Samsung T3 2TB External USB3 SSD Review

March 13, 2016

Review: Samsung T3 USB3.1 (gen1) SSD

Provided by: Samsung

In this day and age, everyone who uses a computer will
require a way of getting data from A to B. For just a few megabytes, or
gigabytes, of data, a USB pen drive, or cloud storage will be sufficient. But
what if you need to move around large amounts of data?

You can of course use an external USB HDD to store and
retrieve the data. An external USB HDD is cheap, and can have a large capacity,
but they are quite slow when tens of gigabytes of data needs to transferred to
and from the device. Not only that, an HDD is quite a fragile piece of kit. You
certainly won't want to drop it, or subject it to any violent shock, while it's
running.

An ideal solution, in my opinion is an external USB3 SSD.
The downside of this is they tend to be pretty expensive. On the positive side
though, they are much faster than an HDD, and much more robust. If you drop it
while data is being transferred, the chances are it will continue doing its
task without any fuss.

Enter the new Samsung T3 external USB3 SSD. Samsung was kind
enough to send me a review sample for testing, and in this article I will show
you how this tiny SSD performs. The intended use of the Samsung T3 external SSD
is different to that of the traditional desktop SSD that I usually test here at
Myce.wiki, so the tests I carry out on the Samsung T3, will be relevant to the
T3's intended use.

The T3 is available in 250GB, 500GB, 1000GB, and 2000GB
capacities. The version that Samsung sent me was the 2000GB version.

Samsung company information

Samsung should need no introduction, but those of you who
would like to find out more about Samsung, can do so at their website.

So let's find out how this new SSD performs in our range of
tests.

The Samsung T3 2000GB SSD

Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what it
came shipped with.

Packaging

The review sample I received was the retail version.
Included in the package was the Samsung T3 2000GB SSD, installation
instructions, warranty information, and a rather short USB3.1 cable which supplies
power to the Samsung T3, and the USB3.1 (USB C type) data connection.

The Samsung T3 weighs in at only 51 grams, and the drive is
tiny, measuring only 74mm in width, 58mm in height, and 10.5mm in depth.

The T3 case is a mixture of metal and plastic, and feels
more solid than the previous T1 model, which I reviewed last year. The metal
part of the case also enhances the thermal performance of the drive,
dissipating heat away from the SSD controller and the NAND.

Inside the Samsung T3 external USB3 SSD, we find a USB3.1 interface
board to connect the T3 to the outside world, a Samsung MGX SSD controller, and
Samsung's own TLC 3D V-NAND. The Samsung T3 also supports USB UASP mode, which
allows NCQ (native command queuing) and queue depth scaling with a UASP enabled
USB3 port on the host PC, which is supported natively from within Windows 8/8.1
and later.

The T3 is also supplied with software to initialise and format
the SSD ready for use. The T3 is formatted using exFAT by default, so it should
be compatible with Windows and Apple based systems. If you wish to use the
Samsung T3 with an Android device, you will need to format the drive as FAT32.

The supplied software allows the T3 to be encrypted with a
user password, and also displays information about the Samsung T3 external USB3
SSD.

Specifications

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at our
testing methods and the review PC....

Test machine

For this review I will be using a computer with the
following configuration:

Hardware:

· Motherboard: Asus Z170 Deluxe (Intel
Z170 chipset)

· Processor: Intel 6th generation
Core i7 6700K

· CPU cooler: BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 2

· RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance
LPX 2666MHz DDR4 (dual channel)

· GFX: MSI GTX 950 Gaming 2G

· Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC1050
HD audio controller

· Hard disk OS: OCZ Vector 256GB
SSD.

· Case: Antec Performance One
P280

· PSU: Antec True Power modular
550W

· Display: Dell P2715Q 27” 4K
widescreen IPS LCD (HDCP compliant)

· Operating System: Windows 10 Professional
64bit

Samsung T3 SSD was connected to an Intel native USB3 port on
the Z170 motherboard of our review PC and all tests on the drive were carried
out with the drive connected to this port.

The test PC has UASP enabled USB3 ports, and this was
enabled for all the tests in this article.

Test applications

To test the performance of the Samsung T3 SSD, I will be
using the following test applications in this review.

HD-Tune Pro
ATTO
Iometer
CrystalDiskMark
Anvil’s
Storage Utilities

Test procedures

The Samsung T3 external SSD's intended use is to be able to
transfer large amounts of data from one PC or laptop to another. I will
therefore run a few synthetic benchmarks so we can see how fast the T3 is
technically. You can take what you wish from these tests, but the 'real world'
tests a little later in this article will give a much better picture of how the
Samsung T3 performs in its intended role in the real world.

I will also compare the Samsung T3 USB SSD with the older T1
model, so you have some comparison data.

Now let's head to the next page, where I look at some
basic benchmarks...

Synthetic Benchmarks

HD Tune Pro

In this benchmark I am checking sequential reading speed at
a block size of 4MB.

With an average sequential reading speed of 436.4 MB/s, the Samsung
T3 SSD shows a good turn of speed.

We can see in the above graph that the Samsung T3 is faster
than the T1 in this test.

ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring the data
throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and writing performance,
using different file sizes and block sizes.

The reading speed results for the Samsung T3 2000GB SSD are
impressive, topping out at over 467 MB/s, which is right on the limits of the
throughput (with overheads) that USB3 can manage. Writing speed tops out at
over 460 MB/s.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0

Crystal Disk Mark is quite a handy benchmarking application.

As we can see from the above screenshot, sequential reading and
writing speeds are both very good, also random reading and writing performance
at low and high queue depths is excellent for a USB3 connected device.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage
Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD benchmark tests
many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random at different
queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly than this,
all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD benchmark is the
fact that you can change the compression levels of the test data. The
compression levels of the datasets used for the tests can be varied from 0%
compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few data
profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.

I will include a screenshot of the review drive, and all
comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If you would like
to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other SSDs in this
article, you can do so by following the link here.

100% incompressible

With test data that can't be compressed at all, the Samsung T3
SSD is performing extremely well, although according to Anvil's benchmark, the
T3 is not as fast as the T1.

Summary:

The Samsung T3 2000GB SSD has performed extremely well in
the basic synthetic benchmarks. Random reading and writing performance is very good,
and sequential reading and writing performance is of a very high standard for a
USB3 connected device.

Let's head to the next page for our IOMeter test
results.....

I/O Performance

IOMeter is probably the most versatile of all the synthetic
benchmarks. Its ability to be configured to generate a multitude of different
I/O traffic is unmatched. Another great feature of IOMeter, is the capability
to test any storage metric that you can think of, providing you know how to
configure the assignments. The reviewer also has complete control over things
like queue depth, block size, whether the traffic is random, sequential, or
even a mixture of both.

Partition alignment and sector boundaries

Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, and Windows Vista will
automatically align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation,
Windows XP won’t. It is imperative that an SSD’s partition is aligned. Windows
XP is also restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 and 8 will use 4k boundaries
if they can. The Samsung T3 SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these
boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility
with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.

IOMeter allows us to set the sector boundaries for
conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector boundaries at 4K,
which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.

All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data set on the target
drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.

IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.

The first test involves creating continual 4KB random files
on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that
Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the
background during a typical Windows session. It is said that most 4K random
writes take place at a queue depth of only one, and I have been requested to
include this test in my reviews.

Queue depth 1

At 40.95 MB/s the Samsung T3 2000GB SSD is excellent for a
USB3 connected SSD.

As we can see, the Samsung T3 is faster in this test than
the T1.

Our next test involves creating continual 4KB random files
on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that
Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the
background during a typical Windows session. I will use queue depths of 4 and
32 for these tests.

Queue depth 4

At a queue depth of 4, the Samsung T3 SSD is pretty good,
and we can see that UASP is allowing queue depth scaling.

Once again, the Samsung T3 proves to be faster than the T1.

Queue depth 32

At 161.61 MB/s, the Samsung T3 2000GB SSD is excellent for a
USB3 connected SSD.

Yet again, the Samsung T3 proves to the faster of the two
tested drives.

4K random write with incompressible data.

In this test, I am testing writing performance with test
data that can’t be compressed.

In this test, the Samsung T3 is marginally faster than the
Samsung T1.

4K random write queue depth profile

The following graph is displaying how the Samsung T3
external USB3 SSD scales with increasing queue depth, and also shows comparison
results obtained from the Samsung T1.