SABRENT Rocket XTRM-Q 16TB External Aluminum SSD (SB-DXMQ-8X2)

I was looking for a portable backup drive. I had been using the WD My Passport Ultra which came with the USB-c cable but was NOT Thunderbolt! That was a fake out. USB 3.2 is so slow compared to Thunderbolt.When using a USB-C connector with Thunderbolt protocol make sure you buy the CORRECT CABLE. The current version is Thunderbolt 3.0 on my computer but I bought the Belkin's TB 4.0 certified cable to ensure the highest transfer rates.It MAKES a difference to take advantage of the "SS" Super Speed ports. Make sure you use the SS or Thunderbolt Logo'd ports for the correct speeds.With this drive I am seeing 2,200 Read speeds and 186.7 write. I TURN OFF the W10 caching in the Device Manager. I want my drives to push the data through right away, even if it appears slow, not have MS play games using my system memory and cache to make the drives SEEM faster. Small files, sure use cache, but with backups no help from caching. (edit: added the ratings with cache on).I do all my Acronis TI and W10 (using w7 Backup tool) to this drive and it is fast.Yes it gets hot enough to burn your fingers, but it comes with the rubber cover which helps protect you from it.I am happy with the purchase. I may buy a second or go up to the 8Tb once they become available again and I am a solid Samsung SSD Pro guy, but found this was perfect for the cost and purpose.

So I received this product and have been using it in conjunction with my 2019 Macbook Pro, my Western Digital 5TB HD, my G-Drive 1TB SSD, and my Sandisk Extreme 1TB SSD. The Sabrent XTRM is exactly that (Extremely Fast). I have the 1TB option because I don't use it for storage (BUT THE SPACE IS THERE JUST IN CASE), I use it to speed up my editing and file transferring work flow. Now this product is blazing quick but you have to keep your expectations in check because its speed will vary depending on the other product its either reading or writing information from.For example, when transferring files from my Macbook, real world numbers are 4-8 mins per 20GB. Compare that to file transfers between the SABRENT and my other SSD's 1-2mins per 20GB. So don't just assume that because you have the SABRENT it's going to make everything lightning fast because it will/won't depending on the device its communicating with.Now with that said I knew this thing was definitely a game changer when I attempted to move 650GB of information from my G-Drive to my WD HD. What I did was I transferred it first to the SABRENT (SSD TO SSD) this took 18 MINUTES. READ THAT AGAIN (18 MINUTES TO MOVE 650GB, WOW). From the SABRENT to the WD HD was 45 MINS. Now compare that to my G-Drive straight to my WD HD the same 650GB was estimated to take 2 and a half hours.THE SABRENT XTRM IS WORTH EVERY PENNY IT RETAILS FOR, JUST MAKE SURE YOUR OTHER DEVICES ARE UP TO SNUFF TO GET THE BEST/MOST OUT OF IT.

The 16TB version contains two 8TB drives inside. The drive works well for what it does. It's very fast and (as far as I can tell in limited usage) reliable. It requires an external power brick (included) which is a bit less convenient than bus power. The drive runs very hot, especially if you use both internal 8TB drives at the same time (in RAID for example) -- almost hot enough to burn you. Note that it does NOT WORK with USB (maybe some of the lower capacity variants work with USB, but this one does not). You MUST have Thunderbolt, and most likely you must have Thunderbolt 3 (I can't test earlier versions).I believe this product is discontinued; the replacement product is a portable Thunderbolt dock which includes a hard drive but also the rest of the ports that make up the dock, for a cheaper price.

I think the only fair way to edit a review, when the original review itself is accurate, is by appending to it rather than replacing it. To that end, the original title of this review was "Drive lasted a total of two hours; no longer recognized by any computer." Its full text is below, following the update.UPDATE: I received a call from Sabrent. They made a generous goodwill gesture and made arrangements to have the failed drive overnighted to them for failure analysis, and for a replacement to be dispatched my way. As the owner of many of Sabrent's 4TB XTRM drives and someone who obviously has a need for a large volume of portable storage, I simultaneously decided to purchase another 8TB XTRM-Q, figuring that if there was actually some hardware problem or incompatibility I would simply return it.Well, I can't yet report on the replacement drive from Sabrent, but I can comfortably say that XTRM-Q #2 is performing as expected, and I expect/hope for the same with XTRM-Q #1's replacement. I will update this if anything changes.Note for those curious: this drive uses a Phison controller.8/19 update: Sabrent has had the failed drive for nearly two weeks and there is still no sign of its replacement. It seems that they are having an issue with this model or product line. Hopefully it's something they can resolve through a firmware update. Revised to three stars. I can't reasonably keep at four stars a product that I haven't been able to use the majority of the time I have owned it.Yet another update: Replacement works, as does the second 8TB XTRM-Q I bought. Realistically, for my purposes, which require portable storage capable of handling fairly frequent multi-TB transfers, direct-to-QLC speeds are just too slow. That’s not Sabrent’s fault; it’s the technology. Just know that you are not going to get sustained writes much (if anything) over 300 MB/s. On the flipside, the TLC 4TB XTRM is sufficiently snappy, routinely moving data at transfer rates in excess of 1.8 GB/s. That’s damn fast. But my use case is probably not yours, and most people will be more than fine with this monster-capacity portable SSD.A final note regarding power draw: the 8TB XTRM-Q routinely pulls in the neighborhood of 1.5 amps, rarely but occasionally spiking near 2 amps. That practically means that on most laptops, you shouldn’t get too comfortable plugging in two drives at once. Doing so on a 2019 MacBook Pro inevitably leads to the laptop cutting power to one of the drives, which could be catastrophic to whatever it is you are working on.INITIAL REVIEW (ONE STAR):I hope to be able to update this review to something positive, but my experience with this $1700 8TB drive warrants zero stars if that were possible. 16” MacBook Pro running 10.15.6.First time plugging in the drive it appeared to work. I formatted it in Disk Utility from ExFat to APFS, then tried to clone my 8TB internal SSD to it. (Prior to doing to I ran DriveDX and BlackMagic Disk Speed Test on it. Everything looked fine.) After writing for ~40 minutes at a much slower transfer rate than I expected, my computer crashed. During that time the SSD enclosure's aluminum shell reached temperatures as high as 171 F. On restart I got a notice about the drive having been disconnected and an alert in Carbon Copy Cloner that the XTRM-Q had a read error, which I confirmed in DriveDX. Reconnected it successfully, tried again. Drive was intermittently disconnecting regardless of the cable I used... then my computer crashed after ~an hour.Since then, the drive hasn't been recognized in Disk Utility at all, though it does show up in System Profiler under Thunderbolt. No idea what's up. I thought it might be a computer-side hardware issue some others were also experiencing, but when I tried the drive on a 15" 2019 MBP running Mojave it still wasn't recognized... other than in System Profiler. I have since tried multiple other computers.Verdict: the drive worked for a total of maybe two hours. It’s been dead since.I had my assistant call Sabrent customer service, where a recorded message told her someone would be with her soon... for an hour. Not cool.