SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin evaluate: A flexible, sturdy 10Gbps flash drive

Greatest Costs As we speak: SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin flash drive

It’s a irritating expertise when the one port on the system you wish to connect with is Sort-A, and your connecting system is Sort-C. Or vice versa. Hope you introduced an adapter.

Yeah, it’s a fiddling drawback, however is usually a actual time-waster and it’s one which many distributors have addressed with twin Sort-A/Sort-C drives such because the SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin that’s reviewed right here.

Learn on to study extra, then see our roundup of the perfect exterior drives for comparability.

What are the SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin’s options?

The Excessive Professional Twin measures roughly 3.2 inches lengthy (together with connector), 0.65-inches large, and 0.4-inches thick. It weighs a bit greater than most at 1.2 ounces — largely due to the sturdy steel housing that the drive portion rotates within. The load provides it a pleasing, strong heft.

You swivel the drive inside stated housing to reveal both the Sort-A or Sort-C (one is all the time out within the open). The drive clicks into place in case you orient the connectors parallel to the housing, however you possibly can have each uncovered (see the lead picture) in case you select.

Jon L. Jacobi

The Excessive Professional Twin is 10Gbps 3.x Gen 2 USB (round 1GBps transfers optimally) and the NAND is late era if my assessments are correct. Whereas the write fee drops, it’s solely to round 350MBps.

SanDisk warranties the Excessive Professional Twin for all times (restricted). That’s a little bit of a shocker, as most exterior drives carry a three-year, or extra hardly ever, a five-year guarantee. I’m assuming the “restricted” is predicated on the variety of writes doable and never working it over with a Zamboni.

However the firm rightly figures there’s no manner you possibly can write sufficient information to exceed the NAND’s write-cycle restrict. Regardless of the logic, I prefer it and it does warrant the “Professional” within the moniker.

How a lot is the SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin?

On the time of this writing the Excessive Professional Twin was obtainable on Amazon in 256GB/$55, 512GB/$73, and 2TB/$180 capacities. The 1TB model I examined was $110 on SanDisk’s web site, and as the remainder of the costs have been the identical, I might anticipate Amazon to promote 1TB for that value as properly, when it’s obtainable.

How are these costs comparatively? A tad excessive really, particularly when probably the most wonderful Teamgroup X2 Max is cheaper.

How briskly is the SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin?

Whereas not on par with Teamgroup’s X2 Max, the Excessive Professional Twin put in a reputable efficiency — usually. It’s really able to higher write numbers than these proven for CrystalDiskMark 8 (over 900MBps), however solely when utilizing a 32GiB or smaller information set. Our check unit was 1TB. The 2TB unit would little question have put in higher numbers, although possible nonetheless not so good as the X2 Max’s.

As we check all drives with the 64GiB information set, these are the numbers you see under. Sorry SanDisk.

The Excessive Professional Twin’s random efficiency below CrystalDiskMark was a lot better than what you see under, however solely, once more, with 32GiB and smaller information units.

With the 1TB model of the drive I examined, writing 48GB went past the allotted secondary cache. The numbers are instantly under, adopted by a screenshot of the drive slowing down in the course of the 48GB write course of.

There’s simply not plenty of secondary cache on board the Excessive Professional Twin, as you possibly can see on this display seize of the Home windows Explorer copy course of.

In comparison with any drive however the PNY Duo Hyperlink V3, the Excessive Professional Twin would fee as gradual writing 450GB. However whereas it misplaced out to the wonderful Teamgroup X2 Max, 20 minutes shouldn’t be horrible for a thumb drive. The native write fee is over 350MBps, which isn’t comedically tragic just like the PNY’s 15MBps.

The PNY was additionally a 1TB drive, whereas the X2 Max was 2TB which provides is extra NAND for secondary caching. Nevertheless, the X2 Max’s native write fee was double the Excessive Professional Twin’s and would’ve cleaned its clock regardless.

The NAND contained in the Excessive Professional Twin is comparatively new if it could actually maintain 350MBps or so. Observe that the native write fee kicks in fairly shortly at round 20GB.

A fast be aware: I put these drives by the wringer. Few customers write the quantity of knowledge required to expertise a slowdown on any type of common foundation.

Do you have to purchase the SanDisk Excessive Professional Twin?

In case your regular write information units are small, the comfort of the twin captive USB connectors makes the Excessive Professional Twin a sensible choice. Particularly in gentle of its super-solid building. However there are plenty of choices on the market. Store properly.

How we check

Drive assessments presently make the most of Home windows 11 24H2, 64-bit working off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Professional in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Extremely i5 225 feeding/fed by two Essential 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence whole).

Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Inner PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we report solely the previous) to search out the storage system’s potential efficiency. Then we run a sequence of 48GB switch and 450GB write assessments utilizing Home windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far quicker FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s doable.

A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch assessments. Previously the 48GB assessments have been carried out with a RAM disk serving that function.

Every check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Observe that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower as a consequence of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This situation has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much quicker, late-generation NAND.

Our testing MO consistently evolves and these outcomes could not match these from earlier articles. Solely comparisons contained in the article are 100% legitimate as these are gathered utilizing the present {hardware} and MO.