Remember when your mother told you to stop feeding certain animals because they will multiply?
Well, someone has continually been feeding ideas to the folks at Apricorn and they have given birth to yet another great product.
The new Aegis Portable 3.0 solid state drive ($399 and $599. depending on capacity) comes with a built-in USB 3.0 cable and a soft leather pouch. And, since it's an SSD, it can transfer data at speeds up to 360 megabytes per second. It's standard hard drive cousins, which also have USB 3.0 connectivity A LOT more storage space, transfer data at 100 megabytes per second. The big difference here is cost. SSDs store data on microchips and are more expensive to make and last forever, so you find them with lower capacities (in this case 256 GB and 500 GB) than standard hard drives.
Apricorn's USB 3.0 standard portable hard drives boast capacities from 500 GB to 1.5 TB for $79 to $189. But you sacrifice speed and, since these drives are "mechanical," durability.
We played with the Aegis Portable 256 GB SSD and were delighted with the results. We we able to back up mega-gigabytes of music and pictures in a fraction of the time it would have taken us using a standard HDD using an USB 3.0 cable.
Other reasons to go with an SSD rather than an HDD include:
- 5X Greater Life Expectancy than Premium Rotational Drives
- Works in extreme temperatures
- Freezing temps of 40°F (40°C) below 0
- Searing temps of up to 158°F (70°C)
- Unaffected by high humidity
- Works in 95 percent humidity at temps under 131°F (55°C)
- Virtually shock and vibration resistant
- Rated to: Shock 1500G/0.5ms, Vibration 20G/20-2000Hz
- With no moving parts, the Aegis Portable SSD is completely silent
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