Buffalo has announced the miniature SSD which features a rugged so it should be able to survive drops and other kinds of hostile treatment much better than hard drives, Buffalo’s Miniature Rugged External SSD, the SSD-PSMU3, is specifically designed to handle drops and falls. The main thing that sets this SSD apart, when looking at rugged external SSD is the overall size of this SSD, this SSD is miniature and resembles a flash drive.
Buffalo’s SSD-PSMU3 is a miniature rugged SSD that offers capacities of up to 960 GB and while the 960 GB external SSD is expected to be priced at $210.
Buffalo’s SSD-PSMU3 series SSDs are designed up to MIL-STD 810G 516.6 Procedure IV drop test, and this test is also known as the “transit drop.” This test states that this SSD was tested to survive up to six face drop tests, eight corner drop tests and twelve edge drop tests from a height of around 1.2 meters, even after all those drops these SSDs should still be in working condition and suffering from no physical or internal damage.
These drives measure 33 x 9.5 x 59.5 mm and weighs just 15 grams (this SSD is similar in size to a box of PEZ mints, according to Anandtech). This smaller size lead allows this drive to be particularly easy to make them rugged enough to survive drops from up to 1.2 meters.
This series of SSDs offer a capacity of 120 GB, 250 GB, 480 GB, and a 960 GB, these SSDs also feature a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Micro-B interface that connects them to their hosts using a USB Type-A or a USB Type-C cable. Buffalo has rated the drives for roughly 430 MB/s throughput, but with the interface that these drives use will most likely limit the speed of these drives, most likely this SSD should offer a real-world speed of near 400 MB/s this limit is due to the overhead incurred by 8b/10b encoding.
This SSD is set to be available in white, aquamarine and pink, Buffalo’s rugged SSD=PSMU3 drives will hit the shelves in Japan starting March 4th. The cheapest drive, the 120 GB drive, will cost ¥5,700 ($54) without VAT, the highest capacity drive is expected to be priced at ¥22,300 ($210) without taxes.