MSI Datamag 20Gbps External SSD Review: Super-Fast USB Storage
MSI's Datamag Portable SSD Is A Pocketable Terabyte Of 20-Gbps Storage
| MSI Datamag 20Gbps Portable SSD: Pricing TBA MSI's first external SSD offers NVMe-like performance in a compact and attractive aluminum chassis.
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MSI's been selling internal storage for a while now, and its Spatium M580 FROZR was one of the fastest SSDs we've ever tested. What about external storage, though? If you wanted bring-along terabytes, you were out of luck, because the company hadn't launched any external SSDs—until now. Meet the "Datamag", MSI's first USB SSD. It comes with a 20-Gbps USB Type-C interface, an attractive aluminum frame, a convenient loop for lanyard use, and a unique magnetic mounting system.
Despite the 20-Gbps USB interface, the Datamag isn't quite able to fully utilize it, topping out around 1600 MB/second in MSI's own testing. That's still extremely speedy for external storage, though, and we're certainly not complaining. In its infographic above, MSI notes that the drive is "universally compatible," and indeed, we cross-tested it with a couple of game consoles, a couple of smartphones, and multiple PCs, where it performed flawlessly.
One key note that MSI mentions is that the drive is "ProRes / RAW Ready." This means that the drive is well-suited for capturing uncompressed video, whether in Apple or other formats, like Blackmagic or RED. This drive is actually particularly well-suited for such content creation use, given its ability to be attached to the back of an iPhone using its built-in magnet.
The MSI Datamag 20Gbps comes with two USB Type-C cables of different lengths.
In the small paper box, you get the drive itself, two USB Type-C cables, and a USB Type-A to Type-C adaptor. The inclusion of two USB Type-C cables is convenient, but rather than a short and a long cable, it's more like a short and a shorter cable. We would probably have preferred the longer cable to be longer than it is, but this is the very first of first-world problems.
The rubber ring on the bottom helps keep the Datamag from sliding around when attached magnetically.
There's not much to see on the bottom of the drive, but you can peep the ribs in the aluminum frame. MSI says that these are to help keep the SSD cool, but we didn't really notice it heating up much; we suspect the original designer put those there to help with grip, considering the surface of the drive is pretty slick even with its grooved face. The rubber ring around the base of the drive serves a dual purpose in limiting slippage as well as marking where the magnetic ring is.
The Datamag includes two adhesive rings to easily attach it to your devices.
That's right: the MSI Datamag is called that because it is magnetic. The back of the drive includes a quite-powerful magnet that will allow you to attach the drive to anything ferrous. That doesn't include most laptops or phones, so MSI sends along two adhesive steel rings that you can stick to whatever you want. Simply peel the backing and attach the ring to your device, and then the Datamag will snap right into place.
We didn't apply the adhesive rings to anything, but we did test the Datamag's magnet by sticking it onto everything in the house that it would attach to. As we noted above, the magnet is pretty powerful and eager to snap to anything ferrous. It won't pinch you, like some of the bigger neodymium magnets, but it's quite secure when attached to a surface.
MSI Datamag 20Gbps External SSD Performance
In order to test the performance of the MSI Datamag 20Gbps Portable SSD, we enlisted the help of some benchmarks and real world tests. First up is ATTO, a disk benchmark that measures sequential transfer speeds across a specific volume length with various block sizes. It measures transfer rates for both reads and writes and graphs them out in an easily interpreted chart. ATTO's workloads are sequential in nature and measure bandwidth, rather than I/O response time, access latency, etc.
In ATTO, we see the Datamag struggle a bit in read throughput at low transfer sizes. This is clearly an SSD tuned for sequential throughput, and as soon as the transfer size hits 64KB, we see the Datamag climb into the upper echelons of performance. It still falls behind the two ADATA drives, but it matches the rated read throughput of 1600 MB/sec and even exceeds the rated write throughput considerably.
Next up are some numbers with SiSoft SANDRA, the the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. Here, we used the Physical Disk test suite and provide the results from our comparison SSDs...
In SANDRA, we see the Datamag deliver results exactly in line with what MSI promised: a little over 1600 MB/sec in reads, and a little over 1500 MB/sec in writes. It's running a little behind the two ADATA drives in our comparison suite, but well ahead of the Samsung SSDs in this comparison.
CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers using uncompressible data. It provides a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.
In CrystalDiskMark's sequential throughput tests, the Datamag offers up a very consistent performance once again in line with what MSI said to expect from this drive. It gives us the best performance we've ever seen from a portable SSD in the 512K transfer test, maintaining its performance from the standard sequential benchmark. This is a great result for MSI.
In the random tests, MSI's new SSD appoints itself pretty well. It would be easy to look at the QD32 results and sneer, but all that data really tells you is that this SSD isn't the best choice for extremely intense random access workloads, which, well, duh—it's a USB SSD. Don't host databases off USB SSDs, kids. In the more "real-world" 4K Q1T1 test, the drive gives us comparable performance to the other NVMe-over-USB SSDs that we've tested.
This screenshot shows file copy performance on a 3.3GB file (the installer for the Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail benchmark). We had to quickly snap the screenshot before the window vanished because the file copy of the 4GB archive was done in about 3 seconds. This is seriously speedy storage.
That is, as long as you have the requisite USB 20Gbps connection and working UASP on your system. A Thunderbolt port will probably work too, in USB downward-compatibility mode. You can use the Datamag on any system with USB 2.0 or better, but getting these kinds of performance results is going to require a system that supports the correct connectivity. Even still, the Datamag will cap out any slower USB connection easily.
MSI Datamag 20Gbps Portable SSD: Our Top Take-Aways
What is there to say about the Datamag? It's a tiny, sleek portable SSD that offers up a million megabytes of very rapid storage. With this kind of speed, you could easily host applications off this SSD, or as MSI points out, use it for recording ProRes footage from your iPhone or other formats from a mirrorless camera. The magnetic backing gives some versatility to the Datamag, in terms of where you can put it, and we have no complaints about its aesthetics, the included accessories, or the feature set.
Ultimately, our opinion of the Datamag is going to come down to its pricing. MSI hasn't told us what the final cost of the Datamag will be when it arrives in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. Whether or not we can truly recommend the drive will depend on what kind of premium MSI decides to attach to its unique features. Still, this is a fully capable portable SSD that, as long as MSI doesn't go wild with the MSRP, should be an excellent option in the market, delivering fantastic performance and features for anyone seeking speedy external storage.
