Glyph AtomRAID 4TB USB 3.1 Type-C External SSD (Silver)

This product really is blazingly fast: it consistently completes my full-disk and incremental backups in half the elapsed time (or less) of any of my non-RAID SSD “high-speed” USB-C external drives. It’s also smaller than those drives and lighter weight.So far, no hardware issues; I’m going to wait a bit longer before buying my next disk to see if it continues to run well: it’s RAID-0 (i.e., no redundancy), so in theory more vulnerable to hardware glitches. But, to date, this disk is easily my top choice for backups. I hope they bring out more choices with higher capacities.Later update: I’ve now bought four of these drives over the past year: three worked very well, but one was unreliable to such an extreme that it repeatedly froze my MacBook Pro. I returned that one and received a prompt refund; the other three were great until I upgraded my MacBook’s system to Catalina. MacOS Catalina 15.4 on MacBooks had serious problems with large writes on RAID drives. 15.5 is more stable in accessing RAID drives but I still observe significantly slower backups than with prior MacOS versions, and Catalina 15.4 and 15.5 both have sometimes appeared to display flaky behavior for encrypted RAID volumes and partitions. For now, do not upgrade to Catalina if you want to benefit from a RAID SSD drive; I’m hoping a few more releases of Catalina will eventually restore the full performance of RAID drives.

UPDATE:Posted a new screenshot, since my write speeds have improved after deleting 70 GB of data off of my drive. It previously had 20 GB of free space left and I suppose that was the cause of the low write speeds? I know low memory has an effect on performance, but leaving 20 GB of space has never been an issue on any of my other other SSD's, hence why I'm knocking off one star, because other than having to keep about 100 GB space free in order to maintain write speeds, I absolutely love this SSD.Its speed to storage capacity ratio is by far the best on the market for this size of SSD; the only way you're going to get a faster SSD at the moment is by buying one that uses thunderbolt 3 tech. However, there are only a select few of those available right now (and at a premium too, you'll get 1 TB for the same price as the 4 TB Glyph Atom, but ~3 times the transfer speed—your call, really).Previous review:Posted a screenshot of a speed test, but as the title says, the write speeds I'm getting are much lower than the read speeds. They advertise up to 950 MB/s, which we all know is being overly optimistic, regardless, the read speeds come close enough at around 730-800MB/s, but or whatever reason it's only giving me write speeds o around130-150 MB/s. I know the issue isn't with my USB C port or cable, since I've made sure to test with multiple ports and devices, so either this is misleading advertising or my SSD is defective.I do love the 4TB of space though.

I bought this exactly a year ago hoping I would be able to carry all my data with me in order to read and write on a continual basis. I use it between two computers (Alienware 17X and Surface (first a Pro USB, now a Go USB-C)). While it reads everything I initially placed on it (approximately 2.5 TB), multiple times I have lost school files and work files. I am quickly figuring I cannot trust this device to hold anything without backing it up to either another drive or a cloud server. Really bummed out how under performing this drive has been.

Since April of 2019, this hard drive has crashed 4 times... with normal use. Even my cheap western digital doesn’t crash this much.. I didn’t pay $879 just for this to become an added problem!

As a studio professional, I’ve beef using Glyph Technology HDs for years and they are great BUT this one is not performing as well as it should. First, it is not Thunderbolt 3, it is compatible with TB 3 but it doesn’t have the speed. It’s most probably a USB-C controller in there. For a SSD Raid at $849, it is definitely not a good performer. I won’t buy it again.

Pricey but well-designee and performing external storage solution for a MBP. The dual SSD storage modules provide impressive speed at the cost of reasonably warm chassis. The PU outer casing is nice to the touch and provides comfortable, non-slip grip and protection to the metal case.I’m a bit disappointed an OEM branded carrying case being supplied at this cost but there are plenty generic cases to choose from for $10-$15.Overall a solid performer.

I would recommend this reliable SSD for valuable family photos. Very fast with 3.1 USB that is truly fast constantly when moving large documents.

This thing is really fast! It works well in Windows and MacOS. It does get pretty warm when it's working hard. Some might say it gets hot. Not sure how "compatible" it is with Thunderbolt 3. I am unable to get this drive to connect as a TB3 device; only USB. If you check the connections on a Mac, it always says USB and not TB3, unlike my other external drive that is TB3-only (not USB compatible). Virtually every TB3 port supports USB anyway, so there's almost no way you'd notice unless you're specifically looking. Otherwise, this thing is great. It feels solid and like a piece of quality hardware.