Size, durability, endurance and warranty
Most portable SSDs are impressively compact and light, so they won’t be challenging to tuck in a bag (or even a pocket) and take on the road. We note below if any drive is bulkier than normal.
Nothing we’re discussing matters if your drive can’t survive in the long run. It’s hard to definitively state which external SSDs are the most dependable, but we scoured through user reviews and feedback while researching this guide to ensure none of our picks show a trend of catastrophic errors. If there was too much smoke around a particular model, we steered clear. We ruled out certain drives from SanDisk and Western Digital, for instance, after reports from Ars Technica and The Verge noted an issue that led to data loss (and lawsuits) in 2023.
That said, one of the big reasons you’d buy an SSD in general is its superior durability. Because it has no moving mechanical components inside, an SSD has far fewer avenues to failure than an external hard drive. You still don’t want to be careless with them, but an accidental drop shouldn’t be the end of the world.
Some portable SSDs build on this inherent ruggedness with plastic or rubberized casings and more robust waterproofing. These aren’t necessary for everyone, but if you’re a frequent traveler or someone who often works outdoors, there are choices for you.
Still, all drives can fail. If you have any sort of data you’d be distraught to lose, you should back it up consistently, then make a second backup, ideally with a cloud service. Along those protective lines, we also took note of the warranty policy for each drive we tested. Just about all of them are backed for either three or five years; of course, longer is better.
Encryption and software
It’s not uncommon to store sensitive data on a portable SSD, so some models offer extra security features like hardware-based encryption — i.e., direct scrambling of data stored on the drive itself — built-in keypads and fingerprint readers to guard against unauthorized access if the drive is lost or stolen. While not top requirements, perks like these are certainly good to have. Some SSDs also come with companion software to further manage the drive. The best of those can be handy to have around, but we wouldn’t label them essential.
How we test external SSDs
Unfortunately, we did not have access to a device that can make full use of USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, and Thunderbolt 4/USB4 speeds interchangeably, so we had to split our testing across multiple devices, including an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and an Alienware gaming PC running Windows 11. Because of this, we primarily compared the portable SSDs within each “class” against one another. Before switching OSes, we reformatted each drive to each platform’s standard file system format: APFS for macOS and NTFS for Windows.
After researching which SSDs had enough positive feedback to be worth testing in the first place, we put 13 drives through a range of synthetic and “real-world” benchmark tests. On Windows, these included CrystalDiskMark, PCMark 10’s Data Drive Benchmark, and 3DMark’s gaming-focused Storage Benchmark. On macOS, we used AmorphousDiskMark (effectively a Mac version of CrystalDiskMark), BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, and ATTO Disk Benchmark.
We also timed how long it took for each drive to read and write a custom 70GB folder filled with roughly 11,500 different files, including photos, videos, music files, PDFs, and other large and small data types scattered across numerous subfolders. We performed multiple passes for each test to avoid irregularities, and we kept track of each SSD’s heat levels over the course of the whole suite. Our process wasn’t a perfect science, but it gave us a general sense of how each drive compares to other models in its price and performance range.
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