Micron launches Crucial X9 Pro and Crucial X10 Pro portable SSDs
If you're on the hunt for a portable, high-performance solid-state drive to help you keep things stored on the go, then Micron has just unveiled a couple of options that might help you out.
Micron's Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD
Launched on July 25, Micron Technology has just unveiled two new SSD options: the Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD and the Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD. Micron's Crucial series of SSDs are designed for pro creators, including photographers and designers, among others.
Both of the new portable SSD options utilize Micron TLC NAND and rely on a single-ASIC portable storage architecture. All of this works together to make sure the new pro-series SSDs are lightweight and ultra-compact.
The powerful one
For first-tier performance with a portable SSD, the Crucial X10 Pro is the fastest SSD that Micron has offered so far. It offers up sequential read/write speeds up to 2,100MB/s and 2,000MB/s, respectively.
It starts at 1TB and goes up to 4TB of space, and it can transfer up to 1TB of data in under nine minutes. It has a USB-C port and a cable included in the box, allowing for direct connection to a compatible computer.
Folks who need to edit content can do so with the content still right on the drive, and it's IP55-certified for water and dust resistance.
The Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD starts at $119.99 at Crucial, and it is also available on Amazon for the same price.
The slightly less expensive option
If you want a slightly less expensive option, without a precipitous drop in performance, then Micron's Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD might be worth considering. It has the same ultra-compact design, and can still store up to 4TB of digital work.
Micron's Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD
However, this portable SSD offers up read/write speeds up to 1,050MB/s. It also works with USB-C.
The Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD starts at $79.99 at Crucial and is also available on Amazon for the same price.
Both portable SSD options are compatible with Mac, Windows, current game consoles, and more. And the company is working with Adobe to offer up a free one-month subscription to Creative Cloud for folks who buy either the Crucial X10 Pro or Crucial X9 Pro.
AppleInsider will have both new portable SSD units on our test bench soon, so expect reviews in short order.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
FileVault with an external that has hardware encryption? That's interesting! Maybe a macOS Sonoma feature?
T7 has usable hardware encryption right now and if you buy the Touch model you can unlock it with a tap of your finger same as a Macbook.
ONLY Thunderbolt 2,3,4 or USB4 devices can get speeds faster than 10Gbps / 1,000MBps on a Mac. So the X10 will get similar speeds to the X9, maybe a little faster if the hardware inside is a bit better quality. (more on that below)
I really wish Mac focused sites would report Mac speeds when reporting on SSDs!
OK rant over
If the X10 specifically says it has TLC flash but the X9 does not say if it’s TLC, I guess we should assume X9 is QLC?
Having had a very bad experience with the QLC based 4TB Crucial X6 SSD, I will never look at a QLC drive again. QLC flash memory is slower than a spinning HDD. The only part of a QLC SSD that’s fast is a certain amount of cache sitting on top of the QLC. On the X6, the fast cache got smaller and smaller as the drive got more full. That’s called “dynamic cache.” And the crazy part was, even after deleting all the files on the drive, the cache stayed small! So the drive was fast once (for sequential writes) and then never again after filling up. Totally bonkers.
Then again, I see the quoted write speed for 2TB on the X9 Pro looks like it is quite fast, well above QLC + cache speeds. It looks like maybe they’ve addressed some of the shortcomings of those previous models then. Glad to see it!