Samsung's new external drive puts a Terabyte in your pocket

Samsung has unveiled a new range of rather smart-looking external portable solid-state drives that are no bigger than a business card.

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Samsung has unveiled a new range of rather smart-looking external portable solid-state drives that are no bigger than a business card.

However, despite their diminutive size (71 x 9.2 x 53.2mm) they can store between 250GB and 1TB depending on the model and, thanks to being solid-state rather than spinning disks, they can transfer files at a speed of 450MB a second.

That means that the average DVD-resolution feature film (3GB) can be copied over in just 8 seconds, while something in full HD and therefore 10GB is ready to go in 27 seconds. To put that in perspective an external HDD 'spinning' hard disk would need 85 seconds to copy over a 10GB file.

'The Portable SSD T1 allows users to store their entire digital portfolio locally in one place, take it with them anywhere and have blazing fast access to their data, all without worrying about reliability or security,' said Unsoo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. 'Our digital lives demand storage that surpasses the limits of existing options, which require consumers to compromise, when it comes to mobility, capacity, security or performance. The Portable SSD T1 overcomes the drawbacks of alternative options on every major pain point, making it the next external storage device of choice.'

In order to show that this is a device aimed at business professionals first and foremost, each of the drives in the range comes with a laser-etched black metal chrome-coated finish and hard-core password-protected encryption. But the truth is that the pocket drives are small enough, fast enough and robust enough to appeal to anyone who wants extra storage space on the go or who wants to carry other files on them securely -- whether heading to a meeting or heading off on a vacation.

With this in mind, the device can survive knocks and drops and uses something called thermal dynamic guard, which basically means that even in extremely hot or cold environments, the data stored on the hard disk shouldn't corrupt.

The devices support USB 3.0 input and are PC and Mac compatible and when they go on sale later this year will cost $179.99 (250GB), $299.99 (500GB), or $599.99 for the 1TB model.