Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD Review: Ridiculously Fast External Storage

Name: Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD
Brand: Samsung

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 10:00 AM EDT

EFD Software's HD Tune is described on the company's web site as such: "HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more." The latest version of the benchmark added temperature statistics and improved support for SSDs, among a few other updates and fixes.

HD Tune v5.50

More Info Here: http://www.hdtune.com

The Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD put up the best sequential transfers here as well, and its read latency was the best of the group too. However, its write latency trailed some of the internal drives, which isn't surprising considering the overhead associated with its external interface.

Tags: Samsung, SSD, Storage, Thunderbolt, nvme, samsung x5

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com