Increasing capacities and falling prices make external USB-based SSD storage more attractive than ever. Though not the fastest drive on the market, Crucial’s X8 Portable SSD, available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, makes a strong case for a number of reasons. Plug the Crucial X8 Portable SSD into your PS4 or Xbox One and expand your gaming world. With up to 2TB of storage, you’ll spend less time deleting files and more time in the game. Compatible Android devices must be able to work with USB Mass Storage over OTG. Operating system updates and reformatting may be required. For more information, see https://crucial.com/support/x8. The X6 seems to have a power consumption profile similar to other drives in the set. The 1W+ idling number is a bit too high for our liking when attempting to use the drive with battery-powered devices, but the competition is not much better in any case.

The X8 2TB version consumes less power than the 1TB version from last year. In addition, the peak power consumption is the lowest for the X8 2TB drive. Idle power consumption is not as good, with the OWC Envoy PRO EX USB-C being much more efficient on that front. Pricing The X6 supports both UASP and TRIM - the two main things to look out for when dealing with SATA SSDs behind a USB bridge. On the NVMe-class drives front, CrystalDiskInfo provides the following information. NVMe-Class External Drives Information Crucial's X8 hangs in there with the best during our sequential tests. It delivers very responsive performance under random workloads, too. With the X8's random 4K QD (queue depth) 1 read speeds being at least one-third faster than the competition, it's no wonder the X8 performs so well when we hit it with the easier workloads. It's a responsive SSD with strong low-queue depth random read and write performance, which is important because this workload models normal light usage. Sustained Write Performance, Cache Recovery, and Temperature Write speed and temperature are two important and inter-related metrics for external devices. Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

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The price of flash-based storage devices tend to fluctuate quite a bit over time. However, the relative difference between different models usually doesn't change. The table below summarizes the product links and pricing for the various units discussed in the review. SATA-Class External Flash Storage Devices - Pricing

Point is, it is all too easy to be blinded by headline sequential transfer speeds. For most, a high-capacity, high-value 10Gbps external SSD will do, and that’s exactly how Crucial pitches it. Conclusion Inside, Crucial uses 64-layer QLC NAND allied to a four-channel Silicon Motion SM2263 controller bridging over to USB. X8 opts to include the version using DDR4 memory – there is another relying on the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) interface for buffering duties – but do appreciate sequential speed is capped at 10Gbps, even though the controller and NAND can run faster in a PCIe-attached M.2 NVMe environment. Compatibility may vary and may be contingent on device formatting and host capabilities. For more information, see https://crucial.com/support/x8 The ASMedia ASM2362 USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge controller handles communication between the USB interface and the PCIe NVMe SSD. It boasts a solid design that offers power management capability for low heat output and port connection stability. It links up to the NVMe SSD over a PCIe 3.0 x2 interface for low communication overhead and better performance. Acting as a proxy in understanding speed when moving or installing games, there is little difference between the best and worst here.

Crucial NVMe SSDs

The Crucial X8 Portable SSD’s long copy rate was good for the first 180GB or so, thenit fell off the cliff. Its subsequent pace, barely above 80MBps, was slower than a hard drive. Shorter bars are definitely better. Despite TRIM not being explicitly mentioned in the CrystalDiskInfo report, we were able to activate it on the X8. Otherwise, the reported S.M.A.R.T attributes are similar to the ones obtained for the other external SSDs in the same class. Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology

MB/s speed measured as maximum sequential performance of device as measured by Crucial on a high performance desktop computer with Crystal Disk Mark (version 6.0.2 for x64). Your performance may vary. Comparative speed claims measured as maximum sequential performance of similarly situated portable SSDs, mainstream portable HDDs and mainstream USB flash drives from vertically-integrated manufacturers selling under their own brands as of June 2019. The X8, on the other hand, performs admirably with the SLC cache - For around 256GB of continuous writes, the drive provides 825 MBps+ of bandwidth before slipping down to around 150 MBps for the direct-to-QLC writes. The reason for the X8's stellar performance for normal workloads lies in this SLC cache. Normal workloads rarely go beyond this huge cache, and that is enough to make the X8 lead the charts in almost all tests. The problem is when the SLC cache runs out - as is possible for creative professionals transferring huge work files. Crucial does mention read-intensive workloads as the main focus of the drive, and hence folks with those types of workloads may well prefer SSDs such as the SanDisk Extreme PRO v2. Power Consumption Looking closer, there are no activity lights to break up the unibody construction. To the drive’s design credit, the external casing – ending in grippy, rubberised sections that ought to avoid easy marking – does a great job at keeping everything cool; internal temperature rose to merely 48°C after 10 minutes of sequential writing, while the casing ran only five degrees warmer than ambient room level.Increase storage capacity for nearly any computer, tablet, phone, or console. Works with Windows, Mac, iPad Pro, Chromebook, Android, Linux, PS4, and Xbox. Connect with a USB-C 3.2 Gen2 interface or use our included adapters for USB-C or USB-A connections. Today we will present you our second portable SSD from Crucial, which is available on the market since a few weeks ago. The portable SSD is simply called X8, and it’s one of the fastest portable SSD we can buy in stores. It also offers huge capacities up to 2TB, and support for all devices with USB connections, including PC, MacOS, PS4 and Xbox One. PCMark 8 has a storage test that simulates how well a drive will function under everyday workloads such as videoconferencing and word processing. All five of the tested drives performed similarly; the Crucial again came out on top but by a negligible amount.