The best portable SSD in 2024: super-fast and convenient on-the-go storage

Samsung T9 portable SSD on a MacBook Pro laptop
(Image credit: Gareth Bevan / Digital Camera World)

If all your shooting is fast filling your computer’s storage – or you need to keep your digital portfolio portable – then it's time to invest in one of the best portable SSDs. A conventional portable hard disk drive still offers the most bytes for your buck, but for top transfer speeds, a solid state drive (SSD) is a must. The best portable SSDs are also a fraction of the size and weight of a conventional portable hard drive, and though an SSD's speed and portability still commands a premium over a hard drive, pricing is now much more accessible for storage space up to 1 terabyte.

Rather than testing transfer speeds using unrealistic benchmarking software, we instead recorded maximum sustained read and write rates when shifting photos and video to and from a Windows PC packing a fast internal m.2 SSD and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity to ensure no testing bottlenecks.

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Ben Andrews

Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future. Whether he's in the lab testing the sharpness of new lenses, the resolution of the latest image sensors, the zoom range of monster bridge cameras or even the latest camera phones, Ben is our go-to guy for technical insight. He's also the team's man-at-arms when it comes to camera bags, filters, memory cards, and all manner of camera accessories – his lab is a bit like the Batcave of photography! With years of experience trialling and testing kit, he's a human encyclopedia of benchmarks when it comes to recommending the best buys. 

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