SanDisk Desk Drive 8TB Review

1. Introduction2. SanDisk Desk Drive 8TB3. ATTO/CrystalDiskMark/AS SSD4. Throughput5. PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark6. Import / Export7. Real Life File Transfers8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

SanDisk has been in the storage business for over 30 years (they were acquired by Western Digital in 2016) producing a wide range of flash-based products including SSDs, memory cards and readers and USB flash drives. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that their latest drive, the SanDisk Desk Drive, is their first desktop SSD.

At launch the Desk Drive is available in just two capacities, 4TB and the flagship 8TB drive the company sent in for review. Although designed as a desktop unit, at 136mm x 67mm x 202mm and weighing in at 272g, the drive is compact enough to fit in a large pocket or bag (remembering of course to take the power supply as well!)

The drive uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 interface and SanDisk rates the read performance of the drive as up to 1,000MB/s (we couldn't see the write speed anywhere on the spec sheet for the unit). Using CrystalDiskMark Info, the drive(s) inside the Desk Drive are identified as 4TB WD Black SN850X. The Black SN850X is a PCIe Gen 4 drive rated up to 7,300MB/s and 6,600MB/s for reads and writes respectively using an in-house WD controller and BiCS5 112-layer TLC NAND.

SanDisk rates the read performance of the drive as up to 1,000MB/s. Using the ATTO and ASSSD benchmarks we couldn't quite get to that maximum with test results of 966MB/s and 955MB/s respectively. Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark we could confirm that official maximum read figure with a best test result of 1,015MB/s (from the default and 0 fill tests QD8 Thread 1). Switching over to the Real World profile the best figure we saw from the drive was 943MB/s (0 fill, QD1 Thread 1). When it came to writes, we didn't have an official maximum but the best we saw from the drive was 1,012MB/s which we got from four of the six CrystalDiskMark Sequential tests.

The 4K performance of the Desk Drive was pretty good. Using the Peak Performance profile (QD32 1 thread) in CrystalDiskMark 8, the best read / write figures we saw were 397.31MB/s and 373.25MB/s respectively. Using the more life-like Real Word profile we saw best read/write figures of 40.62MB/s and 80.01MB/s respectively.

Preloaded on the drive is a link out to a download page to enable you to download Acronis True Image for Western Digital with versions for Mac OS and Windows. The Windows version supports computer backups, setting up of Acronis bootable media, access to security tools and the cloning of internal drives. The Mac version supports backing up of selected disks, folders and files, create Acronis bootable media and file recovery.

We don't yet have a buy link but the MSRP for the 4TB model is £359.99, and the 8TB model will set you back £663.99.

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Pros

• Large capacities.
• Compact design.
• Overall performance.

Cons

• Not bus-powered.
• 3-year warranty is a bit mean.

KitGuru says: It comes as somewhat of a surprise to find that, after being in the storage business for so long, the Desk Drive is SanDisk's first venture in the desktop SSD storage market. It offers large capacities combined with decent performance and it's pretty easy to carry around as well as long as you remember to pack the power supply with it.

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