Sandisk Pro-Blade Transport review: Fast, handy 20Gbps modular storage

Price When Reviewed

$49.99 for dock I $159.99 w/1TB Mag I $219.99 w/2TB I $339.99 w/4TB

Best Prices Today: Sandisk Pro-Blade Transport

If you’re on the lookout for a quick, glossy, detachable media storage system, Sandisk’s $50 Pro-Blade Transport with its modular SSD cartridges ($120/1TB to $300/4TB) has you lined.

Why modular/detachable? So you’ll be able to rotate backup media, retailer copies off-site, in addition to segregate separate initiatives onto their very own discrete media. Modular additionally lets you broaden your TB rely over the identical connection so you’ve gotten slim, and on this case, good-looking cartridges, as litter somewhat than a slew of bigger drives.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best external drives to find out about competing merchandise.

What are the Pro Blade’s design and options?

The Pro-Blade Transport system is predicated round a classy $50, transportable docking unit, the “Transport,” which measures roughly 5.1-inches lengthy, by 2.8-inches large, by a little bit over 0.6-inches excessive. It weighs slightly below 6 ounces.

The 20Gbps USB Type-C-connected Transport encompasses a single slim bay/port that accepts skinny SSD modules referred to as “Mags” (little doubt quick for journal — as in firearms), that are solely 4.3-inches lengthy, by 1.1-inches large, by 0.3-inches thick. If that appears terrible near the scale of a 2280 NVMe SSD, that’s undoubtedly what’s inside.

Note that whereas Sandisk after all gained’t encourage it, and it’ll probably break your five-year guarantee, you can take away the SSD from the cartridge if for some motive the dock goes stomach up and you actually need the information.

The Mags can be found at $120 for 1TB, $180 for 2TB, and $300 for 4TB. When I used to be first requested about reviewing the system, I used to be anticipating larger boutique pricing and whereas these costs are affordable, they’re closely discounted from the official MSRP.

Understandably, we just like the decrease costs. Often the reductions of main vendor’s cling round fairly some time. Here’s hoping.

Interestingly sufficient, the Pro-Blade Mags that Sandisk despatched us had been formatted to Apple’s APFS. That says an entire lot in regards to the audience — a audience used to paying fairly a bit extra.

But that is PCWorld, and Windows customers with a necessity for quick rotating media backup or library storage may even have an interest within the Pro-Blade Transport system.

How quick is the Pro Blade system?

The Pro-Blade Transport system with the 2TB Mag put in that we examined was no slouch throughout the 20Gbps USB bus — lagging behind solely OWC’s outstanding 1M2 (a 40Gbps drive examined at 20Gbps) and USB4/Thunderbolt fashions in general efficiency.

We, after all, would’ve preferred to see Sandisk go for 40Gbps USB4, which the TLC NVMe SSDs contained in the Mags can deal with simply. But 40Gbps ports are nonetheless a really uncommon commodity and upping the pace would little doubt have elevated the worth of the Transport.

20Gbps interprets to roughly 2GBps sustained transfers, which continues to be very quick, but with decreased energy consumption and decrease working temperatures in comparison with 40Gbps choices reminiscent of USB4 and Thunderbolt 3/4. These aren’t petty considerations.

Below you’ll be able to see that the Pro-Blade Transport did very nicely in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential checks. The single-queue, single-thread sequential learn was a tad disappointing, however the different scores had been high notch.

Random 4K efficiency suffered no main letdowns, with the Pro-Blade Transport sustaining the tempo in each particular person check — excepting its loss to the incredible Express 1M2 within the random learn.

The Pro-Blade Transport additionally did very nicely in our real-world 48GB transfers, ending only some seconds behind the OWC 1M2.

The Sandisk Pro Blade maintained throughput over the whole thing of our 450GB write, and given sufficient time to reassemble the secondary cache, was in a position to preserve this tempo even with the 2TB magazine approaching full capability.

Alas, I did run into some points throughout testing of the Pro-Blade system. First it crashed AS SSD 2.0 throughout its 4K/64 thread check utilizing a 10GB information set when all checks had been run on the identical time.

This is one thing I’ve by no means seen earlier than, and am discussing the matter with Sandisk. If I needed to guess, it had one thing to do with caching as I used to be in a position to full the 10GB 4K/64 thread and entry time checks if run individually. AS SSD didn’t crash with the smaller 1GB information set employed.

Also, there have been no points with the 10GB information set on our older AMD storage check mattress. Perhaps it’s an remoted compatibility situation with the present check mattress (see the tip of the article for an outline).

However, underneath the stress of deleting one 450GB file, then instantly making an attempt to put in writing it again, the copy course of hung and tousled issues to the purpose that Task Manager wouldn’t open. I needed to shut down the system utilizing a 10-second energy button press then restart to get issues going once more. Upon reboot, disk supervisor advised me the drive wanted initializing, however then threw an error once I tried.

It was at this level that I made a decision to unplug the Transport then plug it in once more. Voila! The drive was again to regular, and extra importantly for this dialogue — all the information was intact. If it had not been, you might kiss one other half star goodbye.

While none of those glitches had been deadly, nor more likely to happen to the typical consumer, the Pro-Blade Transport firmware probably wants some superb tuning. No doubt, detachable/modular is extra finicky than static storage, however I needed to dock that first half star.

Note that the Pro-Blade Transport carried out flawlessly on my Mac Studio with macOS and the Mag formatted to APFS, albeit underneath significantly much less stress.

Should you purchase the Sandisk Pro-Blade Transport system?

Yes! If you’re prepared to simply accept the possibility of an occasional non-fatal operational inconsistency and the discounted costs are nonetheless obtainable. The system may very well be an exquisite addition to any prosumer or intense hobbyist setup.

But on the full retail worth, you’re paying a hefty premium for what is basically a housekeeping comfort. It’s additionally loads to pay given the the glitches I skilled.

I’ll retest and replace this assessment as soon as Sandisk ameliorates the problems I skilled.

How we check

Storage machine checks at the moment make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit operating on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch checks make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each check is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This is much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with their far quicker NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability attributable to extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.