SK Hynix Tube T31 1TB Stick Type SSD with DRAM | up to 1000MB/s | 10 Gbps | USB-A 3.2 Gen2 | External Solid State Flash Drive Compatible with PS4, PS5, Xbox, Window PC & Mac

If you're looking for a really fast drive in the form factor of a USB stick, here it is. (It's not as fast as an internal NVMe drive, but anything that connects to a standard USB port can't be.) If you carry around a small flash drive for quick backups or reimaging of systems, this is about as good as it gets. If you catch it on sale it's around the same price as an ordinary thumb drive with the same capacity, but it's a far better drive. This is actually an M.2 SSD in a stick-shaped case. Its read speed is as high as a USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 (also known as SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps) drive can be; it saturates the USB bus. That, in turn, is as fast as a USB-A port can go; higher speeds would require a USB-C connection. The rated write speed isn't QUITE that fast but it's close, and independent testing showed it beating that spec and saturating the bus. If you plug it into a Superspeed 5Gbps port it will only be half as fast, but will still equal or beat any other drives; it won't be fast in a USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) port but it will still work, and will be as fast as any drive can be on that slow port. SK Hynix doesn't publish a TBW spec for this drive, but it's likely to be comparable to other consumer SSDs; hundreds of terabytes written per terabyte of capacity. It supports S.M.A.R.T and TRIM, though many operating systems won't make full use of those on an external drive. The form factor is the one negative here. Being able to plug directly into a USB-A port is handy, but the drive is big enough that it blocks adjacent ports on many systems and won't fit into some laptops at all. If you regularly face space constraints, you might prefer the X31 Beetle from SK Hynix instead; that's essentially the same drive in a small package with a USB-C port, and comes with C-C and A-C cables for use with computers with either type of port. Because of the need for included cables, the X31 Beetle is usually slightly more expensive than the T31 Tube.

It's an amazing palm sized external hard drive. Clone your drive and run it from this. Back up your video or data files. Mirror a hard drive for security. It's a reasonably priced option that didn't intimidate me from the start. It works well using a free disk genius app that allowed me to clone a drive on my laptop that has a buggy camera. They recommended saving what I could. I'll give them a clean slate and hopefully they get it right.lol Yeah the drive isn't a thumbdrive but I bet you could find one of those here instead. I was amazed how fast the thing was reading and writing. It was effectively slowed when I used my USB hub and the card reader but that was for experimental purposes. It is always going to find your computer bottlenecks and shake them in your face so you buy the next big thing. 😀 It's good from the box and a sleek design. Like others said. Get a usbC adapter and find a longer one so it plays well with the old USB hound dog. Crazy how that real estate is so valuable on these new machines.

Intended use: USB-A backup/transfer drive This thing rocked as I performed multiple 1TB transfers. It did get hot but not excessively. No slow downs in transferring large amounts of files of all sizes. Verified 10Gps throughput by using USB-C 3.2 on a laptop. Only dings (slight): fairly chubby so USB port access could be physically limited but in the same category as some 2230 M.2 based USB drives. Now my go to transfer drive.

Let me preface this by saying that I have particular expectations for a product like this because of personal history. If I was coming into this without those prior expectations I would rate it as excellent. I think most people just looking for a device like this would be more than satisfied with it. That said, I personally was slightly disappointed. A couple years ago I spent a good while looking for a product like this. After finding the options at the time lacking, I made something myself out of machined aluminum and one of the m.2 2242 NVMe to USB carrier boards you can buy here on amazon or on aliexpress. When I recently saw that SK Hynix, a brand I respect and trust, had come out with what looked like exactly the product I had been looking for, without the hassle of making another one myself, I excitedly grabbed one. Functionally it’s excellent and preforms well. It uses good components and is easy to recommend over traditional usb sticks for longevity, consistency, speed, and versatility. Additionally SK Hynix deserves praise for filling a glaring hole in the market. Now, when I first saw this, I assumed it would be made of aluminum, since that seemed the most logical choice, since it is sturdy, durable, and also has favorable thermal properties, allowing you to just use the case for thermal management, forgoing a more complex solution. However, this is instead made of plastic. This decision, while likely made for good reasons, also means that they needed to fit an additional thermal solution inside the case along with both the ssd board and the carrier board. This, and other considerations of the construction, means that this thing is a good 4mm wider and thicker, as well as 12mm longer than the device I made from aluminum. Now for most people who wouldn’t have anything to compare it to, this wouldn’t be an issue, but for me it takes it down from perfect to just ok. My only real nitpick with the device is that the cap is likely to get lost immediately, since it’s just friction fit and not connected to the device at all when loose. Still, it is a good device, and one that I can easily recommend to someone that just wants an off-the-shelf, portable, self-contained solution at a good price that can handle the kind of things you need a proper ssd for. For those looking to do a little more work there is also now an off-the-shelf solution with an aluminum case that is also available on Amazon sold under the brand ElecGear. Though the fit and finish is only so-so, it is considerably smaller and only requires that you purchase your own 2242 or 2230 drive and assemble the enclosure, which takes at most a few minutes. I still think I would recommend the T31 over that option for most people, but there are some people who would likely prefer the smaller sturdier construction.

There are reviewers here stating that the drives format to only 32GB. This is only true if you format it as FAT32 (which the Windows 11 installer does by default). To fix this, you can see the drive by right clicking start, and hitting Disk Management, and adding a partition that supports larger storage, like NTFS. **IF you are not sure it is the correct drive, right click the gray area and hit Properties. It should show as SKHynix T31. ### Formatting the wrong drive can cause loss of information, or your computer to not boot any more. PLEASE be sure you format the right one ### ** This particular stick is a little bit bulky in size/shape, but I don't mind personally. It is very solid as well. I was able to move an 800MB video file to this drive in about 2 seconds, so the speed is definitely there.

This is a great drive - compact and very fast. I use it to do periodic backups from my computers and then back this drive up to a hard drive. I've been using these since they came out and they have been solid. Would I buy it again? I did!

The Hynix Tube T31 is portable, but how useful it will be remains to be seen. I purchased it during prime days to see if I will use it more than external SSD drives that need a cable. I would not buy it at the 99.99 regular price because of the problems noted in my review. It is a little bit bigger than the size of most usb flash drives, but small enough it doesn't need a cable. You may need to sacrifice a USB port or two as the device takes up a lot of room though. Copying data to it from other external USB drives might be a little tricky with the ports being blocked. I don't get why manufacturers do not include pictures in their ads of their device actually plugged in to a pc. And this one really needs them, so you can really see how much room it takes up. So I have added some pictures which I hope helps people make the right decision. Now how about sending me an amazon vine invite amazon? Your vine folks who reviewed this aren't doing a good job with reviews, they should be including these photos and have better reviews! Pros: fair price for prime day, but buy this on sale only, because the cons don't justify the regular price. shipped quickly 3 year warranty from the mfr Does the 1050MB/sec speed as specified has a light (albeit on the wrong side) It is MBR partitioned, which was smart for Hynix to do. You can use it with BIOS or UEFI systems out of the box. A clean formatted disk and ready to use with no trial software or other useless data that wastes space. Cons: Does not show SMART data in the latest hwinfo or latest hdsentinel. Other USB SSDs from other mfrs show this info. This is a big con, because we cannot monitor the temperature as a result of this. We have no way to tell how hot it gets. And that is pretty important and why I deducted 2 stars! I hope something can be done about this with a firmware update + actual support for it in newer versions of SMART monitoring tools. Hynix should make their own SSD utility to monitor this stuff. No idea if it has QLC or TLC flash memory. No information on lifetime TBW. No information on TRIM support. Can't be used as installation media for Windows, because it is a HDD and not a 'removable disk' like other usb flash drives. I was hoping this could be used for that purpose, to make a windows install go very fast. Though I didn't need instructions: some people do. And the instructions only mention PS5 + Xbox stuff, nothing about PC or Mac at all! Yet this drive is not marketed as a gaming device, which makes no sense. USB A connection only No USB C cable or adapter for those who only have USB C 10gbps ports. drive is a bigger footprint and takes up a lot of room - see pictures with vertically mounted case ports: you can plug a regular size USB cable into the ports above the drive or below it. But not to the left or right of it. If you put a usb cable in to the left or right, it presses the drive outward and it will bend the usb connector. Tyical of many flash drives and other larger footprint usb devices. I have seen a lot of flash drives that have suffered this bending issue, from people who are not careful. You would think in the last 10 years that computer mfrs would get off their duffs and properly spread out the USB ports, so that bigger footprint devices like this can play nice with other USB devices. No extension cable to alleviate this problem. Even a 45cm extension cable (the same length that comes with external 2.5 HDDs), would easily remedy this issue. Formatted MBR with ExFat, which is cross platform but also wastes a lot of cluster space with smaller files at 1MB per file. I had to reformat it NTFS for optimal use of the disk space, which is only 4k per file. If you load this up with a bunch of 1K files, they will actually take up 1MB on the drive with ExFat. With NTFS the 1k file would only be 4K and that's a huge difference. There is a white activity light on it, but it is on the left side. If you plug this into a tower that has sideways ports (see pic) the light flashes downward and you might not see it. If you do see it, it does look like a blinking x-files UFO space ship light as if it was coming down to abduct someone... The light should be on the TOP so it can be seen no matter which way the drive faces, upward or sideways. $99.99 regular price is too steep because of these cons. I can't say I would go for this over other USB SSD devices for the regular price. It is an interesting device. Hopefully future versions will be better with the SMART monitoring support, and an actual aluminum external casing. A youtube video from another person showed there is a metal heatsink on the inside, but I suspect the external casing material still traps heat inside the unit. We can't tell because this device has no SMART monitoring to check the temperature. I can recommend it if it meets your needs, though I would be concerned about longevity especially if you are going to use very large files with it.

I'm using this for a bootable backup of my iMac, and it works perfectly. This is not a flash drive, it's a full-on high performance solid state drive in a flash drive footprint. If I ever need to use this to rebuild or recover a machine, this will be invaluable. I feel like it is a lot of convenient storage for a very good price.

買ったのはこれで二本目です。安くて速い。そして、大きいので夏場でもわりと熱くならないです。ただ、大きいのでusbハブに2本並べて挿せなくて残念でした。大きさはこの製品が悪いわけではないので問題ないですが、一応。transcendやsandisk、orico、elecomのssdを買ったことがありますが一番速度が安定して速いのはこのssdでした。他のssdはたまに速度が落ちるときがあるので、大きさが気にならない方にはとてもオススメだと思います。一応速度が安定した順に書くとsk_hynix=SanDisk>orico>elecomです。SanDiskはとても高くなってしまったので今はsk_hynixが一番良いと思ってます。

Prestazioni eccellenti, come Hynix ci ha abituati. Niente da eccepire sulla bontà del prodotto, soltanto che avrei preferito un case in metallo (sulla falsariga del Corsair Voyager GTX) e, magari, anche un laccio per appendere il pennino al collo. A tenerlo fra le mani, si ha quella sgradevole sensazione di economia che è all'opposto di Hynix. Ripeto, il prodotto è eccellente, ma questi due dettagli avrebbero aumentato la "professionalità" del prodotto.

Un des meilleurs SSD compact sur le marché. Débit excellent, chaleur maîtrisée. Rien à ajouter, à choisir les yeux fermés.

I initially thought it was underperforming because I was only seeing around 38 MB/s, but it turned out the drive had connected at USB 2.0 speeds. Once I plugged it into the correct USB 3.0 port, transfer speeds from my internal M.2 SSD to the Hynix increased to around 250–300 MB/s. The advertised up to 1,000 MB/s is only achievable with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) port. My motherboard only supports 5 Gbps USB, so I can't reach those speeds. That's something buyers should check before expecting the maximum performance. Your PC's USB hardware will ultimately determine the speeds you actually get. I have to give it 5 stars for value for money as there is nothing comparable in this price range. Can't speak for reliability as I've only had it a few days.

It works like a portable USB but is it a SSD. Amazing