Best Samsung Portable / External Hard Drives
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Fast, Affordable and Reliable – Could not ask for more out of a portable SSD, Samsung have done a really good job with this little unit. It's small but packs a punch and is fast as… Read more
hell, even quicker than my Intel internal SSD.
Overall I was so happy with the performance I ended up purchasing a second one, can't speak highly enough of this product, very happy customer.
Ideal product – I needed to back up photos from my phone as I was out of storage. This product really helped me and was really easy to use Show details
All good .. and looks good too – The Samsung Portable SSD T7 (2TB) comes as a colourful, svelte package. It has the same width and depth as a credit card, but a bit thicker. It comes… Read more
in impressive (over)packaging. It comes with two cables, thus allowing it to connect to either USB-A or USB-C ports. The instruction manual requires a strong magnifying glass to read. As below, it is a genuine 2TB capacity (the slightly lower number shown in the attached image is due to the space taken up by formatting). As per the image, its read/write speed is at least 300MB/sec on my elderly laptop, so its claimed speed of three times that is quite possible.
Background …
I bought the 2TB Samsung T7, based on the coming together of multiple factors.
I’m finally upgrading from my elderly 17” laptop to a smaller 13” one, which comes with only a small (for Windows) internal SSD (and USB-C/Thunderbolt ports). I have a Thunderbolt hub to connect to a larger monitor, so it made sense to buy a high-capacity external drive to move the data across then leave hooked into the hub. The T7 started appearing in my searches from a number of sites, with significant discounting having finally started (maybe a T8 is on the way?).
Samsung is a reputable brand (with a couple of exceptions – but the all brands seem to have their disasters). I found a heavily discounted one on eBay from a site with lots of positive reviews. So (belt-and-braces) I ordered it from eBay via PayPal in the knowledge that both had repaid me in the past for failed transactions.
Checking for fake?
There are numerous high-capacity drives supposedly available cheaper from eBay, Amazon etc. There are also lots of horror stories of beautifully designed and packaged fakes. Apparently the fakes includes a small’ish (say 64GB) chip and circuitry that lies abut its size, overwrites anything beyond the chip’s size while maintaining a directory claiming to still have the files. So the fake is going to appear to work correctly as a genuine 2TB SSD for Windows File Explorer or similar tools.
To check that I did have a genuine 2TB, I downloaded a free utility H2testw. This works by filling the drive with 1MB files then reading them back, confirming that each is the same file that it wrote.
Backup Drive. Very Fast and dependable – I needed a backup drive for my Apple Macbook Pro. I already own some T5 usb SSD samsung drives, so I purchased the T7 series in a 500GB . This drive… Read more
has never let me down and is very fast and reliable. The box contains a USB-C to C and a USB-C to A connecting cables.
I bought 3 of these on Black Friday Sales from Amazon, and noticed that the USB-C female ports on all of then a buried a bit deep in the casing. The… Read more
connection is not very good, but at the time I needed the SSD storage and never thought to return them straight away. The connections now are hit and miss, even on super expensive cables, so I concluded that the SSDs were fake/counterfeit, or made by a third party at low cost. I tried the Samsung Magician software, but that is not mounting any drive. I have spent a number of hours and days on the problem, and conclude that these were a bad purchase. I have a T9 which is a better connection, but trying to get help from Samsung has been fruitless-they simply defer to the Samsung Magician software, as do the Reddit crowd. I have lost all confidence in Samsung storage, and will be migrating at great expense to Lenovo. Other evidence is the Serial Number and QR code on the casing-none of which are of any use. Samsung have no way of checking the SN. The QR code is bogus, and does not register on my iPhone reader. All a bit disconcerting, since we entrust our valuable files to that company. A tough pill to swallow since I went all in with Samsung SSD over other brands.sam