Shadow Mini™ External 512GB USB 3.1 Portable Solid State Drive SSD

Works exceptionally well with my mid-2015 Retina Macbook Pro. I have partitioned 50GB of space on my Mac's internal SSD as a bootcamp drive and I use the ShadowMini as a second drive in my Windows 8 installation on which every program, apart from the base Windows files, is installed. I have installed Microsoft Office, Steam (with a handful of games) and a couple of Windows utilities to the ShadowMini and everything runs smoothly and seamlessly off the drive. I get very good read/write speeds of about 350-380 Mbps which are far higher than anything delivered by a traditional external drive. Games like Far Cry 4, load fairly quickly and run without hiccups. I have stuck the drive with double sided tape to the lid of my MacBook so that its always there. This drive suits my purpose exactly as I had intended and expected and therefore, deserves a full 5 star rating.The downsides include the heat generation of the unit over a period of sustained use, especially gaming. It can get very hot but so far, it doesn't seem to affect its performance. In addition, the USB 3.0 cable that came with the unit was a little loose fitting and the laptop would show disconnections of the drive frequently when moved. Switching the default cable with that of a Seagate Backup Plus drive solved that problem.

UPDATE 2/21/17:My original Shadow Mini broke immediately upon use, copying 80GB of files. (Overheated, caused my system's wifi and mouse to stop working. Possibly shorted USB cable / drawing too much current)However, customer support was EXCELLENT, and immediately sent me a new replacement drive for free, which is currently working fine.Rating is updated to three stars, because the original malfunctioning device has given me some concern about the reliability of the drive for storing important data. However, I've had no problems yet, within three weeks of use. It does seem to get a little bit too hot for comfort, but the device has not yet stopped working.UPDATE: CURRENTLY IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH CUSTOMER SUPPORTCustomer support contacted me promptly, and has promised to send a replacement device. Depending on the outcome of the second device, I'll update the review here.ORIGINAL REVIEW:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------I got the drive this evening, and immediately plugged it in and started copying 80GB worth of MP3s over. The drive got quite hot during the transfer. After coming back 10 minutes later, it's disconnected and can't be found by disk scans, and doesn't show up upon removing/plugging back in. Appears to be totally dead.

I've had this storage device for a few years and it's great! It's very easy to use, small/very portable, comes with a nice case, and it's fast. I use it for storage between my personal computers and work computers, and it works great.Some users have mentioned it being slow, but honestly it's not that bad. I can write several Gb of data on to it in a couple mins.I would recommend it to others!

Really wanted to give this SSD drive a great review. It is nice looking, came nicely packaged with carrying case and so on. Really like the small size. At first (for one day) seemed to work fine. Thereafter started to have problems with data files being corrupted, and "recycle bin" corrupted. After trying to find the cause(s), the problems just seemed to escalate and get worse and worse to the point I could never possibly rely on this drive again (day seven of use). Used the drive with windows 10 both home and pro, one on brand new I7 laptop, and one almost new I7 desktop system. Tried reformat twice (NTSF). Both computers had similar issues with the drive. At first had better luck with desktop but then in one day lost about 20% or more of the files while hooked up to desktop. Was not even using these files when corruption occurred. Fortunately kept meticulous backups as this drive was disintegrating. Recovery software seemed to indicate data was still there, just not read correctly by the drive. Back to Amazon. And will probably try to use an SSD again but from another manufacturer. Meanwhile while waiting for refund, am back to a Toshiba external HDD which has performed flawlessly for over three years.

Fastest USB3 SSD drive I've seen so far. Write speed is about 390 MB/s and the read speed is 420 MB/s. This is very close to the internal speed of my 2012 Air. Very impressive. Perfect for bootable backups and fast enough to run Virtual Machine files from it.This drive comes in a matte black Aluminum case. It is smaller and lighter than a regular 2.5" internal drive. Has a nice carrying pouch as well. Overall the quality is very nice.I can recommend this drive to anyone who needs a fast and a portable expansion.

Should my initial impression turn I will update but as of now I am quite satisfied. I have a Samsung T1 as well and both have their strong points. This drive has a metal enclosure and a carry case. Very fast and compact. I use Vera-Crypt containers for security so bundled software is not an issue. Definitely better (smaller and more stable) than the 2 SSD's I put in aftermarket enclosures.

I really do like this little ssd. I have collected lots of music and photos over the years and I got this ssd to store them all on it.It is very fast although I did not do any measurements. I have had no problems so far and am really pleased with it. If I neededanother external ssd, I would get this same brand.

The Shadow Mini USB 3 SSD drive worked great with the RAVPower Plus wireless travel router that I use with a portable 4-slot USB3 hub and XQD + SD II memory card readers in order to back up camera memory cards.

This is is a great SSD, as the item ships from the US, expect a wait of about a week. It will take several days before the company dispatches the item, (I ordered mine on the 5th of January and was dispatched on the 7th and got it on the following Monday. (11th) You will also receive a tracking number from the company as well, so you can track the status of delivery. (while the Item comes from the US, there were no issues receiving it, as I'm in the UK. so no issues with tax and duty.Once you unwrap it from the main parcel, then the parcel inside that one, you will find the product box, inside you will find1X SSD - (depending on your choice of colour and capacity (I got the 480gig version. (but because of how the computers calculate the size, computers converts the amount of bytes into gigabytes by dividing by 1024, so a 480gig drive will be 447)1X USB cable - (my only niggle is, its not that long) so mine is on top of my case where its connected to my computer's back USB3 ports.1X leaflet -which gives you some basic information about the drive.1X travel pouch1X small card for online backup - as the company has partnered with another (spideroak) to provide 10gig free of online storage. (if that is a subscription service I don't know, as I've not signed up to test.The drive is pre formatted with the NTFS file system, so its basically plug and play, (you can of course format it to another file system if you wish)Read and write speeds are very good, I have an Asus Z87 pro motherboard, so it has support for Asus's own USB3 turbo feature, (that speeds up the transfer rate) so my read and write speeds are about 423mb/s read and 414mb/s write (Sequential test using crystal diskmark) but this maybe different for you, depending on some factors.I have had this SSD for a few days and it's been fine.If you aren't comfortable adding an internal one, or your system is under warranty, or maybe a laptop and got one already, then I highly recommend this drive. The images of it don't really do this thing justice, its really quite small, it's slightly (only slightly) wider then a credit card and a and a centimetre and a bit longer then a credit card, and its hight is about a centimetre.Budd quality is great, so its not going to break in two with handling, but I still suggest you do handle it with care. It does get warm after a bit, but not too warm or uncomfortably hot.While I do have an internal SSD drive, (my system is under warranty still) I wanted another SSD both as a backup device and one which I can use for games. So far it hasn't disappointed.If you are new to SSD's then they really are great drives, so much faster then a traditional mechanical drive by a big margin.Overall, this is a really good drive, I don't think there is anything else left to say, so I will end the review here.

Ordered on Monday; it arrvied this morning. A very neat, compact piece of kit with a great case as well. Within 30 mins of it arriving I have already created a second back-up for all the most important files and I'm feeling a lot more secure! I literally plugged it in, drag and dropped and off it went. Really, really pleased with the purchase and the service.

Great Product