SSDs are firmly entrenched in the external storage and portability market. They are faster than HDDs, are not afraid of shocks, but you cannot call them compact. Seagate has addressed this issue by releasing the tiny Seagate One Touch SSD. Let’s take a closer look at it.
Most users most often use USB flash drives to transfer and store data. They are compact and easy to handle. But copying files of tens of gigabytes onto them is a real torment. Just because they have write speeds that rarely exceed 25MB / s, you can use SSD drives installed in a portable box with USB 3.1 support as a solution to the issue. But just you need to be careful with them because inexpensive models have “weak” controllers, and in case of abnormal situations (incorrect shutdown or power problems), they can easily damage the box electronics or the memory of the SSD itself.
You can also read: Silicon Power SSD Slim S55 Review: Fast and reliable
Therefore, in order to save yourself from such risks, it is worth choosing specialized SSD solutions with high-reliability controllers. One of these drives with the “tender” name Seagate One Touch SSD 1TB has been in our test lab, and we are ready to tell you about its features and test results.
Unusual design
The first thing you pay attention to when unpacking the device is its very compact size. Despite the impressive 1 TB storage capacity, the manufacturer has managed to “shrink” the case size to almost half of the standard 2.5-inch SSD. Its dimensions are practically equal in width to a bank card, and in length, it is shorter by almost 11 mm. The thickness is also quite small – 10 mm.
Minimize the weight of the drive. Its case was made entirely of white plastic. The top cover made of synthetic fabric with a canvas texture adds a zest to the design. It looks stylish and practical – stains on such a surface are not visible, and fingerprints do not remain.
On the edge of the top cover, the strap with the company logo puffs up defiantly. Some users suggest using it as a loop for attaching to a carabiner. Attached one to your backpack (preferably in an inner pocket so as not to lose it), and the drive is always with you.
The lower part of the lid also has a texture but an oblique corrugation directly on the plastic. The hole for the SSD status LED is located on the same edge as the USB 3.1 cable connector. The set includes a standard version of the interface cable with a USB 3.0 plug. Length 230 mm also in a cloth braid.
Speed test: synthetic and practical
We tested an external Seagate One Touch SSD 1TB on a Windows 10 laptop and connected it to a USB 3.0 port. The speed measurements were impressive. The high performance is because the drive uses a high-speed NAND flash memory and a high-quality controller. All this allows you to get a consistently high speed in practical file copying. Moreover, the data transfer rate does not drop even when the cache buffer is exhausted.
So, when transferring 13 GB of video files of about 3.8 GB each from HDD (5200), the speed throughout the entire process was kept at 104 MB / s (screenshot on the left). When copying similar files from an internal SSD to an external SSD, the speed was over 227MB / s. Very fast!
Synthetic speed tests in popular benchmarks showed the same high speed for reading and writing data, comparable to the speeds of SSDs connected via the SATA bus. The Crystal DiskMark benchmark trial showed results for reading 419 MB / s and writing a little lower – 404 MB / s. In another benchmark ATTO Disk Benchmark in similar measurements, the results were significantly higher – 459 MB / s for reading and 442 MB / s for writing.
Another popular benchmark, AS SSD, made it possible to measure not only the read and write speed: 383 and 404 MB / s, respectively, but also find out the data access time – 0.370 for writing and 0.330 for reading. Good performance for pluggable media.
In general, these results confirmed one of the essential functions of such external SSD drives: the ability to fully use them for full-fledged work at high speeds directly from the medium itself.
Supplied software
When you first connect to a PC, Windows will open the disk contents to you, where you will see a separate folder for MAC and at the root – software for Windows. After running the executable file, you will be taken to the browser page to register and download the Seagate Toolkit software. This is a compact set of tools that allows you to back up from a PC to external media in an automatic mode, and if necessary, and restore data.
It is noteworthy that the disk was originally formatted with the exFAT file system, which, in theory, should be supported by mobile devices. However, Android smartphones do not transfer it and require formatting to Fat32. If you intend to backup photos and videos from your mobile, follow this operation, and you will have a giant portable storage at your fingertips. However, in this case, the size of a single file copied to disk should be less than 4 GB.
Conclusion on the product
The portable Seagate One Touch SSD 1TB is interesting primarily for its attractive case design and extremely compact size, comparable to USB flash drives. It will allow you to quickly make a backup of data from a PC or transfer large files from one computer to another. The media’s high speeds, confirmed by our tests, guarantee minimal waste of time during the file copying process. It can also be useful to work directly from this disk without wasting time on file transfers. The use of SSD technology will protect data from shock and vibration. Drive price starting at $144.40.
