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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The retail availability of a portable 1TB SSD alone would have wet the whistle of countless media professionals but Monster Digital has gone much further. The new Monster Digital OverDrive 3.0 1TB External SSD is lighter, thinner and smaller than any smartphone we could find, has its own integrated USB 3.0 card and fits in your pocket without the need for any external power source or cabling whatsoever.
So… in our pocket, we can fit 1400 Divx movies (230 if they are DVD), 250000 songs, the complete hard drives of 6 typical 160GB notebooks or, if you really need to, 1000 romance novels. That is just an incredible volume and an extremely small form factor to accomplish that task.
Performance of the Monster Digital OverDrive 3.0 is no less than the standard with 250MB/s read and 150MB/s write transfer speeds and not only do we see this mix in the OverDrive, but also, the same exact components (Marvell controller & Toshiba memory) were previously reviewed by us in two separate similar USB storage devices. The OverDrive 3.0 was intended to transfer large, highly incompressible files, such as movies, music and photographs back and forth and it definitely meets that need. Quite frankly, this is a stunning tech device in your hands.
Price is another very important factor as, not only are there no similar devices available at the retail level but also, anything even close to similar is way above the $1/GB price point. If we did consider the 1TB Kingston Data Traveler Flash Drive similar, it’s 512GB smaller capacity is going for just over $1000 and the 1TB capacity cannot be found anywhere, including at Kingston Technologies. Monster Digital has it the price point dead on for the OverDrive 3.0, even at the 1TB capacity.
At the end of the day, the Monster Digital OverDrive 3.0 1TB USB 3.0 External SSD has earned our Editor’s Choice Award for capacity, price point, anticipated availability and build.
Check Out the Monster Digital Pricing at Amazon / Discussion Forum
The Integral Memory 1TB USB 3.0 SSD Portable External Solid State Drive is smaller and it is Available now. https://www.kapptech.co.uk/1tb-usb-3-0-ssd-portable-external-solid-state-drive.html
https://www.integralmemory.com/product/usb-30-portable-ssd-external
I have been looking for a product like this for ages. Thanks a lot for this review.
Your welcome!
Would the Monster SSD be powered adequately by present day 3.0 USB technology? I read a review on Amazon that identifies this point as a problem; thanks!
I don’t know exactly what you mean but…both the 512GB and 1TB capacity drives have been in use for transferring piks and videos for several months now without fail.
That sounds like good news. I don’t have a background to rely on or knowledge of the power supplied by the 3.0 USB technology vs. power required to operate the Monster SSD as rated or promoted in their advertisements. Happy New Year!
A few months back, I bought a 64Gb USB 3 memory stick (don’t recall the brand) to quickly back-up my desktop harddisk. Unfortunately, Win 7 indicated it would take some 6-12 hours to back-up 10 Gbyte — a speed comparable to that of USB 2. While I was waiting for copying the disk, I shopped around and found a Sandisk USB 3 64Gb (Extreme?). I drove to the shop and was back 1.5 hours into the copying process. With the new Sandisk USB memory stick, copying 10 Gbyte took some 12 minutes.
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My point is that USB 3 and SSD doesn’t guarantee fast operation. The use may be without fail, but it may be fast or slow — depending on the implementation. The criticism on Amazon is that the SSD they reviewed was not much faster than a fast HDD for small files.
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Angelbird SSD2go seems to be fast (indicated r/w speeds of up to 460Mb/s). But they don’t have a 1Tb version yet. Even with slow operation, SSDs may be useful — they are more rugged than HDDs. If speed is important, it is probably smart to check reviews that consider this aspect.
Small 4k files are a great deal more work to transfer than large files and this has always been known. The SSD is much more than a simple file transfer size, however, and the first step you take with access time increase is massive. IMHO, USB 3 alone has been set aside by today’s Superspeed and new releases. Angelbird is that example.
I analyse large data sets for a living. I need large capacity portable drives. What kind of performance improvement can I expect from the Monster SSD compared to read/write to a powered non-ssd 3TB Seagate external? Thanks!
Comparing ANY SSD to a hard drive when transferring large amounts of data is like comparing apples and oranges. The hard drive doesnt come anywhere close to transfer speeds. Look around our site though and see what we have posted with SuperSpeed and UASP.
Thank you for your reply, Les! I looked around and came across the Drobo Mini. It seems to be a good option for me with upgrades and expansion abilities. Your thoughts? I am wondering how the disk management software that comes with the Drobo will impact on my computer’s RAM?
The only hesitancy I might have with that is transfer speeds. The Drobo (which I am not totally familiar with by the way) uses HDD for storage which will still limit your transfer speeds from the external to the system. The SSD increases this significantly. As a more recent example, look at the MyDigitalSSD OTG we recently reviewed. Similarly, we will be reviewing the MyDigitalSSD Pocket Vault in the next few days…both with SuperSpeed that triples and even quadruples transfer rates compared to such a device.
Thanks again Les! I will investigate the MyDigitalSSD further. I see however that the Drobo (www.drobo.com) now caters for SSD as well and even have a mSATA ssd slot. It might be a product to review?
Read this…preformance sucks.
https://reviews.cnet.com/external-drive-bays/drobo-mini/4505-3033_7-35544730-2.html
Better yet:
https://www.drobospace.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=37629
We have a similar NAS on the way that we know does twice that for performance…and is very similar. To me, that is still WAY TOO LOW! I don’t know why these companies haven’t caught on yet.
Thanks again Les! I am looking at the MyDigitalSSD at the moment. Final question please. I saw you gave the OWC Envoy USB 3.0 an editors choice award. Since I am after speed and not safe storage, which would you prefer, MyDigitalSSD or OWC. Keep in mind my data analysis software runs on Windows. Also can I put a 1TB Samsung in the OWC? Thank you!
I just bought a monster digital usb 1tb ssd. I plug it in and it doe snot show up in my removable storage. I can find it in my Disk manager but I am unable to format it. I have called and emailed Monster Digital but I get do response from them. Is there a driver for this device? If so where can I get it. Is is not on the Monster Digital web site.
There is no driver; it is plug and play.
It’s USELESS to me in the Case. How do i remove the ssd from monster
digital case? I needed a 500gb SSD to permanently mount as the system
boot drive in a new PC. The SSD had the lowest price. But then it
shows up in the “Overdrive Mini” case–USELESS TO ME!!! How do I remove
it so I don’t have to waste $$$ on buying another SSD?
This is a joke post right? There is not a standard format SSD in here to use, other than to plug it into a USB which is the same as with the case.
Hi Les, thanks for the review and the info. I purchased the 1TB version and love the product. Now my issue is that the drive has stopped working and I have a feeling that it’s the cable. How do I remove the cable and replace with my own? My drive is already past the 3 years warranty. Martin
Sorry… cannot help you on this one. 3 years of use…. good run.