SanDisk is announcing the availability of a host of external flash drives at Computex 2015. Two of them are being marketed as external portable SSDs with a Type-C interface, while the other two are standard flash drives.

The SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD is the obvious star of the lineup. It comes in three capacities, 480 GB ($400), 960 GB ($600) and 1.92 TB ($1000). The SSD is housed inside a compact aluminum casing. All of them carry three year warranties. The family comes with a maximum performance rating of 850 MBps and carries a USB 3.1 interface. Both Type-A and Type-C cables are supplied with the unit.

Aspects of interest include whether the internal flash is organized in a RAID-0 fashion with SATA interfaces, or whether it is a PCIe based unit behind a USB 3.1 controller. Kristian is at Computex and will likely be having some hands-on time with the device to gather the answers

The SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD is available in 120 GB ($100), 240 GB ($150) and 480 GB ($240) capacities and claims maximum performance of 415 MBps via a USB 3.0 interface. Both Portable SSDs are designed for rugged environments and feature SanDisk SecureAccess software with 128-bit AES encryption.

The Ultra Fit 128 GB and Ultra 256 GB are standard USB 3.0 thumb drives. The Ultra Fit is more like the Mushkin Atom in size, but has double the capacity. The unit is priced at $120. The maximum performance is of the order of 130 MBps. The Ultra Fit 256 GB is rated for 100 MBps and is priced at $200.

Both the Ultra thumb drives carry a five year warranty and include encryption with the SecureAccess software. In addition, these drives come with a year's subscription to RescuePRO software for data recovery.

Comments Locked

10 Comments

View All Comments

  • Michael Bay - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Those external SSDs look nice, but the price is absolutely atrocious.
  • R3MF - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    this is the second sandisk 2tb ssd product announced at the start of computex.

    hopefully the start of a flood of 2tb announcments, in order that 1tb units lose their halo pricing.
  • nathanddrews - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Agreed. The delivery of 2TB consumer SSDs has been, quite literally, retarded. With 1TB models originally being at or above $1,000 and now down to $350-400 on a regular basis, it's really strange that there have been no 2TB models in the $700-1,000 range. Obviously the 1TB models sold well enough at that price to justify their continued production.

    Maybe it's a lack of OEM demand due to the heavy-handed push of cloud storage on consumer products? All I know is that the first 1TB SSDs started selling about 8 years ago. That's a **** eternity.
  • IceClaec - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Has it really been 8 years? The first one I knew of was from Foremay back in mid-2010, the earliest "consumer" model I remember is an OCZ drive from 2011 sometime. My memory is probably failing me though.
  • IceClaec - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Actually, I'll correct myself, earliest I could find was this:
    http://gizmodo.com/5128280/worlds-first-1-tb-25-ss...

    So 6 years from the first enterprise 1TB model. There probably just isn't enough demand in the consumer space for the 2TB models yet, especially since SSD's (unfortunately) still remain a novelty for most people outside of ultrabooks. There needs to be a bigger push for them in the desktop market I think.
  • MikeMurphy - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    They need to have a healthy profit margin on such a niche product.
  • fokka - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    i don't think we even had 1tb _hard drives_ 8 years ago, if we're talking about the 2,5" format.
  • philipma1957 - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Welcome news a 2tb ssd. Of course I want it just to break it open and use it as a boot drive.
    I have 1.2tb I want to have it on a ssd and have that as my only drive in some small form builds. 1000 is too much. The other day samsung had 500gb ssd and a 8gb stick of ram for 185 that is 740 for 2 tb and 32gb in ram.

    I would love a 2tb ssd in the 500 to 600 price range.
  • 3ogdy - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link

    Hopefully, these ones don't become read-only after a less-than-modest period of use(not even a year). It would be a shame, given the capacity. It would also be a shame for the company since, last I checked over there at SanDisk, the blame was on the customer. Bad products and bad customer service. Never again.
  • vnangia - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link

    I don't know if they've done anything to improve the standby power draw of the Ultra Fit, but the USB3-64GB device that I have is a battery killer. It makes my normally 8-hour+ MacBook Air battery life a 3-hour life if it's left plugged in, even unmounted. Standby time dropped from a week to under a day. Please ask if you do get a chance.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now