Netac Portable SSD 1TB for Type C, Up to 980MB/s, NVME SSD PCIE, USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps External Solid State Drive - ZX

This drive appears to be hitting its maximum advertised speeds even with USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 in lieu of USB 3.2. It automatically used UASP mode in Windows 10 when I plugged it in (a requirement for maximum speed). I verified the speeds in CrystalDiskMark and the UASP mode in CrystalDiskInfo. My motherboard is an MSI MPG Z390 Gaming PRO Carbon AC LGA1151.I attached the speed test results to this review. Sequentially, I averaged around 1065 MB/s read and 966 MB/s write speeds. Random was, of course, quite a bit slower: 264 MB/s read and 270 MB/s write. For an external USB drive, this is quite fast compared to my other external drives.The drive is a great size and comes with a small case for protection. Short USB-C and USB-A cables are included. The drive is sleek looking and 1 TB (931 GB usable) is fantastic for a USB drive.If I ever have any issues with this drive, I will report back. In the meantime, it is working fine. Don't forget to properly "eject" the drive in Windows before disconnecting it from your computer or you run the risk of corruption, and always have backups of any data you have on this drive to be safe. 5 stars for now!

This seems to be an nvme drive in a portable enclosure. I think I like it better than the 2.5 inch form factor drives in mobile applications. The usb interface probably throttles anti of the speed advantages of nvme; but it is plenty fast enough for my purposes - I put all my daughters favorite movies on it for hr to watch on road trips. Works great!

I've used some other Netac flash memory products, but I hadn't actually seen a full SSD from them until I got the Netac 1TB External SSD, USB3.2 Gen2 10Gbps. The device arrived in a small box, containing the drive, two USB cables (USB-A to USB-C and USB-C to USB-C), and a small fake leather pouch.The drive itself is pleasant enough. It's shaped like an elongated Pepperidge Farm Milano cookie. The enclosure is large enough for a 2280 M.2, and the USB to PCIe bridge chip and PCB. The enclosure is all aluminum, with a tasteful machined chamfer that's got a polished surface. Interestingly, the end of the enclosure with the USB-C port is a little more blunted than the other end, so you know what end to plug in at a glance (nice touch). Two Torx T5s hold the thing together. Inside you find a generic M.2 NVMe SSD, with 4 flash memory chips, and a Silicon Motion SM2263XT controller.The SM2263XT is a DRAM-less controller, but it does support Host Memory Buffer (HMB). Theoretically, the use of HMB should allow the device to use a bit of system RAM for the address mapping that would usually be in the DRAM cache. Guess what? In practice, it actually works! That said, the SSD isn't particularly fast for an NVMe unit, but who cares when you're just going to be throttled by 10Gbit/s USB 3.1 gen2, anyway? I've included an ATTO result, which shows the drive saturating the full bandwidth of the host interface. It also shows strong read performance, which is atypical of older DRAM-less drives (thanks, HMB!). The performance issue that you'll run into is the size of the SLC cache. On the plus side, the flash memory is TLC, as opposed to QLC. On the negative side, the drive appears to only have about 14GB of SLC cache (TLC memory that's essentially being used in 1-bit/cell). As long as you aren't going to be writing more than 14GB at a time to the drive, you aren't likely to drop below the interface transfer rate.I didn't experience any stability or temperature issues with this drive. The included sleeve is nice for protecting the USB-C connector, but there's no way to store or secure the cables to the sleeve. As far as the overall drive goes, I think the enclosure is nice, and the SSD is good enough for most tasks. If you want the fastest possible external drive, you should be looking at Thunderbolt. If you want the fastest write performance for large transfers, you should be buying an MLC-based SSD. If you don't need either of those things, the Netac is a decent package. Recommended