Why do you recommend the T5 instead of the T7?Īccording to a lot of reviews and tests, the T7 may have higher speed claims but it tends to bog down with larger video files. I own many of these and use them all the time for recording and editing 4K ProRes files. Not as fast or rugged as my top pick, but still plenty quick for many and a steal of a price. Transfer Speeds: Up to 1050 MB/s Samsung T5 Budget-Friendly Option Get Latest Price on Amazon Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1/3.0/2.0) If you want a reliable and consistent drive at a great price and don't need the fastest speeds available, look no further. These little drives have become rather ubiquitous, and for good reason. The absolute best convergence of speed, size, ruggedness, and price.
SanDisk Extreme Portable V2 NEW Top Pick For 2022! Get Latest Price on Amazon
If you are editing multi-cam footage, using formats greater than 4K30, and/or using a higher quality codec (uncompressed or higher qualities of RAW, for example), then read/write speeds greater than 1000 MB/s are recommended. If you are editing single camera footage at 4K30 or less and and using a fairly standard codec (H.264, H.265/HEVC, ProRes, DnXHD/DnXHR, or compressed RAW formats like BRAW or ProRes RAW), then all of the drives on this list should work well. If you want or need a longer cable, be sure to get a very high quality cable or you will potentially see speeds drop the longer the cable gets. The shorter cables help maintain the speeds the drive manufacturers claim. Many of these drives come with short cables for a reason. If you have a computer that only supports USB then some, or all, of the drives in this list may not perform to their maximum performance claims. If you have a computer that supports Thunderbolt 3 or 4 then you should get the maximum performance from every drive in this list. Many times your computer ports will be the limiting factor for speed and compatibility.įor example, if your computer has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 capability (up to 10Gbps) and you purchase a drive with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 capability (up to 20Gbps) then you will probably only be able to get about half the read/write speeds the drive claims. Know what port(s) your computer offers, then find drives that are compatible with that specific interface. Some Thunderbolt cables do not support USB-C.Some USB-C cables do not support Thunderbolt.USB-C USB ports can usually only support USB.USB-C Thunderbolt ports can usually support both Thunderbolt and USB.USB-C supports both USB and Thunderbolt.Remember - you will probably never regret having too much space AND too much speed. This is a list of the best external solid state drives (SSDs) I recommend and use for video editing.