I’ve been a fan of SanDisk’s portable Extreme Pro SSDs for many years. When I travel with my laptop, I take a couple with me so I can back up my photos and videos each day. The ones I’ve been using transfer data up to 2,000 MB/s (sustainable read and write speed). They’re also very durable, with good water and dust resistance (IP65).
Because they’re fast, I actually use them to edit 4K videos from—even when I’m at home—getting better performance than doing so on my MacBook’s internal drive. So when SanDisk recently launched a new, faster version of these fabulous drives, I was a happy chappy.
An SSD is the perfect storage device for traveling. They are small, fanless, and don’t require external power. They’re perfect if you need to pull out your laptop and do some file backups or review and edit some video footage, in a coffee shop or airport.
The new SanDisk Extreme Pro portable SSDs are designed for USB 4.0, for photographers and filmmakers on the move who want high performance and durability. They are capable of achieving read speeds of up to 3,800 MB/s and write speeds of up to 3,700 MB/s. For those with USB 3.2 or USB 2.0, they won’t be as fast but are compatible and still offer great performance.
There are two versions available: a 2 TB and a 4 TB.
Like the older versions of these drives, they have a built-in loop designed to attach a carabiner, so you can secure your valuable data to your bag to help avoid it being stolen by pickpockets.
My Thoughts
As someone who does a lot of video work, faster SSDs are very useful. Invaluable, actually.
As I shoot higher-resolution video formats like ProRes, having a fast drive to back up my memory-intensive footage easily and quickly is essential.
As I do a lot of editing work on the drives with file sizes that are getting bigger because of camera capability improvements, I’m finding I need more than 4 TB sometimes, so an 8 TB version of this drive would have been a nice addition—particularly for those shooting 8K60 raw or on the road for weeks with a medium format camera. Maybe there's one in the pipeline?
They’re very well made, with an aluminum casing and rubberized, shock-resistant shell. The older generation of Extreme Pro SSDs are approximately 4.25 x 2.25 inches and weigh 77.5 g. These new ones are noticeably bigger at approximately 5.5 x 2.5 inches, weighing 172 g.
SanDisk offers the best warranty in the business, at five years, and they’ve proven to be very reliable in my experience. Despite the increase in weight and size over the USB 3.2 version, a couple of them in your travel bag still make sense if you want fast and reliable backup and reassuring durability. The downside, for some people, is cost. They are pricier than the competitors. The 2TB version is $279.99, and the 4TB version is $429.99.
A SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD—whether you choose the USB 3.2 or new USB 4.0 version—is the perfect tool for the traveling creative.
Important Addendum: This news article was written based on my personal experience with using SanDisk SSDs over the past six years.
Within 24 hours of this article being published, many people have notified me that they have experienced serious problems with the reliability of some SanDisk SSDs.
The purpose of this article was to notify readers that there is a new fast SSD on the market. Should anyone decide to buy it, I would advise to back-up any important data. I always back up my files on two separate drives.
My sincere apologies to those who were upset at my failure to share a complete story about SanDisk SSDs, and I appreciate you bringing these issues to my attention.
It's one thing for a person to comment on the day to day improvement in technology. For me, I've been hospitalized for 3 yrs and have just regained the strength to hold my camera. Looking at what's new, after a 3 yr gap, it's mind blowing how much tech has improved.
You should have mentioned the Sandisk debacle concerning these drives (I own 2x 4TB). Whole production runs had problems but Sandisk would not admit to any wrongdoing. Lists of the batches produced and whether one is effected are available on the web. Only purchased them for the 4TB capacity and Samsung were taking too long to offer a 4TB version of their rock solid SSD's.
I was lucky that the 2 I own have not been effected but that was my last rodeo with Sandisk.
I can only speak from my own experience. I've used these drives for years and never had any problems with them. They've proven to be very reliable. But thanks for the input, this is worth knowing.
https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandisk-portable-ssds-are-failing-so-fr...
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sandisk-extreme-pro-failures-are-due-t...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/22/23733267/sandisk-extreme-pro-failure-...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abrupt...
https://www.theverge.com/23837513/western-digital-sandisk-ssd-corrupted-...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-worthle...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-still-w...
After the failures of the old ones, Sandisk SSD's are dead to me.
I've used them for years, and never had any issues.
It’s remarkable that the author of the article seems unaware of the huge debacle surrounding these drives the last few years, and WD/SanDisk’s complete PR fumble as they tried to liquidate them into the consumer market while ignoring the droves of failure reports.
It was big news, I’m honestly surprised that anyone could have missed it. Any responsible company would have issued a recall.
I'm sharing news about a new product, and my comments are my own opinion based on my experience. What a company did or did not do in the past with regards to another product is not what this article is about.
With respect Simon, that attitude would make it appear that either 1) you're uninformed or 2) you're uncaring. Neither is a good look for a writer and I'm sure you don't mean either. So you should acknowledge the issue, perhaps addend your article (if the editors go along), and discuss. Perhaps there's a resolution or update.
A fair comment.
Respectfully — that’s the issue.
You’ve said this is just your personal experience, which is fair. But when multiple people are raising concerns, it’s because there’s a much bigger story here.
SanDisk is facing multiple class-action lawsuit over catastrophic failures of this exact kind of product. These weren’t minor issues — drives wiped out entire libraries of data. For over a year, the company denied it, only to finally admit the problem after massive public pressure. Their solution? A firmware patch that didn’t fix it, or replacements that also failed. No refunds. No accountability.
The lawsuit added: “Without warning these hard drives have wiped out data stored on them, making the files stored on them unable to be accessed and users unable or unwilling to use these drives out of the reasonable concern such data will be lost forever or cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars to recover..The lawsuit goes on to claim Western Digital has only supplied “an unreliable firmware update, or replacement devices that also have been reported to suffer from the same defect."
If I were a new photographer and read your post, I’d think, "Well, this pro knows their stuff — must be a solid product." But that wouldn’t help them. It might actually lead them straight into the same trap that’s already cost hundreds if not thousands of creatives their files, their trust, and in some cases, professionals their livelihood when they could not deliver their images to clients.
Sharing what worked for you is valid — but omitting this very public, ongoing failure makes the post feel incomplete. When we use our platforms to influence buying decisions, there’s a responsibility to include the full picture — not just the part that went smoothly for us, and the reason why you are seeing the pushback that you are. That this same company you are personally promoting has also arguably lost more consumer trust and reputation in the photo category than any other company in recent memory.
Everything you said is correct and i agree with you. I will look at addressing this.
Yep that says it all and Jacques Ars's list of web links show the PR desaster Sandisk created.
Never again Sandisk! Have gone back to Samsung which seem to have a more solid QA.
I have two 4 GB drives, which have been excellent. So I bought two 8 GB drives which suffer from the same problem so many have seen—they self-eject with the "improperly ejected" error. SanDisk seems to be in denial, or at least has nothing to offer as a solution.
David, I've had this issue in the past. One thing that worked for me was keeping the drive cooler. Now this was only my experience. I put the drive on a couple of chopsticks to raise it off my desk and I put one of those little cheap portable, hand held fans pointed at it. FOR ME, this kept the drive from overheating and ejecting. Give it a try and let me know if it helps.
20 year full time pro here. I'm going to jump in with a work flow comment:
- Try to bring enough memory cards so you never have to reformat a card on assignment.
- Back up daily to your laptop AND an external drive and/or the cloud.
- As soon as you get home back up your RAWs to 2 SATA drives.
- Every time a SATA drive fills move one of them off site. (your parents, your storage room, your friends, etc.)
I currently have a 2-drive OTC SATA toaster. I have drives 30 & 31 in it. (Yes, I've used that many.) The even numbered drives go to my Dad's house and the odd numbered drives stay here.
I've been fortunate to never have a SanDisk Extreme drive fail. The "non-extreme" over heat easily but never have fully erased.
Back up, back up, back up.
Completely agree with you.
Unfortunately when on an assignment shooting video, one has to download files daily, and my workflow consists of backing up to two external drives, as a safety precaution. Transferring 1TB of more of files daily to the cloud is not practical, and there's no laptop with 30TB internal storage that I know of. Yet!