The title of this review is terrible. We are reviewing the Sabrent Rocket Pro 4TB SSD. This SSD is a USB 3.2 Gen2 external SSD and we can use either Type-A or Type-C with the drive depending on the system we are attaching it to.
Sabrent Rocket Pro 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2 External SSD
The unit itself is very small measuring only 4.13″ x 1.77″ x 0.55″ or 105mm x 45mm x 14mm. It is a fairly plain gray since it is made out of an aluminum chassis. We get a Sabrent logo as well as a rocket logo with Sabrent stripes.
The chassis itself feels extremely sturdy. It may take some scuffs, but it would be fairly difficult to damage the drive inside when it is thrown in a bag or dropped while walking. When you see the drive, you may think this is a metal painted plastic drive. You may know the specs and think it is some thin aluminum case like an aluminum can. It is not. I stood on this unit and it did not even leave a mark. The unit is very heavy duty. We would have liked if Sabrent figured out how to get this a formal environmental rating.
There is a single interesting side. Here we have the USB Type-C port that provides data and power to the drive.
In that Type-C connector goes a cable. We are going to assume most of our readers know what a USB Type-C cable is.
Sabrent provides two cables. There is a Type-C to Type-C and a Type-A to Type C cable so you can use the drive with any host. As we saw with STH’s USB 3.1 Gen1 to 5GbE Network Adapter Guide some vendors do not adopt this flexible model and provide only Type-A or Type-C. In either case, it is nice to have both cables even if you will only use one for the drive.
There is a small detail here. The Type-A to Type-C cable has Sabrent branding while the Type-C to Type-C does not. The latter is also a shorter cable. Aesthetically, it is nice that both are gray to match the drive.
Next, we are going to take a look at performance.
Performance
Overall performance is about what we would expect from a USB 3.2 Gen2 external SSD that is centered around a M.2 drive. A few days ago we reviewed an Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P-B enclosure using a 1TB Sabrent Rocket Q M.2 SSD in the USB 3.2 Gen2 adapter. There we saw that while the drive was capable of more, USB is the limiting factor. Here, we are seeing the same thing. Starting with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, we get results that we would expect:
A quick note here is that other than the higher-end 4K footage and at higher framerates, this drive is keeping up. Here is the obligatory ATTO benchmark result:
Here is a CrystalDiskMark run:
Here is Anvil. As we saw in the Icy Dock + Sabrent solution, we tend to get lower sequential performance here than with other tools.
Here is a AS SSD result:
The AS SSD 4K-64T numbers were consistently off as we see here. Still, this is very good performance for a USB 3.2 Gen2 SSD.
Final Words
Current street pricing is around $699. There are two ways to look at this. First, compared to the $280 2TB model, it is twice the capacity for more than twice the price. A second way to look at it is that the drive is unique. If you need 4TB of capacity or more than 2TB, then there are not many options out there, especially in such a compact chassis. It seems like one is paying a premium for the higher capacity here, which makes sense.
Sometimes though, you just need the capacity. We want to emphasize again the chassis on this system. The aluminum casing feels very substantial and is certainly not a thin metal sheet like one may expect to replace plastic we see on many external SSDs. If you need to invest in a drive with this level of size and speed, then at least you do not have to worry about a drive this expensive failing due to the outer case cracking easily. Small, fast, and solidly built seems to be the design goal here.
Unfortunately I can not justify to purchase one of those, but I definitely would love to have 4TB of pocket storage. There is one thing I do not understand though. The case appears to be pretty indestructible for all intended and most of the ‘unintended’ use cases, the USB port however is exposed! Why would you not add some kind of built-in covers for the port? At this price point I don’t think anybody who wants or actually needs this thing would complain about $5 more :-)
So… not gonna crack it open to show us what’s inside? ;-)
I don’t think it is meant to be a rugged, resilient drive. Sure, the case withstands a person standing on it, but frankly so do those little plastic buckets gummybears are sometimes sold in. Jumping around on it would be an entirely different matter, but it is still to be seen whether the Sabrent drive would survive a Punk pogo-dancing on top of it.
Durable, yes. That’s also how Sabrent markets it: a drive in a durable case, for travelling. Not for heavy duty outdoor work in adverse conditions. That also answers why Sabrent didn’t thought, or didn’t want to spend, for some functional protective USB covers. It’s of course also a bit marketing wank to elicit an impression of “premium”. An ordinary USB SSD in an ordinary case should be fine during travels, too. Other cases might not be such hot lookers, but yeah, depends on your lifestyle, i guess (there is no jet set life without an Apple Smartwatch, right?)
The aluminium case (yes, aluminium with two “i”, deal with it) could theoretically be helpful in cooling the SSD controller, but i have seen no conclusive evidence that drive indeed utilizes the case to cool the controller.
Eric! Crack the thing open and shows what u0is inside!
If you really want to protect the data inside, just buy a rugged Pelican case like https://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/cases/ruck-case/personal-utility/r20
I’ve got the Rocket Pro 1TB. It has a flakey JMS583 controller in it that only works properly on 1/3 of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 machines I’ve tried it on. Symptoms on multiple PCs include poor average write speeds due to the drive locking up every few seconds (on write, occasional 100% disk utilization with no actual throughput). There seems to be a known issue with early revisions of that JMS583 controller, fixed in rev3 I think. Latest Sabrent firmware, cool NVMe temps, and known good USB 3.2 cables make no difference.
Sabrent support has been no help with wildly different theories every time I reply, usually not even taking the time to read the results of the testing they’ve asked me to do. I wish I would have just returned it to Amazon. I think I’ll just scavenge the drive out of it and get something else. Glad to see there are some positive experiences out there but I wouldn’t recommend gambling on this drive until Sabrent publicly addresses this issue.