SanDisk Desk Drive USB SSD review: High capacity, 10Gbps performance

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SanDisk apparently learned from its own Extreme Pro whose data-wiping issues may have stemmed from a lack of power, and Seagate’s FireCuda Gaming SSD 20Gbps SSD, which would only perform at 10Gbps on some systems, likely due to the same issue (although thermal throttling could have been the culprit). Note that I have tested many a 10Gbps and 20Gbps SSD that performs just fine using only bus power.

How much does the Desk Drive cost?

Though I already covered pricing up top, it’s helpful to discuss the Desk Drive’s price in relation to what it’s intended to replace — a hard drive. At the time of this writing you could find a name brand external 8TB hard drive for $150 — around 21 percent of the $700 (MSRP) 8TB Desk Drive. Of course, the hard drive provides only around 10 percent of the performance.

So the equation remains roughly the same when it comes to HDDs and SSDs: The former are significantly cheaper per gigabyte, while the latter are far faster, less delicate, and more reliable. That said, HDD reliability is much better than it used to be.

Buy according to need. If your backup is firing off in the middle of the night when speed doesn’t matter as much, go HDD and get a couple for redundancy. If you’re constantly banging on your external storage for work when seconds, minutes, or hours count, pony up the extra bucks for an SSD.

How fast is the SanDisk Desk Drive?

As a 10Gbps USB SSD, the 8TB Desk Drive I tested is of course light years faster than a hard drive and held its own in our testing against its 10Gbps rivals. That said, it’s no match for 20Gbps or 40Gbps SSDs, which generally double the benchmark results and halve the transfer times.

CrystalDiskMark 8 rated the Desk Drive as very facile in sequential transfers for a 10Gbps USB SSD as you can see below. It wasn’t the fastest in every test, but overall it performed quite well.

Jon L. Jacobi

            <div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="SanDisk Desk Drive CDM8 Seq" class="wp-image-2324567" width="1200" height="606" loading="lazy" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><p>The SanDisk Desk Drive was very competitive in CrystalDiskMark 8.</p> </figcaption></figure><p class="imageCredit">Jon L. Jacobi</p></div>

    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Jon L. Jacobi</p></div>

The results were more mixed in the random 4K operations. The Desk Drive was fastest in two tests and below average in the other two. As you may notice, this is not unusual for external SSDs — a couple of the other drives are inconsistent as well.

            <div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="" class="wp-image-2323679" width="1200" height="582" loading="lazy" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The SanDisk Desk Drive wasn&rsquo;t quite as fast in random operations, but bested