The Samsung Portable SSD T1 puts a new spin on an old favorite, offering the benefits of solid-state speeds wherever you go. With a sequential read/write rate of up to 450 megabytes per second this hard drive will blow conventional mechanical competitors right out of the water. The drive will come in three available flavors; 250GB, 500GB and one terabyte.
The T1 also comes equipped with its own built-in security software, capable of encrypting your files and personal data with a 256-bit AES key. It will be automatically compliant with USB 3.0 as well as older USB standards, of course.
No version of this drive weighs more than a few grams north of an ounce, and each measures two inches wide by three inches deep and a tad less than four-tenths of an inch thick. This means you can cram up to a terabyte of storage into a device no larger than two average thumb drive stuck side-by-side.
Such incredible density is possible thanks to Samsung’s 3D V-NAND technology, which layers memory on a chip to drastically reduce the footprint necessary for any given capacity. This is similar to Intel’s 3D NAND, but its take isn’t due until mid-2015 at the earliest.
A three-year warranty will protect you from any failures, and the drive will be ready to go for Mac or Windows right out of the box. Pricing starts at $179.99 for the 250GB model, then goes up to $299.99 for 500GB and $599.99 for one terabyte.