INTRODUCTION

   USB flash drives may still hold the lead in terms of consumer sales (mainly due to their very compact size) but portable SSDs (solid state drives) have been closing in for a while now. Yes, they may not be quite as compact as USB flash drives but they do offer superior read & write performance numbers along with larger capacities and that makes them ideal for use especially by professionals who require both. There are two types of portable SSDs currently in the market, SATA 6Gbs/s based ones with maximum speeds of just over 500MB/s (5G+) and M.2 NVMe based ones which can go all the way up to over 900MB/s (10G). Due to both their compatibility with older motherboards and their very good price/capacity ratio SATA based models are far more popular right now and so today with me I’ve got yet another one, the Z7S 960GB (1TB) USB 3.2 Gen 2 by Netac.

   Started in May 1999, Netac Technology (Stock Code at Shenzhen Exchange: 300042) is a leading flash memory manufacturer based in Shenzhen. Through more than ten years' growth, Netac was successfully listed in Growth Enterprise Market in January 2010, becoming the first listed removable storage supplier in China. Netac is the trademark used for our USB flash memory products. As the inventor of flash memory and a leading new-generation storage product manufacturer, Netac possesses the first generation of USB-based flash memory technology in the world. We focus on manufacturing of flash memory products, such as USB flash storage, portable hard drive and solid state disk, especially on security and encryption of USB flash storage and portable hard drive. We have a wholly-owned production base for processing of all flash storage products. At present, Netac Technology (Hong Kong) Limited and Leapro Technology Co., Ltd. are two fully subsidiary companies of Netac Technology Co., Ltd. Leapro Technology Co., Ltd is the holder of the SD-3C license.

   Netac may not be a very popular manufacturer but they've won several awards for their innovations over the years and just by taking a look at their available lineup it's clear that they are not kidding around. The Z7S portable SSD (currently available in 128/256/500/960/1920GB capacities) may not be their fastest model to date but it can still hit read & write speeds of over 550-480MB/s respectively thanks to the dual-core MAS0902A DRAM-less NAND flash controller by Maxiotek which they've paired with 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash modules (either by Intel or Micron). Now the MAS0902A controller by Maxiotek may not be used as much as some other models but it still offers state of the art features like Maxiotek's AgileECC 2 (LDPC ECC with best-in-class flexible flash protection and hardware-based Virtual Parity Recovery RAID engine), WriteBooster 2 (enhanced transmission speeds and sustained performance), AES-256 hardware encryption and SED (Self-Encrypted Drive) and of course support for TCG-OPAL 2.0. This is my first encounter with a portable SSD that uses this specific NAND controller so let's see just how well (or not) it does.