Samsung T7 Portable SSD, 1TB External Solid State Drive, Speeds Up to 1,050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen 2, Reliable Storage for Gaming, Students, Professionals, MU-PC1T0T/AM, Gray

I’m not the most tech savvy and wanted backup on an external drive for graphics heavy work and photos. I remember the challenge of making my last external drive compatible and especially deleting old files, so I was a little anxious trying to find a solution.In case it helps someone else, I work primarily on an iPad Pro in a design program (Affinity) and needed a backup storage solution besides the Cloud. I didn’t really want a second cloud solution to be backup and can’t use an external drive with the iPad. I also have a MacBook, which has massive storage, but can’t be backed up to ICloud, while the ipad can backup to iCloud. My workaround for immediate file saving is to create shared files which are stored on iCloud (I call them Desktop) on the ipad. Desktop is stored on the hard drive of the MacBook and gets updated via ICloud device sharing even though I can’t initiate an iCloud backup from the MacBook.Inside Desktop I have labeled files as usual and a parent file for graphic design from the Ipad, broken down into 100+ named project files and sub files. Whenever I save from the ipad, I save to Desktop (in iCloud) and then choose the appropriate file within Desktop to save. This way I have the folders on the hard drive of the MacBook as interim backup, and am working around not having iCloud backup storage available when I’m on the MacBook. The T7 comes in as secure and portable physical data storage.The T7 drive is the hard copy backup of the files shared between the iPad and MacBook, I think necessary in case of some dreadful software issue, fire, or other unanticipated loss of access. I plan to have more than one as soon as I can afford it, to rotate.Again hopefully this may help someone like me who spent some solid hours figuring out a better way to secure my data and workaround the Mac user experience.Since I am wanted to do manual backups I needed the process to be easy so I wouldn’t avoid doing them, for obvious reasons. Though we don’t need to get into it here I don’t want to use Time Machine on my Mac to back up the disk. So I had to figure out something else.The T7 is great, easy to use, no time at all to install, self explanatory pretty much. I dragged folders full of work from the desktop (yes I like to see them, don’t judge) to backup. The initial backup was very quick and painless, most files were a few seconds. The graphics heavy files perhaps took about 10 minutes? These are massive, not a problem, and may have been quicker than this, I expected it to take more time. (My last iCloud backup was over 13 hours of anxiety - I kid you not and have since deleted almost all the working files from the drawing app after saving them in Desktop so they happen more quickly now, but still, I thought this was a daylong project).I experimented with dragging an old file to the trash from the T7 disk pane, and it worked as expected. I had to read online about how to go about copying my photos library (Mac) to disk, but it wasn’t hard. I have over 40,000 images, and it took about 20 minutes as I recall, if longer probably max 25. I tested the backup by remaining in the open pane and opening the photo files, which worked. Amazingly all this data barely touches the capacity of the drive, maybe 10% or less of a TB? Minuscule, anyway. 2 TB is overkill for me, especially since old files can easily be deleted.(This may be different for a user in Time Machine because it keeps multiple versions of your backups, and maybe more settings etc. which can take up a lot of space?- not tech savvy, as I said, but I had trouble with my older system and Time Machine and being unable to delete backups which rendered my backup disk unusable, and I didn’t want to deal with this again even though it’s less convenient to do it manually).I think the T7 drive will fail before I need more space, which is a great problem to have. I’m planning to get another disk (with less storage) and use it as a failsafe backup- ideally storing it in a safe or out of the house just in case, and keeping a rotation to protect against loss.On the critical end, I’d love it and think it would be much safer for data if the user pane of the T7 was visibly different from the one on my desktop. It’s the same color, font, everything, as my desktop window (maybe that’s just how these things work?), which makes me triple check when I’m deleting or updating. Don’t do this on a Friday night after an adult beverage….I’d also love it if there was a simple tutorial available when you opened the disk up, just for ease of first use, a how to (experimented with a throwaway file deleting because it wasn’t obvious that dragging files to the trash would work) for most, and as a reminder for others. I hesitate getting one for my parents because of this. But I’m happy and will buy another, looking forward to the peace of mind it gives me.

This Samsung portable SSD has been an absolute game-changer for my storage needs. The speed is incredible—transferring large files is lightning fast, and it handles 4K video, photos, and backups with no lag at all.The compact, sleek design makes it super easy to carry in my bag or even a pocket. It feels durable and well-built, with a solid metal casing that gives me confidence it can handle everyday bumps.Setup was a breeze—just plug and play on my Windows 11 pc.If you're looking for fast, portable, and reliable storage, this SSD is worth every penny. Samsung nailed it with this one!

I interact with portable drives daily. I move TBs worth of data around every week onto a variety of devices. When I'm asked, these T7 drives are always on my recommended list. I've seen about 40 of them and we haven't seen one fail yet. Even when we had an issue with one, we were able to use the provided software to get it up and running without data loss.Transfer speeds are as advertised. If you are carrying a drive around on your person or in a car, I'd recommend the shield version of these drives especially if you can catch a sale. These aren't the cheapest drives out there, but they're very reliable in my experience. We have a few of these that are over 5 years old without issues.

Pretty much an industry standard product at this point along with the internal 990s (though PCs are garbage). I have 3 or 4 of these in various sizes and generations (t5, t7)The 2TB used to be like $200 minimum so I was stoked to get it for $150ishIf you have an issue with one of these, 95% of the time, it’s your fault.

For those of us used to the standard backup hard drive, you won't believe this one. It's literally the size of a credit card, but of course thicker. Sooo much smaller than the disc-based portable hard drives. And much, much quicker on data transfer. I bought this for my daughter's new laptop for nursing school, but I'm so impressed with it I'm buying a few for myself. Super happy!

I have 4 of these … I bought the 3 of them over the last few years and they all worked pretty well, almost at the advertised r/w speed, overheating is a problem but that’s what it is for this type of compact portable ssds. Until recently I bought the 4th one just because it’s almost 50% off - This one does seems to have quality issue, not sure it’s related to this batch but after a few round of full disk size writes, it seems I can no longer write to it, write speed stays at 1MB/s. This seems to happen only if I format it to exfat. Reformatting it to ntfs seems to fixed the issue, I’m not sure if this is because a tiny sector corrupted or if the issue will comeback. Anyway, overall ok product but be careful of getting lucky with a potentially defective one like this.

Easy to set up and use. Fast writing with C-USB. Bought to store photo library that could be passed on to other family members.