INTRODUCTION

   Without doubt one of the things in the electronics industry that has evolved considerably (and far more than others) over the past 20 years is flash storage media, especially portable ones. I still remember my very first USB flash drive back in early 2001 which was just 128MB in capacity and was still more than plenty for all my needs so when in just 20 years from 256MB (which was the highest available capacity back then) we've jumped to 4TB (for portable SSDs - 2TB for USB flash drives) it seems pretty amazing really. Capacity however is not the only thing that has increased, just take into account that back in 2001 theoretical USB speeds didn't surpass 48MB/s (most drives didn't even do 30MB/s) whereas today many drives go up to 1000MB/s (USB 3.2 Gen2) and some have even breached the 2000MB/s mark (USB 3.2 Gen2x2). The Rocket Nano Rugged USB 3.2 Gen2 portable SSD was released by Sabrent in 2020 and since it somehow managed to fly under my radar this is what I'll be testing today.

   Sabrent is a leading American manufacturer of computer peripherals and accessories, bringing uniquely styled quality products to consumers worldwide. Sabrent’s commitment is to offer the latest technology and the highest quality consumer electronic products at an affordable cost to everyone. Since its founding, Sabrent has consistently delivered to market a full line of computer peripherals and accessories that incorporate style, quality and the latest technologies available.

   Unlike the "regular" Rocket Nano line which is available in silver, black, blue, pink, red and gold colors the Rocket Nano Rugged is available in just silver (both lines are available in 512GB/1TB/2TB capacities). Inside the IP67 certified sandblasted aluminum enclosure (water, dust and drop resistant) of the Rocket Nano Rugged Sabrent has placed the PS5013-E13T NAND flash controller by Phison together with 96-layer BiCS4 3D TLC NAND flash by KIOXIA. The PS5013-E13T is a DRAM-less quad-channel (16 CE) PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe v1.3 NAND flash controller which packs features like dynamic write acceleration (SLC pseudo-cache), host memory buffer (HMB), end-to-end data path protection, smartECC (RAID ECC), redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN), thermal monitoring, TRIM, integrated power loss immunity, active garbage collection, AES-256 encryption and TCG Pyrite/OPAL support (Toggle 3.0 and ONFi 4.0 are also supported). So, time to check and see just how the Rocket Nano Rugged 2TB compared to several other portable SSDs.