Gigadrive’s portable external solid-state drive could be a revolutionary game-changer for gamers. While traditional external SSDs promise to boost your storage capacity in a simple and affordable way, the downside is that these drives are often hampered by speed bottlenecks, making them slower than internal drives. However, by leveraging the connection speeds of Thunderbolt 4 and USB4, Gigadrive aims to eliminate any speed bottleneck, making it faster to write to and read from the external drive.
Gigadrive’s external SSD boasts read and write speeds of up to 2,800MBps, which is almost as fast as some of the fastest internal PCIe Gen 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs. With these speeds, your gaming rig can readily — and quickly — access game files and assets stored on the external drive without any noticeable slowdowns. For comparison, PCIe Gen 3.0 drives can reach up to 3,500MBps speeds, while newer PCIe Gen 4.0-based drives can reach up to 7,000MBps.
“The engineering team behind Gigadrive has made it possible to level up the best read and write speeds on the market to 2,800MBps — a milestone unreachable for any other external SSD,” the company said of its external drive, which is now offered to consumers in a crowdfunding campaign. Based on these promises, Gigadrive’s SSD blew past its funding goal in under one hour after going live on Indiegogo, and to date, the company has raised more than $1.2 million with seven days left of its campaign.
The drive can be used with any Mac or PC with Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 ports, tablets, smartphones, and even game consoles, according to Gigadrive. And given Thunderbolt 4 support, GigaDrive will be a great companion to owners of the new M1-powered iPad Pro. The company stated that the external SSD can be used with any device with a USB-A or USB-C port.
The Gigadrive external SSD ships with its own enclosure in storage capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB options. The design comes with built-in heatsinks in a durable and rugged design, Gigadrive explained on Indiegogo.
“Dual thermal pads, optimized surface area, and built-in heatsinks provide advanced heat control to GigaDrive,” the company said of the drive’s design. The enclosure is said to be IP67-rated for dust, water, and shock, and the case is made of aluminum to help with heat dissipation.
And as part of the initial crowdfunding campaign, the company is offering as much as a 50% discount. The 1TB drive, which is expected to retail for $299, is now $153 on Indiegogo, with worldwide shipping available. The 8TB drive costs $729 during the crowdfunding campaign, but prices are expected to go up to $1,399 at retail.
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