Fantom Drives Extreme 2TB External SSD - 2800MB/s, Thunderbolt 3 and 4, USB Type-C, Aluminum, 3D NAND TLC, TB3X-2300N2TB

Bought the 4tb version for heavy pdf work. First, it would disconnect from computer on its own, so every time I had to reconnect to computer, then repeat. Most recently, it fails to recognize files. It appears to be the drive, because the files are properly recognized on other drives that I tested. Fantom customer service non-responsive. $800 down the drain! Will wait to see if Amazon/Fantom company will rectify the situation.

Fantom offered the exact same drive, with 2-day shipping, for a total of $424.00. The price was based on a 10% off sale (of which they seem to have on a frequent basis). Hence, I bought the 2TB eXtreme Pro Thunderbolt 3 drives directly from the vendor. For those who absolutely must have Seagate or WD drives, realize that each 2TB drive (I purchased two) has the PNY brand Gen 4 XLR8 CS3040 M.2 NVMe 2TB SSD drive, which has been reviewed by PC Magazine as being not only significantly faster than the aforementioned TB 3 SSDs, but are rated for 2-million hours (MTBF); that’s 500,000 hours more than most. Like other similar drives, it has the same 5-year warranty. I once fell into the “It’s gotta be a Seagate or WD SSD!” camp, and only bought LaCie drives. I changed my mind after researching Internet sites and watching a number of YouTube videos that declared the PNY CS3040 to have superior throughput in comparison to the popular LaCie model and others, based on its excellent on-board controller. Reviews are one thing, but real-life tests are another: I was surprised to find that the Fantom drives had faster Read/Write numbers than the internal Seagate in my LaCie. The LaCie Ruuged TB3 SSD was almost as fast in the Read mode, but was noticeably slower in the Write mode(?). The Fantoms are faster than the internal Seagate M.2 NVMe SSD in my mid 2020 iMac i9 27-inch 5K 72GB RAM | 5700XT(16GB) GPU. While some might consider it a downside, I actually appreciate the heft and somewhat larger build of these portable drives. Location video shoots can be rough on equipment. These drives get warm, as expected, but thanks to the solid aluminum chassis with recessed heat sink ”fins,” they do not get near as hot as the USB C half-speed (1050 MB/s) drives I used to use on my video camera. Perhaps that’s why they last for 2-million hours. Did I mention that the Torrance, California built 2TB Fantom drive costs less than its portable LaCie and SanDisk/G-Drive counterparts? (Note: the 1 TB version of the same drive uses the ubiquitous WD M.2 NVMe 1TB SSD drive).

Wow! This thing is fast! Purchased this to optimize the timemachine transfer from my 2017 core i7 MacBook Pro to my new 2023 M2 Max Mackbook Pro. When I first got it I benchmarked it on my 2017 MBP with Blackmagic connected via Thunder Bolt 3 and got 2.5 GB/s read and 2.3 GB/s write. Reformates it from HFS+ to APFS to optimize it for timemachine and re ran the benchmark with the same results. Very happy. Ran timemachine to it and with in an hour my 800GB Backup was completed. Went to restore the new M2 Max MBP from the backup and I was up and running in 30min! As you can see in the photo it was transferring at 2.02 GB/s couldn’t be happier!

Very fast, but the include cable is just too short.

I never do reviews, but I will for the FD Extreme. This thing is as well-built and almost feels like solid metal (a little heavier than average, and a little thicker). Cool to the touch...overall best of dozens of external SSDs in speed and quality.

I needed an external drive for my mac mini (which only came with 256 gig, it was an emergency buy). This one feels as if it is an internal drive. I had trouble with stability with other external SSD drives. This one works great, also when doing heavier stuff with final cut where even for very small projects hundreds of gig are required. I only use it for a day now (including video editing for a night) but it is a relief to be on a stable harddrive.

Great external drive for my MacBook Pro. Uses Thunderbolt 3 for super fast speeds. Packaging said it was formatted for Mac but it was formatted for Windows. Easily fixed w/Macs Disk Utility. Once formatted, its been flawless.

After using this for a few weeks now, Im thoroughly impressed by the speed of the drive. I do large vector illustrations(work) and 3d animation(hobby) and its way faster for me to work directly on the extreme from FD than it is to work on the Mac itself. Fits perfectly into my desk set up and also good because I can carry it around when Im on my macbook pro. The listing mentions the quality of the build. When I received it, I could definitely feel the quality in my hands from the first time. Hands down would recommend any mac users looking exclusively for mac ssds. Ive added crystal disk results from my pc with thunderbolt 3 port and black magic results with my mac. i got better than advertised speed with the crystal disk surprisingly. I get it, this is pretty expensive, as is any new technology for that matter. However, when comparing the quality and price of other Thunderbolt 3 nvme ssds, its cheaper and better quality. The performance seems to be more consistent and better as well. First time getting fantom drives but if their other products are as good as this, they got themselves a loyal customer. Im kind of glad i clicked on a social media ad for once.

When I bought my current MacBook Pro, I configured it with a small SSD, figuring I could always put in a larger one later, as I had always done in the past. But since Apple decided to start making $3K disposable computers, thats no longer an option. Luckily, the Thunderbolt ports are super fast and so is this external SSD. So far, I love it. Testing with Blackmagic, its just about as fast as the Sabrent Rocket. (Write speeds are slightly faster, read speeds are slightly slower.) The aluminum case feels nice and solid. The detachable cable is nice as well. I had two Sabrents that failed at the attached cable. Also, this Fantom drive has a 5 year warranty. Sabrent only offers 3 years with registration.

I use this drive as primary storage for RAW photo files to improve the access and speed when working with photo editing software like Luminar or Aurora HDR. Before getting this Fantom FD Extreme drive, I used a Seagate USB 3 external drive, so opening images and switching from one saved template to another in order to compare photo looks would take 25-30 seconds. The lag time was so limiting that I had gotten into the habit of just moving the one file I was working on to my internal Mac SSD drive to make the comparison/toggling faster. Compared to the internal SSD speed, this drive is nearly as fast in accessing/editing files using a Thunderbolt connection [using unscientific counting, I would get to roughly one thousand one (~1 sec) on internal, and one thousand one, one thousand... (~1.5 sec) on the Fantom (versus the 30 seconds on a USB). Great purchase!