And what is worse windows would not allow me to format them in any fat system. But what confuses me in the article is that it's "force" formatted. Does it mean that formatting the drive is blocked in some way?Heinrich D. Bag - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
There is freeware called GUIFORMAT that will allow larger drives to be formatted in FAT32. I had to do it for an AMAZON FIRE TV. Handy and free.zeeBomb - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Very nicekpb321 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Android doesn't support exFAT in the default config because it has royalty requirements and they'd have to pay MS for that. Any phone that has a SDXC slot and supports 64gb+ sd cards should have exFAT support as that is what SDXC cards come pre-formatted as.Nintendo Maniac 64 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Android uses the Linux kernel so you can use the likes of Ext4 (which it uses for its internal storage).Of course there's the issue where MS refuses to support anything other than FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT...
tuxRoller - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
There are ext4 fs drivers for Windows.Arbie - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
If there's no info on TRIM, what should we expect? Does the drive drop to 1/3 its original speed, permanently, after you fill it up once? By 2016 I thought this was all solved.dano_spumoni - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Agreed, if i'm going to pay extra for a high performance external SSD I want it to behave similar to an internal SSD. Lack of TRIM support just goes to show the technology is not as mature as we hoped yet... Perhaps TRIM can be added through a software/firmware updates...zodiacfml - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Seems like 48 Layer V-NAND as they (Samsung) don't seem to care much with this product, only to sell the first few of the new dies.bill44 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
"In a bus-powered enclosure, it is difficult to put incorporate PCIe SSDs."USB 3.1 Gen 2 can provide more power (don't know if that's enough though). TB3 can go one better (up to 100W).
Would be nice to see a PCIe 3 x 4 SSD in a USB 3.1 Gen 2 or TB3 enclosure that does not use SATA mode.
Doubt we will ever see a bridge-chipset other than what we see here (that uses SATA mode).
ganeshts - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
It will be risky for device vendors to implement. The reason is that most PC or phone USB Type-C ports will only implement the minimum required option - which is 5V at 900mA - even with 3.1 Gen 2 ports. If you have a drive with higher power requirements, it might not be compatible with many of the USB ports out there - only those that implement USB Power Delivery (where the minimum is 5V at 2A).Yes, Thunderbolt 3 does provide a little bit of leeway - 15W is the minimum (5V at 3A).
BillyONeal - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
The connector standard provides that much power, but few implementations actually do.bill44 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
If we always take the lowest common denominator, we will never move forward. I see your point though, but shouldn't there be a power user option? We have the tech where a single (non-raid) PCIe SSD would be able to saturate the 3.1 Gen 2 interface, but, if We want performance, we have to make do with 2x SATA SSDs in RAID. Which is more expensive and not as fast.Leosch - Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - link
Sorry but this is wrong and irks me to read again and again.100 W is not provided by Thunderbolt 3, but by USB Power Delivery 2.0. Thunderbolt 3.0 also does not have additional protocols as the article claims but is instead one of multiple USB Alternate Modes the most popular of the others being Display Port 1.2.
So many great features of the new USB standards and the new USB connecter get ascribed to Thunderbolt 3 even though it is just piggybacking as an alternate mode over the same link.
lordmocha - Sunday, March 27, 2016 - link
Why do you say TB3 can go one better than USB 3.1 Gen 2? What about USB Power Delivery 1.2 which is 100W which you can get in a Type-C port without TB3 capability...Magichands8 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
So TRIM support is indeterminate? I'd really like to know why there wasn't even an attempt to see if it could be established with this drive. As a potential buyer I would be really interested in knowing if the T3 is going to gradually turn into a paperweight just from normal use. It's kind of relevant.dano_spumoni - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
yes, it's disturbing that they won't at least confirm or deny TRIM support, it's kind of a big deal for an expensive external SSD.name99 - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
Why did you not give the power required (at maximum usage, generally lots of back-to-back random writes)?This is especially important for bus-powered drives because it tells us whether the drive can (or cannot) usefully be connected to an old-style USB-2 computer, or whether we need to be especially careful in how much power we provide to a USB-3 hub.
royalcrown - Monday, February 22, 2016 - link
$ 850 USD for 2 TB...no thank you.ssddaydream - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
I'm really wondering what the current draw of these drives are. I couldn't find published power consumption anywhere for the T3.ssddaydream - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
Any info on this? This is incredibly easy to measure using variety of low-cost USB power measurement devices available on eBay and Amazon.ganeshts - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
Can you link me to something that supports Type-C?ssddaydream - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
I have the USB 2 version. I believe the accuracy will be sufficient. I want to know whether devices such as the Note 3 (900mA output current on USB OTG) can power up the Samsung T3.http://www.amazon.com/DROK-Multimeter-Capacity-Vol...
ssddaydream - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
As far as Type-C, that is a great question. I am looking into whether a Type-C cable can be dissected and spliced to a USB cable which could be run through the current/voltage meter as that would isolate the Vbus pin. I just need to make sure all the power is supplied via the single Vbus pin.Keep in mind that all phones use USB 2.0 for their USB OTG connections. The USB 2 version of the current/voltage meter is perfectly fine for testing these drives with smartphones. Even the Note 3 and S5, with their USB 3.0 connectors, do not provision their USB OTG connections at high speed (limited to approx 40MB/s transfer speeds). However, the Note 3 is the only phone I am aware of that actually supplies 900mA output current (my own testing.)
DIYEyal - Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - link
Can you please confirm trim? If it doesn't support trim, the product is useless.dano_spumoni - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Agreed, if someone is going to buy this type of super fast external SSD they are probably going to copy very many huge files over it's lifetime... TRIM is huge deal for a device like this... not mentioning if it has support is very weird and disconcerting... I won't even consider getting this unless it has TRIM...theduckofdeath - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
"The only caveat is that Android doesn't support exFAT."Now, that's not entirely true. Samsung's Android devices support exFAT, and I'm sure most other high-end Android devices support it as well. Nexus devices does not support exFAT because Google won't license the file system for "vanilla" android. That said, the 99.9% of Android devices sold does not use vanilla android and I don't really know of any OEM who isn't in a license agreement with Microsoft about stuff like exFAT and those other 100-ish Microsoft patents Redmond has successfully managed to license to those Android OEMs.
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Thanks for the info. I only tested on Nexus 6P, so I shouldn't have made a generic Android - exFAT comment.AnTech - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Driver needed for Mac? Check outMac Owners Should Hold Off on New Samsung T1 Flash SSD
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/mac-owners-...
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
That is the T1. I don't think there will be a issue with T3, because the security package comes for download online / is an installer present in the main partition itself.AnTech - Sunday, December 4, 2016 - link
Thanks. I purchased it. At least Samsung Portable SSD T3 500 GB is amazing. Boots Mac to work from it all day long at work and home, and does not even get hot. Not even warm. External metal enclosure remans cold. I have not seen that before. The internal Samsung 3D V-NAND is truly amazing!AnTech - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
Can it be used to boot Mac and work from it all day long?AnTech - Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - link
RAID 0 inside as in SanDisk's 1.92TB Extreme 900 Portable SSD? That is the best way to lose data (2x probability or more). One disk fails (or controller), all lost.Unicron1000 - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link
I have a T1 and while small and fast, it has some quirks -- and I can't use it the same way as a Samsung 840EVO SSD inside of a USB 3 enclosure.I couldn't format it with Disk Utility on Mac out of the box. And the only way to eject it was Force Eject on El Capitan. I had to use its janky proprietary formatting program that crashed constantly to format it.
When formatted in Windows 8 to FAT32 or exFAT, a Playstation 4 won't recognize it. Does the T3 fix these quirky shortcomings? (I'm guessing it's the hardware encryption on the T1 that makes it such a fussy devil)
DieterH - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
I own a new 1T Samsung drive, can I install the drive into this enclosure?MrHorizontal - Monday, August 1, 2016 - link
I see the NAND packages are on a daughterboard - is that daughterboard actually m.2 SATA or mSATA per chance?FrenchTech - Monday, January 29, 2018 - link
As a photographer and video maker based in Paris, I bought the Samsung T3 for its compact size and high speed. Unfortunately, this drive has failed on my twice already — on the only two major trips I took it on — though it worked flawlessly at my desk and around town for months. I just don’t understand it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me on any other of the many drives I use!The first time it failed totally — neither readable nor writable. But it did power up, and when I called my seller once I was back, he convinced me to just reformat it and it would be fine. Months later it failed again, only this time, it could be read (not all but most files) but couldn’t be written to. This is where I’m at now, just back from 7 weeks in India, and wondering what to do with this cute little treacherous gadget...
Has anyone gotten any other feedback like this? What could be happening? In both cases I had made a lot of changes to what was on the disk, deleting and adding files and folders just before leaving. But so what? That’s what an external HD is for. All I know is I can’t trust this one ever again. In both cases I was lucky to find a place to buy another drive in a faraway land, and was lucky too that no files were lost, since I never save anything in only one place. Still this is weird, and expensive.
Can anyone be of any help?