Oyen DigitalU34 Bolt 2TB USB4 (40Gbps) NVMe Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) Portable SSD

Woah this thing is fast!Tested on my MBP M2 Max and a Mac Studio M1 using 5GB (large file) setting using blackmagic's testing tool (avail. on the app store). The picture is the MBP but about same results for the Studio (though note that you have to use the ports at the back; the ones at the front only allow transfer up to a little over 300Mbps)Cable is provided (that's important). The drive comes formatted as HFS+.First screenshot is with the original HFS+ partition, second is after re-formating as APFS. HFS is for compatibility with older MacOS pre-Sierra and is less optimal for SSDs, especially for smaller files. Also while APFS is not PC-compatible, neither is HFS so there is little to gain for keeping it as HFS for the regular Mac user.Other big plus: the drive is small (basically the part not covered by the rubber thing in the middle is slightly smaller than a credit card in surface, so the whole thing is just a nudge wider than a credit card) and relatively thin. Fits in a jeans pocket like a pretty full wallet would (not that I would carry it like that, but it means it fits easily in a front pocket of a backpack)NOTE:External SSDs have a bad tendency of failing (just bought this after my Kingston failed within 6mo - granted manufacturer warranty is good for 3 years for these type of devices) so will come back in ~6mo to confirm everything is fine.

This is (at least) my fourth Oyen Digital drive. They are blazingly fast and don’t get hot. I’ve used others (and still have them), but each has had issues or doesn’t make 8TB. The Sabrent, which are more compact, run extremely hot (so hot they are hard to touch). I love the mini Sandisks, but one failed on me early on. I’ve since read other warnings on those. (All drives will fail at some point, but that one was not old - and I was able to reformat it, so I don’t rely on it.) In all, the Oyen Digital drives have proven to be reliable in the long run, fast, and reasonably small and durable. And they don’t get hot (just warm, as you’d expect).

Super fast drive. Great for Time Machine backups. Extremely portable. Even includes a TB4 cable. Seems pricey but you get what you pay for. Performance matches claims.

Why did you pick this product vs others?:RIDICULOUSLY FAST!For windows users (like me) DONT freak out when it doesn't work out of the box.Look at the little card it comes with, format for your need as it describes, and you are good to go.I edit on windows and Mac, so needed something fast that would work with both machines.

Here are performance tests of (a) this product, (b) mac mini m4 internal hard drive, (c) external 2.5" mechanical hard drive from a few years ago via USB-C.As you can see this external NVME drive is faster than even the internal drive, and 50x faster than a mechanical drive.I bought this specifically to use with the base Mac Mini m4 with its very small internal storage. Initially I tried a mechanical drive to see if I could manage. But it was absymally slow trying to manage my photo library on it.And I bought the Mac because I wanted to use its AI to catalog the people in my photos. I did not find a user friendly, accurate Windows software for this to use on my gaming PC. So decided to buy a mac.

I never write reviews but had such a pleasant experience with this. It feels super high quality, the capacity is *real*, it functions perfectly, and the value is really strong compared to what else is out there especially the big brands.I felt it was putting my M4’s ports to waste if I didn’t get something like this, and am so glad I did.I also thought it was thoughtful it came formatted HFS+ instead of APFS, for a reason they helpfully explain in an included leaflet: Apple has done a poor job with recovery mechanisms if something goes wrong. fsck commands are more capable in HFS+, and APFS rescue can be really tricky. Of course you’re able to instantly erase and reformat as APFS if you’d like (I have and it’s divine), but this was a kind precaution for the user who has no idea what any idea of this is.I had the LG Ultra 5K Unfines and those really slow down since they’re not true TB in the back ports; if you plug directly into your Mac’s IO ports the speed was rating at 35gbps. I also emailed support to see if they were real, and they passed the test.Go for it!My name is Sam, I am a real human that lives in NYC, I did not use AI to type this, I was not compensated for this review (there was a notecard that said they’d appreciate a review in the product, fine by me 👍🏼), and like any storage device always regret not buying a larger one 🙃

I have the 2tb version and it's connected to the thunderbolt port of a mac mini M4 pro. Photo of the speed test attached, because I would not have believe it. Insane. This thing is ridiculously fast. Definitely pro level on a budget and most certainly worth the money. Yes, a T7 will give you amazing everyday speeds and yes, it's ALL dependent on the connection and the OS speed, but if you want blazing, future proof speed, this is it.

The drive looks well built and also very fast. I trusted the positive reviews... Problem is that it lasted only 3 days.. from my standpoint utterly unreliable. The problem happened when I was writing some metadata on some pictures and suddenly the drive locked itself in read mode. The drive can still be mounted and the data previously written on the disk is readable but only in read mode. Impossible to delete any file, to format or erase any partition also at low level because the drive report I/O errors. So I find myself in the situation where I have 350G of sensitive material that cannot be erased before returning and at the same time the drive cannot be used anymore because all writing is blocked due to the I/O errors. Support didn't have any tool to do an internal diagnosis of the drive, just suggested, low level partitioning from Windows or Linux with Parted Magic which works as a dedicated bootable Linux distribution that I did but with no success as the HW failed. I would never trust it for any serious workload.