I bought this recently for slightly more and was pleasantly surprised how good this product is. Does not come with or require a power adapter.
Using it to run my Virtual machine off and works really well. Thinking of getting another one for video editing and notice they've come down in price.
CamelCamelCamel.
There's also the Samsung T5 at similar price point, from Amazon US as well.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/352340
These are kinda slow with smaller file sizes (ie portable boot disk) but fast for larger files (ie video files).
Personally been using a Sony BG-2 as my portable boot drive, it's a lot more responsive for that. Bit more expensive though, I believe I paid $135 for 256GB.
Lexar drive: ATTO Benchmark
Sony drive: ATTO Benchmark
Note with 8KB files the Sony is already hitting 200MB/s reads, while the Lexar is only on 80MB/s.
Edit: I'm being very critical saying slow… These are both bloody fast compared to HDD, but there would still be a slight different in responsiveness and boot times.
Note with 8KB files the Sony is already hitting 200MB/s reads, while the Lexar is only on 80MB/s.
Damn, that's substantial difference!
For reference, it's about on par with a WD My Passport Ultra 1TB on smaller transfer sizes.
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/2193/ultra-atto.j…
Note the letancy is probably lower on the SSD so it's not as bad as it sounds, but it's still quite poor performance for an SSD.
Overall, the Lexar drive is basically comparable to higher speed flash storage. It's not quite an SSD as such. The Sony drive has a SATA M.2 SSD inside it, be it a lower end one.
Get a Samsung Evo 850 500GB SSD from MSY for $199, then get a USB3 to USAP adapter like this, or this nicer looking case
You'll have a BLAZING fast external HDD. It doesn't cost that much more.
Is it ok to leave an external portable hard drive connected all the time for hourly backups?
I don't see why not. I use it to run my virtual machine all the time.
No, you can't remove the housing and use the contents as a internal SSD…