Crucial X9 1TB Portable External SSD - Up to 1050MB/s, External Solid State Drive, Works with PlayStation, Xbox, PC and Mac, USB-C 3.2 - CT1000X9SSD902

Small, fast and powerful really excellent purchase, small enough to take anywhere but great transfer speeds and a solid build quality. Very impressed this was my first Crucial product but certainly won't be my last

This handy device gives you instant access to a massive amount of extra memory, to either use to store - as a back-up - or transfer your data to another device. A few years ago I bought a similar (functional) device, but that was the size of a shoe box, you had to power it from 240VAC, and it wasn’t compatible with all my devices. This little gadget is cheap, fits into the palm of my hand, data transfer is instantaneous and it takes its power directly from the USB. What’s not to like? Oh and it’s a fraction of the price!

I needed an easy way to transfer large files between 3 different computers and I wanted something with decent capacity (1TB is plenty for what I'm doing) and was very small and lightweight.When I ordered this I didn't realise just how small it is. It's tiny and it weighs nothing. It's USB-C so you're covered for most modern devices and it's an SSD so it's fast. It's not as fast as having an nvme type SSD directly on your motherboard, for sure, but it's plenty fast enough for my needs.You can see from my photo just how small this is. I've put my Sennheiser earpods next to it to show the scale.The case is solid and feels very protective, although I'm not going to drop it on purpose to test it! The specs suggests it's pretty tough and feeling the case I can believe it.I kind of wish I'd gone for the 2TB or even 4TB version just for future proofing, but the reality is that 1TB is way bigger than I actually need, since I'm not using it for long term storage. I'm transferring around 50gb when I have a working session so there's absolutely tons of space with the 1TB version.At this stage I have no way of knowing what the longevity is like, but I've had Crucial prodcuts before and always been pleased with them.

For most people, the lure of an external SSD over a traditional mechanical hard drive, is speed. Crucial X8 boasts up to 1050Mb/sec transfer rate when copying files using it. Crucial's claim may well be true, given the drive is essentially a USB type C device with a backwards compatible type A converter for use with all legacy USB ports. BTW, type A ports are what the vast majority of any USB equipped PC's come with.USB type C's primary benefit is speed. Type C connections are significantly faster than USB 3 type A connections. Confusingly, the USB naming system changed a few years back to further confound consumers. The basic USB 3.0 standard now becomes USB 3.2 gen 1. Take note of the Gen. 1 as this is important in terms of overall speed. The Gen. 1 suffix denotes basic USB 3.0 speeds of up to 5 Gigabits - NOT Giga Bytes - per second. Many get confused over Gigabits and Gigabytes, with the latter perhaps being more familiar to people and thus greatly misleading. So many times I've seen and heard people say: "Yeah, it's a one Gigabyte per second speed." In fact, in order to work out how many Gigabytes per second one Gigabit is, you divide it by eight. So, one Gigabit = 125 megabytes per second. This is vastly slower than a true one Gigabyte per second, given that traditionally 1 Gigabyte = 1,024 Megabytes. Most determine one Gigabit = 1,000 megabytes per second and that's close enough to not worry about minor naming scheme differences.Anyway, traditional USB 3, now USB 3.2 gen 1, tops out at 5 Gigabits per second, or, to put it into perhaps more relatable terms, 625 megabytes per second. However, this speed is unattainable as the USB standard has overheads and other design elements that restricts this speed to close to 3.2 Gigabits max throughput.Still with me? ... Great!Now, using the traditional USB 3 connection via the supplied adaptor, the very best sustainable transfer speeds I've seen are around 225 megabytes/sec, or about a quarter the advertised "up to" speed claim. To be fair, I do not have a USB Type C port to connect the drive to. If I did, I suspect performance would increase significantly. bear in mind that although USB type C ports are now becoming more mainstream, it's likely you won't have one if your PC is more than three years or so old. The point of all this is to manage expectations as to the performance of this drive. In daily use using a regular USB 3.0/USB 3.2 gen 1 port, I get about twice the transfer speed of my Seagate 1Tb 2.5inch external hard drive which manages a respectable 120 megabytes/second average transfer speed using Windows 10.For me, the main reason I went for this drive was it's low price (just £47 at time of purchase) and the fact it was an SSD, and thus had no moving parts. This meant that it was far more robust as a portable device than a traditional hard drive with its spinning platters.Yes, it's faster than the old external hard drive, but using regular USB 3.0 type A connections, it's no speed demon, so don't expect it to get anywhere close to the touted performance. Of course, the "up to" phrase so often used in advertising is a best case scenario, so buyer beware if you[re purchasing this solely on it's speed claims.Otherwise, this is a nicely built drive, feels solid and weightier than I had thought a solid state drive would be. The only other minus here is the ridiculously short included data cable. I don't know it's precise length, but it's approximately a foot (30cm)at best. My tower case PC sees the drive having to dangle from the front mounted port.Overall, this is a nice, solid external drive that will outperform any mechanical hard drive at this price point. My unit came pre-installed with two files that were links to web pages to, I assume, download the free software from the likes of Acronis and some photo app that I can't recall the name of. Useless to me, but there all the same for those interested. I believe there is a third file which linksw you to Crucial.Finally, the drive comes pre-formatted using the X-FAT file system. This is a highly portable file system that will permit use with Mac or PC. Other devices, such as Android tablets etc, may not be able to access an X-FAT formatted drive. However, the unit can easily be re-formatted using NTFS if needed.Fast, but nowhere near the claimed speeds for probably the majority of users.

I tested this using the USB 3 A-type adapter I ordered with it and got speeds in excess of 300MBps read and write, which compared to any memory device I've tested is by far the fastest USB 3 device I've tested.The reason I tested using the USB 3 adapter is that I got this to connect to my wifi router to use as a home cloud drive, which doesn't have USB C socket, and it's working superbly.It's effectively replacing my home cloud drive: originally had one of those western digital 'mycloud' devices, which has always been quite slow... then wd pulled support for the product leaving owners with a non internet facing home cloud brick as they shut down their servers... then the awful western digital device just fails constantly now, hence investing in this Crucial X6, and it has been an absolute winner in all regards. A perfect replacement.Being solid state it's quiet, fast, compact and runs fairly cool even when dumping onto it the complete backup from my original piece of rubbish (never going near WD again by the way).I've had a few Crucial devices in recent years; to name a few... five SATA SSD's to upgrade laptops, three sets of RAM for laptops, three M3 SSDs to again upgrade storage capacity of laptops... and all have been Crucial and all are still performing to the highest possible standards. Fast and reliable, and this X6 pocket sized gem is doing the same.For under a hundred quid for the 2TB device it's a winner all round in my experience, and given my experience with the Crucial brand in recent years I'm pretty certain this one is also going to be a worthwhile investment. Full marks in all regards.

Fast lightweight drive. I can securely move around a lot of data without worry. Very reliable. Easy to use, just plug and play. Totally silent and cool.