50 MAY2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE387
STORAGE
WDBlueSN5501TB
★★★★★
£106•www.amzn.to/38DWqne
ADATA SD600Q480GB
★★★★★
£68•www.alternate.co.uk
Thereare
faster SSDs,
but the Blue
SN550 isn’t slow,either.It’s therefore
agood bet forwhen you want as much
solid-statecapacity foraslittle moneyaspossible.
Put aside your fears
about external
SSDs being too
expensive compared to hard disks
–this 480GB drive is excellent value,
and decently quick.
CAPACITY 1 TB•PRICEPERGIGABYTE£0.11p•INTERFACEM2/NVMe•WARRANTYFiveyears
RTB•DETAILSwww.westerndigital.com•PARTCODEWDS 10 0T2B0C•FULLREVIEWApr2 020
CAPACITY480GB•COSTPERGIGABYTE£0.14p•INTERFACEUSB3•CLAIMEDREAD440MB/s
- CLAIMEDWRITE430MB/s•WARRANTYThreeyears RTB•DETAILSwww.adata.com•
PARTCODEASD600Q-480GU31-CBL•FULLREVIEWAug2019
KINGSTONA20001TB
★★★★★
£160•www.box.co.uk
The A2000’s
maximum
speeds don’t
look all that hot, but this SSDperforms exceptionally well in
the kinds of non-sequential transfer tasks you’re more likely to
actually undertake in your day-to-daycomputing.
CAPACITY1TB•COSTPERGIGABYTE£0.16p•INTERFACEM.2/NVMe•CLAIMEDREAD
2,200MB/s•CLAIMEDWRITE2,000MB/s•WARRANTYFive yearsRTB•DETAILS
http://www.kingston.com•PARTCODESA2000M8/1000G•FULLREVIEWDec 2019
SAMSUNG PortableSSDX51TB
★★★★★
£344•www.scan.co.uk
Forwhen you
absolutely need to
shiftfiles as quickly
as possible,there’s theX5. Its use of
the Thunderbolt 3interface makes it
the fastest external SSDever.
CAPACITY1TB•COSTPERGIGABYTE£0.34p•INTERFACEThunderbolt 3•
WARRANTYThreeyears RTB•DETAILSwww.samsung.com/uk•
PARTCODEMU-PB1T0B/WW•FULLREVIEWDec2018
PNYProElite 1TB
★★★★★
£175•www.argos.co.uk
Atiny,
very nimble
portable SSD
that’s both faster and cheaper than
Samsung’s similar T5 drive.Just make sure to
connect via aUSB3.1port to get the best performance.
CAPACITY1TB•PRICEPERGIGABYTE£0.17p•INTERFACEUSB3.1•WARRANTYThreeyears
RTB•DETAILSwww.pny.eu•PARTCODEPSD0CS2060S-1TB-RB•FULLREVIEWFeb2020
y
f
t
01
Abasic1TBinternalharddiskshould
costaround£40.Thiswillbefast
enoughforgeneraluseandwillprovide
enoughstorageformostusers.
Makesuretheharddiskyouchoosehas
the appropriateinterface type foryour PC.
Most hard disks and solid-statedrives
(SSDs) use the SATA3interface,which
enablesfaster speeds than the older SATA2.
Pretty much every motherboard released in
recent years will have multiple SATA3ports,
allowing you to connect several storage
drives at once.
02
SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s
high bandwidth forfast file transfers.
Theyuse flash memory similar to that found
in USB flash drives, and although theytend
Choosingan... Internalharddisk
to provide less capacity than mechanical
hard disks, they’re significantly faster.More
expensive SSDs use the NVMe standard,
which is even faster than SATA3, but require
an M.2 slot on the motherboard.
03
Buy ahard disk that provides more
capacity than you think you need, as
your storage requirements are likely to grow.
A2TB disk strikes the best balance between
capacity and low cost per gigabyte.
04
If you want more disk space or you
want to protect your data against
disk failure,think aboutbuying several hard
disks to createaRAID array. Theseuse
multiple hard disks to createone large
logical disk with better performance,orto
duplicateyour data forbetter protection.
RAID arrays require hard disks of the same
size.Intheory,theycan be from different
manufacturers, but it’s better to buy identical
disks if you can.
05
Ahard disk’s spindle speed
determines how quickly it can
transfer data. Aspindle speed of 7,200rpm
is common in desktop drives and is fast
enough formost purposes. Desktop hard
disks with 5,400rpm spindle speeds are
quiteslow butuse less power and generate
less heat and noise.
To strike the best balance between
speed and storage capacity,use an SSD as
your system disk and store your files on a
larger mechanical disk.
ADATA XPGSX8200Pro1TB
★★★★★
£142•www.ebuyer.com
TheAdata XPG
SX8200 Pro
is outrageously
good valuefor the performance it delivers. It’s as fast as or faster
than top-tier SSDs fromSamsung and WD,but costs farless
across all its capacity options.
CAPACITY1TB•COSTPERGIGABYTE£0.14p•INTERFACEM.2/NVMe•WARRANTYFive years
RTB•DETAILSwww.xpg.com•PARTCODEASX8200PNP-1TT•FULLREVIEWApr2019
480 GB
ears
s
lue,
NEW
ENTRY
