Solid state drives (SSDs) have many things in common with their "distant" cousins the typical flash drives but performance was never really one of those things mainly due to USB connectivity limitations (both hardware and software ones). This obstacle as some of you know was left behind not too long ago with the arrival of new USB 3.0 compatible controllers and the UASP (USB Attached SCSI) compatible driver found in Windows 8/8.1 since these two marked the day when manufacturers could actually squeeze the same parts found in every day SSD models inside tiny enclosures and expect similar performance results with increased capacity. Casual users have very little use for such drives however so unfortunately not many "portable" SSDs exist in the market as we speak but with the release of the T1 by Samsung and the Ventura Ultra by Mushkin (which we have here with us today) things are starting to get very interesting.