At a look
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Handsome design
- Magnetic mounting to any appropriate floor
- Up to 4GBps transfers
Cons
- Slowest USB4 SSD we’ve examined
- 10Gbps speeds throughout lengthy writes
Our Verdict
The MSI DataMag 40Gbps provides good-looking design, magnetic attachment, and strong Construction. But it’s merely a superb, not unbelievable, USB4 performer.
Price When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
1TB: $170 I 2TB: $296
Best Prices Today: MSI DataMag 40Gbps USB4 SSD
Magnetically hooked up SSDs will be useful, particularly speedy 40Gbps fashions such because the MSI DataMag 40Gbps reviewed right here. They will be mounted in place on any appropriate metallic floor. Alas, that doesn’t embody my aluminum Macs, however it does embody the router proper subsequent to them.
What are the DataMag 40Gbps’s options?
Well, the identify and intro give away a part of the story — the magnetic ring on the again of the unit (see beneath) and that the drive is 40Gbs USB4. It measures just a little over 2.5-inches throughout in each instructions, is just a little beneath 0.5-inches thick, and has a lanyard opening on the higher proper. Weight is 2.8 ounces, which supplies a pleasant strong heft.
The DataMag 40gbps sports activities a Phison U21 controller and stacked/layered/3D TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND. The firm warranties the drive for 5 years, or till the TBW ranking is reached.
Said ranking is 750TBW (terabytes which may be written) per one terabyte of capability. That’s on the beneficiant aspect for an exterior SSD. The norm is three years and 600TBW or much less relying on the NAND concerned.
How a lot is the MSI DataMag 40Gbps?
The DataMag 40Gbps is presently accessible in 1TB/$170 and 2TB/$296 capacities — these costs come from the corporate, which additionally guarantees {that a} 4TB model is on the way in which. Those are a tad dear for USB4, however not outrageously so.
The drive additionally hasn’t proven up on Amazon as of this writing, so there could also be reductions available within the close to future.
How quick is the MSI DataMag 40Gbps?
Short reply: a lot quick, although there have been areas the place the drive didn’t fairly match the competitors. Part of the difficulty was undoubtedly that the drive MSI despatched us is just 1TB, which means it had precisely half the NAND to play with because the Adata SE920, and one-quarter the NAND of the top-rated LaCie Rugged SSD4.
Less NAND means much less secondary cache and dropping to the NAND’s native write fee sooner. That mentioned, the native write fee of round 830MBps will nonetheless get the job accomplished in an appropriate period of time in lots of circumstances.
Less secondary cache or not, the DataMag 40Gbps was in no hurry to get to its native write fee. In reality, it truly delivered an excellent queued sequential learn rating in CrystalDiskMark 8 earlier than dropping off the tempo.
The DataMag 40Gbps was additionally excellent within the CrystalDiskMark 8 4K assessments. Especially with a number of queues in play. Queues usually are not one thing quite a lot of software program characteristic (Windows doesn’t), however…
It was in our real-world 48GB transfers that the DataMag 40Gbps started to lag a bit extra. I wasn’t anticipating this to happen with the small file and folder operations; often a superb CrystalDiskMark 8 4K rating interprets to a superb efficiency with the smaller recordsdata and folders.
Being “only” a 1TB drive little doubt damage the DataMag 40Gbps’s 450GB write time, which was twice that of the competitors.
Here you possibly can see the place the lag within the 450GB write started. About 50GB in, the DataMag 40Gbps’s write velocity dropped to USB 10Gbps ranges, or round 830MBps.
If MSI had despatched us the 2TB model of the DataMag 40Gbps, it undoubtedly would’ve accomplished higher within the real-world switch assessments.
Regardless, it provides a pleasant increase in sustained throughput over the soon-to-be-reviewed (however already examined) MSI DataMag 20Gbps, and different USB 3.2×2 (20Gbps) SSDs.
Should you purchase the MSI DataMag 40Gbps?
I really like the look, just like the efficiency, and respect that magnetic attachment. Given aggressive pricing I’d give it a nod, however as all the time — learn our different opinions and store round.
How we check
Drive assessments presently make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit working off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence complete).
Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal 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 primary) to seek out the storage gadget’s potential efficiency. Then we run a sequence of 48GB switch and 450GB write assessments utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far sooner FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s attainable.
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. Formerly the 48GB assessments had been accomplished with a RAM disk serving that objective.
Each check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This challenge has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much sooner, late-generation NAND.