Iomega SSD Flash USB 3.0 64 GB

SSD drives are here to stay: with more and more making their way into computers, they're also an increasingly popular option for external hard drives.  After testing the OCZ Enyo 128 GB, we're looking at another USB 3.0 drive with SSD, the Iomega SSD Flash USB 3.0 64 GB.

Its trim (6.9 x 11 x 1 cm) aluminium frame is also very light (113 g).  It's certainly small, but not necessarily that much smaller than other external hard drives.  The latter have the other advantage of offering a lot more storage space and these days often break the 500 GB barrier.  For an external SSD, you have to make do with between 64 or 256 GB, often at exorbitant prices (see inset).  We're left wondering if this segment of external SSD drives won't be abandoned in favour of USB keys, which although often just as expensive, are a lot more portable?

Although they don't have much room, though, these external SSDs put in what can only be described as an excellent performance.  This SSD Flash 64 GB from Iomega is no exception to that rule.

The results on the CrystalDiskMark test were excellent for reading data but less impressive for writing it.
 

It seems to get stuck at 70 MB/s while writing data, especially with larger files.  It does a much better job with small files.

The access times times were as expected from earlier SSDs, and are streets ahead of conventional hard drives:
 

The PCMarkVantage test simulates a series of common apps and shows what the SSD Flash 64 GB is capable of, despite its problems with larger files.
 

It turned out to be even faster than the OCZ Enyo 128 GB we tested a few months ago, making it an excellent extra for storing software on, even if that isn't exactly what it's designed for.

An external hard drive is usually used for storing personal data, often made up of files are that too big to e-mail around.  Unfortunately, that's exactly where the SSD Flash 64 GB was weakest.  That's an unforgivable problem given Iomega's target audience for this product.