Three unique USB utensils land in the lab.
A dinky and slow USB 2.0 key is last year's news. Today's USB drives are faster than ever, have capacity that was a fantasy just a year ago, and are surprisingly affordable. This month, we're testing three sweet drives that redefine the concept of USB storage, including a blazing-fast USB key from SanDisk, a gigantic 4TB handheld drive from Seagate, and an SSD wrapped in a USB enclosure from LaCie. One of them should definitely be in your PC blowout kit.
SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0
The Sandisk Extreme Pro has a lot of hyperbole in its name, but one glance at its specs and you can see it's a fitting title. First, at 128GB it's the largest-capacity USB key we've ever tested. Second, the drive's specs claim it performs more than twice as fast as USB 3.0 keys we've tested in the past, which typically top out at around 110MB/s for read and write speeds. This bad mother is rated at 260MB/s read speeds, and 240MB/s write speeds, which is ludicrous for a USB key. Third, to show how serious SanDisk is with this model, it's only available in the 128GB capacity, because how extreme can a 64GB key really be—know what we're saying?
On the software front, the drive comes with a data-encryption tool named Secure-Access, which is an executable that creates a 128-bit AES encrypted volume. You keep the executable on the key (or anywhere, really), type in your password, and the volume opens. When you close the window, the data is safe; if you forget your password, you'll have to wipe the drive, as there's no recovery.
In addition to these righteous features, this key has the perfect body style in our opinion: it has no cap, a tough aluminum shell, a sturdy loop for your keychain, and a rocker switch to deploy the key. We love it, and wouldn't mind if all future USB keys were built like this.
In testing, the Sandisk came close to hitting its peak speeds in our real-world file copy tests, and definitely hit them in synthetic benchmarks. The key choked a bit on some of the larger video files we had in our test folder, but averaged around 175MB/s or so during the 14GB transfer. That's blazing fast, and the fastest USB key we've ever tested.
In the end, this key's killer speed, huge capacity, perfect chassis, and handy encryption software make it the total package. We honestly can't think of a single thing to criticize.
Verdict: 10 - Kick Ass!
Price: $160, www.sandisk.com
Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB
Seagate's Backup Plus Fast drive is portable storage for power users, plain and simple. It's the highest capacity portable hard drive in captivity, and Seagate achieves this feat by striping together two 9.5mm Samsung M9T 2TB hard drives into a RAID 0 array. As soon as you plug it in, the OS sees the drive as a 3.63TB formatted volume, so you don't have to do any setup. Unfortunately, you can't modify it to be a RAID 1 array. The drive is a bus-powered USB 3.0 model, so it doesn't need auxiliary power of any kind, and it even includes two USB cables; one for modern systems that can provide enough power though a single port, and a Y-shaped cable for those with older PCs that require two connections to pump enough juice into the drive.
Since it's designed to be used as a backup drive, it includes a tool called Seagate Dashboard. This software acts as a hub for several backup tasks including backing up data on a PC, the data on your smartphone (iOS and Android only), and saving your social media data on Facebook, Flickr, and Youtube. You can also restore your backups to their original location, as well.
PC backups can be simple (videos, music, etc.) or you can select individual files and folders. You can then have it back up continuously or on a schedule. It's slick, easy-to-use, and works like a charm. You can even create system "snapshots" instead of individual files and folders, which we appreciated.
In testing, the RAID 0 configuration showed why it used to be the go-to setup for power users, as this is one fast drive. It was able to sustain around 200MB/s in our file copy test, which is faster than the speediest desktop hard-disk drives available. It also didn't choke on any of the fi les we offered it, unlike its solid-state brethren in this roundup.
Overall, this is one sweet drive. We don't like how thick it is, but that comes with the two-drive territory. It's fast though, holds a ton of data, and includes slick backup software, too. If you need more storage than an SSD drive allows, this is the one to buy.
Verdict: 9 - Kick Ass!
Price: $270, www.seagate.com
Lacie Porsche Design Slim Drive USB 3.0
Lacie has never been afraid to make a slick-looking drive that packs a punch, and that's what it's trying to do with its Slim drive with "Porsche Design." If you bought a laptop for maximum portability, this drive furthers that goal by its very slim 0.4-inch thickness, and weighing in at slightly less than a half-pound.
LaCie offers the drive in both a 500GB rotating-platter version and the 120GB SSD version you see here, which costs $65 more than the platter drive. Both come with a two-year warranty, which is kind of low but common for "cost sensitive" storage devices. However, LaCie has never been a company to skimp on anything, so we're surprised the warranty isn't at least three years.
Inside the matte aluminum shell is an SSD of unknown origin, and there's no easy way to open the shell without destroying the enclosure. There are rubber bumpers on both sides but it's otherwise a solid, brick-like case. On the side is a USB 3.0 connector with an extra-long cable; it's a shame LaCie couldn't find a way to integrate it with the shell since it's hard to store it with the cable poking out from the side.
The drive comes with two primary utilities—Genie Timeline for backup duties and a LaCie-branded version of TrueCrypt that lets you dedicate a portion of the drive's 117GB formatted capacity to be an encrypted volume. We love TrueCrypt, and are always glad to see it included as a utility on removable storage, so kudos to LaCie. The Genie Timeline software is also excellent and easy to use.
In our benchmarks, the LaCie Slim racked up mildly impressive read and write scores, but it averaged around 200MB/s in our real-world fi le copy test, which put it dead-even with the platter-based RAID 0 setup of the Seagate. This means that in the real world, this bad boy is faster than a platter-based drive, but not a RAID 0 config.
All in all, the LaCie is a decent drive but there's nothing about it that really stands out or makes our hearts go pitter-patter. It's fast and has a good software package, but it's expensive and has smallish capacity. If you absolutely need a super-slim portable drive, it's a safe bet. Otherwise, go the DIY route and save yourself some cash.
Verdict: 8
Price: $150, www.lacie.com
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