“You never know when you’ll need it again.” This is the siren song of your typical data hoarder — a title that I’ll wear as a badge of honor, as I have my many years of photos, invoices, life admin, A-roll and B-roll captures, and more at my fingertips.
But what is the best drive you can get for this? Well, as I use the SanDisk Extreme Portable for my out-and-about adventures, I’ve stuck with the same brand for my desk setup and picked the SanDisk Desk Drive.
Packing elite speeds and impressive reliability into its tiny puck size, this is best for the data hoarders who love to keep that desk looking clean. That’s not to say it's perfect, as that $379 list price is steep. But think of this as choosing between that cheap used station wagon that will break down after a few hours on the road vs picking up a supercar.
You could always go for the value option, but this is a zero-regrets option. Plus, you’ll never find a $100 discount on a supercar!
Manual or Auto? It doesn’t matter!
Before I get into the real meat of why I love this drive, just one quick heads-up. Chances are you’re used to software that comes with an SSD feeling like a bit of an afterthought that you just quickly erase and get to using your drive. Don’t worry, I’m exactly the same!
However, with Acronis True Image’s slickness and pure automation power, you’ll be left reconsidering this decision. Put simply, it has the ability to back up literally everything on your computer on a scheduled basis and clone internal drives. This gives you a way to recover files that you may lose.
Note that there is one big limitation that may be a bugbear to some — if you are a hybrid data hoarder between your SSD and cloud drive like Google Drive, you can’t make this the main home of all your info. The software isn’t capable of pulling that data into an offline backup. But for those who just need a quick and easy way to back up and recover any info they’ve got, Acronis is a great option on this drive.
Sleek speed demon
So for context, I have the 8TB model, as I have around 6 years of YouTube captures, Twitch stream recordings, RAW photos, and well over a decade of documents, music, and (most importantly, of course) memes in my offline vault. Whether it’s a picture of the Toyota Celica rally car I took at Goodwood, a piece of B-roll from Gadget Show Live 2011, or even a motivational Doge meme, everything is at my fingertips.
And it’s proven its worth many more times than I expected. Honestly, I believed it would be nary a glance that the drive would get for some moments of reminiscing. But you never realize how many clutch moments you have when you’re scrambling to find a file from over 10 years ago until you experience the convenience of it with a ton of storage in a puck like the Desk Drive.
On top of that, for what you’re getting, this is pretty damn zippy. Of course, with this being an external drive, set your expectations accordingly — I’m never going to get the same blistering speeds of my M3 Pro MacBook Pro’s internal SSD.
That said, though, with around 880 MB/s read and 900 MB/s write speeds when that USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface is under sustained pressure, the Desk Drive is ready to handle massive files with ease. In fact, running a Final Cut Pro library file entirely from the drive gives a near-identical speedy experience to when I use the MacBook Pro’s internal drive — instant playback of a 4K timeline with no dropped frames.
Hideaway with a hitch
So let’s address the tiny elephant in the room. Yes, this is technically a little big for an external SSD. But when I compare it to the old desk hard drives I had, the SanDisk Desk Drive is tiny at 3.9 x 3.9 x 1.6 inches — plus that 0.6-pound weight makes it easy to move around and conceal in your setup (like I did by sticking it underneath).
Even if you didn’t have the option to hide it, there’s no shame in showing this off, as this award-winning design is quite the utilitarian stunner in my opinion (I love the dynamic flash of red around the middle).
However, with this design and purpose, I’ve got just a couple of things you should know about. Not deal breakers at all, but just some heads ups. First off, this is a desk drive, so you need to use a power socket.
I know that may be a bit of a “duh” moment, but honestly with the speeds you can get from other far smaller drives without a power cable, this confuses me. From SanDisk’s own Extreme Portable drive, I can get 200 MB/s faster read and write speeds, and there’s no additional juice going to this. What is that current actually doing?
And second, while not necessarily anything to worry about in long-term usage (the 3-year warranty will help with that too), but the drive does get a little warm with sustained use. Speeds don’t dip, but you may feel it heat up, which understandably concerned me at first.
Outlook
If the above two issues are not dealbreakers to you, what you’ve got here is one of the best desk SSDs that money can buy at an even cheaper price for Black Friday!
SanDisk’s Desk Drive is an alluring puck packed to the gills with storage capacity to handle even the biggest hoarders out there. Whether you’re a remote worker looking to keep more data offline, or a homebody who wants that security of keeping things backed up, this is a long-term investment that will last you a long time to come.
P.S. There’s no UK Black Friday deal on the Desk Drive yet, but given the price cut I’m seeing in the US, it’s fair to anticipate that there will be a saving coming to my fellow Brits.
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