3 April 2015

Windows To Go & First SSD Experience

My experience mostly covers external SSD drives with Windows To Go (8.1) installed.

Patriot Supersonic Magnum (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

  • Speedy with large files e.g. backup images
  • Convenient size

Bad points:

  • Very poor speed for small files - so not good for Windows To Go at all
  • Quite bulky on the width, so may not be able to plug in things to ports next to it

Imation Ironkey W300 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

  • Very small SSD - size of a normal USB stick
  • Excellent speeds (400MB/s read and write even with BitLocker enabled)
  • Excellent speed even when connected to USB 2.0 (nearly unnoticeable difference)

Bad points:
  • Does lag/freeze temporarily sometimes (not enough to write to Event Viewer, so possibly caused by antivirus software)
  • Very expensive for the storage sizes (£300 for a 128GB drive)
  • Can get very hot
  • Cap does not fit onto the end of the stick

Transcend ESD400K SuperSpeed USB 3 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

  • Cheapest SSD for a decent performance
  • Very small size (wallet card sized)
  • 3 year warranty

Bad points:

  • I had major problems with this device and timeout errors after 2 weeks of use .This was apparent under both Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.10
  • Transcend customer support was not helpful


Freecom Mobile Drive Mg USB 3 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

  • Very thin and stylish design akin to Apple Mac
  • Excellent performance speeds
  • Stylish casing
  • No regular lagging issues that I have seen

Bad points:

  • Cable that comes with it is not as stylish
  • More expensive than other SSDs available
  • Comes formatted for Mac (but of course can easily be reformatted by Disk Manager)

Useful notes for Windows To Go users - see this blog

For a detailed breakdown of SSD speeds and prices I could find on Amazon at the time, see here: