Transcend ESD200 review: A fast little external SSD

The Elite software has the capability to schedule daily, weekly or monthly backups. The application must be running and the SSD must be connected to your computer and powered on in order for the automatic backup scheduling to work. Manual backups are possible by using either the management interface or the one-step physical button.

A closer look at the Transcend ESD200 USB 3.0 Portable Solid State Drive

If you're using a Mac computer, then you'll have to remember that there are file size limits, due to the fact that the Transcend SSD comes in Windows format MS-DOS (FAT32). So, before you can back up larger files, you must reformat the SSD from FAT32 format to HFS+.

Once formatted to HFS, the drive can't be used in a Windows computer, unless you reformat the drive to NTFS or exFAT, according to Lillian Lopez, a technical support engineer at Transcend.

Performance tests

As luck would have it, I use an Apple MacBook Pro running OS X Mountain Lion. Nevertheless, I used my laptop, which has 4GB of RAM and a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor, for performance benchmark tests.

To measure data read/write performance, I used Blackmagic Disk Speed Test benchmark software.

I tested the 128GB version of the Transcend SSD (Model TS128GESD200K). The SSD is equipped with a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (5Gbps) interface that provides 10 times the bandwidth of USB 2.0 (480Mbps). You'll appreciate that when you go to transfer a large file, such as a movie.

In its press release, Transcend claims that a 4.7GB DVD movie can upload to this SSD in just 15 seconds. My 5.67GB DVD took 39 seconds to upload to the SSD.

I tried a lower-resolution movie that was only 2GB in size, and it took 14 seconds to upload from my desktop the Transcend SSD. By comparison, I uploaded the same movie to a recently released 8GB Lexar JumpDrive S23 flash drive; it took 2 minutes, 22 seconds. The JumpDrive, which also uses USB 3.0, boasts read/write performance of up to 100MB/sec. and 15MB/sec., respectively.

Next I used the Elite software to back up that same 2GB movie, and it took 1 minute, 4 seconds. The larger 5.67GB DVD took exactly 3 minutes to back up.

The Transcend SSD's specs boast of read speeds up to 260MB/sec. and write speeds of up to 225MB/sec. While my tests didn't see anywhere near those speeds, the performance was nevertheless impressive. My benchmarking software rated the drive at an impressive 130MB/sec. maximum write speed and 206MB/sec. maximum read speed.

Admittedly, it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Transcend SSD is a higher-capacity SSD with multiple channels to its flash chips and sophisticated, performance-boosting firmware. The JumpDrive is a typical single-channel flash drive. But the comparison illustrates the point that you can't use a cheaper flash product and get anywhere near the same performance.

The 256GB model of the ESD200 is available for $406 on Transcend's site. It can be found on etail sites for about $275 to $306. The 128GB model lists for $223, but can be found online from $160 to $173.

Bottom line

One-touch backup drives can be convenient, but most consumer backup software can be set to automatically back up daily, weekly or monthly, so placing a button on a drive doesn't seem like a big advantage to me.

That said, Transcend's new external SSD is a small, lightweight and slick-looking backup drive. The fact that it's an SSD with no moving parts to break makes it particularly durable for mobile use. So if you're in need of a decent capacity drive that's very portable and fast, this is definitely an option I can recommend.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and healthcare IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at  @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

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