PNY Elite 480GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Portable Solid State Drive (SSD) - (PSD1CS1050-480-FFS)

240Gb wallet sized solid state hard drive! I also purchased the 480Gb version too. Sturdy construction, fast, drag and drop. I keep one in my jacket pocket and one in my backpack. You should see my friendss/colleagues faces when I pull out this hard drive. RECOMMEND: Buy a few(I did).

Pny is a good brand

So I know I should have looked at the picture and realized just how small this thing is, but its seriously tiny! It also connects immediately when I plug it into my Mac. I did reformat it right away into exFAT so that it works with Macs and PCs, and because the original drive name was not in English. I plan on using this drive to replace an old 500GB HDD that I have, so Ill be migrating a bunch of files over soon. Ill update this review if I run into any issues with this drive, so far this seems solid. The only concern I have is losing it!

I am writing this review shortly after receiving it so if anything changes in the coming weeks I will try to update it. The drive is very small and very light. I bought it for use with a MacBook Air since the laptop itself has very little main memory. I bought the 240GB size and I attached it to the MBA with the included usb 3 cable. My wife and I travel quite a bit and I plan to use it to store images from our digital cameras and unload them when we return. I first formatted the ssd as exFAT with the understanding that that format would allow me to share the device between our Windows and Mac computers but when I ran a speed test on the ssd (Blackmagic speed test app) I was astonished to find how slow the transfer were. You can see the results (read/write = 380/294 MB/s) in the associated screen shot. I have several other ssds that I use on my desktop and they show considerably higher speeds so I decided to reformat the drive for the Mac and rerun the speed tests and that is when I found out something I had not seen initially. The first speed tests I ran with the disk formatted for the Mac returned approximately the same speeds as the exFAT format but I decided to let the speed test run through several iterations rather than stopping it after its first sequence, and the results were both astonishing and depressing. The write speed dropped to less than half of what it had been the first sequence through and I can only assume this has to do with the disk heating up from the initial data transfers. Letting the speed test run through 3 or more cycles only confirmed what I was seeing. Write speeds drop dramatically after the initial test. See that attached screen shots. While the write speeds were very disappointing the drive is small and convenient so users may feel it is worth the cost. I do not.

Pros: 1. Fast enough to edit photos from 2. Very small and light 3. Included cord has held up well Cons: 1. Read/Write speed not quite as fast as advertised A little background about me: Im a college student working as a photographer about 35 hours per week, and I shoot 3000-4000 images in a normal month. If I travel somewhere cool, the monthly shutter count can be closer to 6000. Needless to say, Im in constant need of storage space, especially since MacBook disk space is so precious (mine has the 250GB drive). I have a WD MyBook 4TB drive that sits on my desk at school, and its pretty fast and very reliable. However, I have two problems with it: 1. It sits on my desk (external power adapter) 2. Its fast, but not fast enough to edit from (easily) This PNY Elite SSD solves both of those problems! I use Lightroom to import photos from my SD card to the SSD, and it really is as fast as advertised! Several GBs of photos in a matter of seconds. The write speed is plenty fast enough so that Lightroom/Photoshop editing is not laggy, which was my main concern with any external drive. Like I mentioned, the WD MyBook HDD just wasnt fast enough, so that in order to maintain my sanity, I had to import photos to my internal drive, edit, export, and then transfer the files to the external hard drive. Then, I couldnt keep the photos with me. Now, I import directly to this SSD, edit and export, and put the drive in my backpack! Its small and light enough to actually let dangle by the cord without any worry of damaging the USB port of the laptop or the drive. Also, its built super-solidly, and Id have no reservations about carrying it in my pocket at all. Ive had this thing for a few months now, and the port on the device has not loosened significantly, which is a problem Ive experienced with other drives. All in all, Im happy to recommend the PNY Elite SSD to anyone needing a small, lightweight, blazingly fast storage solution!

Word great

Works easily and performs well. Small and light power usage for mounted data drive for my home Raspberry Pi server.

It was able to transfer 128 gb of video, in a single batch, to my Macbook pro in 20 minutes. For its first single batch of data transfer, not too shabby! I havent had a lot of playtime on this yet but will update my review when Ive got some more experience with it. Please let me know if you found my review helpful in the box down below.

When I received the item it was even smaller then I thought it would be it fits perfectly in my pocket with all kinds of other stuff in there with it perfect for me to carry for my phones extra storage

Nice product