I was recently in need of a new portable backup drive that uses directly a USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 port to go with my new MacBook Pro. I saw a few SSD options and asked my University store. I was propose the tiny, 51g (1.8 oz) 2TB Samsung T5 drive. If like me, you have been using computer for a long time, boy is this unit small for 2TB capacity. I still remember a time were we would leave the home computer ON once we have program a game (from a printout you would get in a specialized computer magazine) because there was no saving option…
Then came the Dataset (my first computer was a Commodore), followed by the 5.25″ soft disk…
The very first hard drive I bought cost the same thing at the T5 unit shown above: a 20 MB (yes 20 megabytes) Jasmine DirectDrive for my MacPlus. This was a revolution at the time. The two units, the T5 and the DirectDrive 20 are shown below in a comparative pictures (yes I still have it and yes it is still working!!!) – click on the image for a high quality viewing
The Jasmine Drive was the state-of-the-art in home computing at the time with its SCSI interface; it was the size of a medium pizza box. Looking at the picture, you can see that the SCSI connectors (right picture, left side) itself is bigger than the T5 drive for 100 000 times more capacity in the latter! The transfer speed of the T5 SSD is rated for 540 MB/s (over 25 times the size of the Jasmine drive per seconds) and my tests certainly confirm close to 500 MB/s sustain transfer rate.
This is not the fastest external drive you can buy nowadays. If you are prepared to pay over 2000$ (CAD), you can get 2600 MB/s transfer rate (like the OWC envoy pro and others). Overall, the 2 TB Samsung T5 SSD is a perfect travel companion for my MacBook and it fits even the tinniest pocket.
Ruminating... 