IP65 PSSD Gets a Capacity Upgrade

Samsung has had market success with its portable SSD lineup, starting with the T1 in 2015. The company regularly updates its PSSD lineup with advancements not only in NAND flash technology, but also in various high-speed interfaces.

In early 2022, the company launched the Portable SSD T7 Shield, a follow-up to the Portable SSD T7 (Touch) introduced in early 2020. It was introduced in models with capacities up to 2TB and advertised a T7 Shield ruggedness / IP65 rating. As a selling point for the regular portable SSD T7 and T7 Touch.The company has made his 4TB version of this lineup Mid-January for the EU marketSamsung officially introduces new capacity SKUs to the North American market today. The review below provides a comprehensive look at the performance and value proposition of the Portable SSD T7 Shield 4TB.

Introduction and product impressions

External bus-powered storage devices capable of over 1GBps performance have become entry-level products in today’s market. Rapid advances in flash technology (including the emergence of 3D NAND and NVMe) and faster host interfaces (such as Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2+) are key enablers. Broadly speaking, there are five different performance levels in this market.

• 2GBps or faster drive with Thunderbolt 3 or USB4 using NVMe SSD
• 2GBps drive with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 using NVMe SSD or Direct USB Flash Drive (UFD) controller
• 1GBps drive with USB 3.2 Gen 2, using NVMe SSD or direct UFD controller
• 500MBps drive with USB 3.2 Gen 1 (or Gen 2 in some cases), using SATA SSD
• Sub 400MBps drive with USB 3.2 Gen 1, using UFD controller

of Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield The one we’re looking at today belongs to the third category in the list above, utilizing an NVMe SSD behind an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip. The 4TB version we’re currently reviewing is basically the same as his 2TB version we reviewed last year, with the only differences being the color of the outer elastomer cover and the number of flash packages on board. The T7 Shield has an industrial design that not only protects your drive from dust ingress and water splashes (IP65), but also provides a rugged element.

Samsung includes a USB Type-C to Type-A cable and two separate cables of approximately equal length from Type-C to Type-C. Disassembly of the unit is fairly straightforward after removing the four screws hidden under the product label stickers on each side and removing the elastomer covers. This reveals a metal enclosure made of aluminum. The plastic tray holding the actual PSSD board can be slid out after removing the piece of plastic opposite the connector end. Both plastic end pieces have grommets around them to ensure a good seal and contribute to their IP65 rating. The main board is secured to the plastic tray with four small screws. The mainboard connector has a red sealing band to prevent it from becoming an entry point for external materials. The gallery below contains photos of the teardown process.

Like the 2TB version, the 4TB version is also single-sided (but includes a thermal pad on the empty side). The SSD controller is a Pablo S4LR033 (also used by the Samsung SSD 980), with an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip right next to it. His SSD subsystem in the PSSD T7 Shield is DRAM-less and almost identical to that of the T7 Touch except for the flash package. The four flash chips on board are tagged K9DVGB8J1B (versus K9DVGY8J5A on the PSSD T7 Touch). This part number is decoded as: TLC, Gen 6 V-NAND (128L / 136T), 512Gbit/die, 16 dies, 1TB for the entire package. This is his NAND package, the same used in the Samsung 870 EVO SATA SSD.

2TB version internal PSSD board

4TB version internal PSSD board

This review compares the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield 4TB with:

• Crucial X6 4TB
• SanDisk Extreme Pro v2 4TB
• Samsung T7 Shield 2TB
• Samsung T7 Touch 1TB

Note that there are no like-for-like comparisons in the above list. The Crucial X6 uses a native flash controller, the Phison U17. However, like the T7 Shield, this is also a USB 3.2 Gen 2 PSSD. The SanDisk Extreme Pro v2 on our list is the same capacity point as the T7 Shield, but comes with a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 upstream interface. Two other Samsung PSSDs represent the same PSSD family with different capacity points.

A quick overview of the inner workings of a storage device is provided by CrystalDiskInfo. Samsung PSSD T7 Shield supports full SMART passthrough and TRIM to ensure consistent performance over the life of the drive.

SMART passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
Samsung T7 Shield 4TBCrucial X6 4TBSanDisk Extreme Pro v2 4TBSamsung T7 Shield 2TBSamsung T7 Touch 1TB	Crucial X6 4TBSanDisk Extreme Pro v2 4TBSamsung T7 Shield 2TBSamsung T7 Touch 1TBSamsung T7 Shield 4TB

The table below provides a comparative view of the specifications of the various storage bridges presented in this review.

Before looking at the benchmark numbers, power consumption, and effectiveness of the thermal solution, we will discuss the testbed setup and evaluation methodology.

Testbed setup and evaluation method

Direct-attached storage devices (including portable SSDs) are evaluated using a Quartz Canyon NUC (essentially a Xeon/ECC version of a Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with: 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – IM2P33E8 1TB From ADATA.

The most attractive aspect of the Quartz Canyon NUC is that it has two PCIe slots (electrically x16 and x4) for add-in cards. If you don’t have a discrete GPU (not required for the DAS testbed), both slots are available. In fact, we added a spare SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the baseboard’s CPU-direct M.2 22110 slot to avoid the DMI bottleneck when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 devices. This allows for two add-in cards that run at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). Quartz Canyon NUC does not have a native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, so Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 Install an add-in card in the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt devices are tested with the Type-C port enabled by SST-ECU06.

The specifications of the testbed are summarized in the table below.

Testbed hardware is just one segment of the evaluation. Over the last few years, the typical direct-attached storage workload on memory cards has also evolved. High bitrate 4K video at 60fps is becoming commonplace, and 8K video is starting to emerge. Thanks to high-res textures and artwork, game install sizes are steadily increasing even on handhelds. With these in mind, the evaluation scheme for direct-attached storage devices includes multiple workloads detailed in corresponding sections.

• Synthetic workload using CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Real-world access traces using PCMark 10 storage benchmarks
• Custom robocopy workload reflecting typical DAS usage
• Sequential write stress test

The following section provides an overview of the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield’s performance in these benchmarks. Before concluding, let’s also look at PSSD power consumption numbers and thermal solutions.