Price When Reviewed

$60 for 1 PC license

Best Prices Today: NTI Backup Pro 7

NTI Backup Pro 7 is what one might refer to as the whole enchilada. It offers file backup, imaging/drive backup, continuous backup as well online backup to NTI Cloud (powered by Microsoft Azure). It backs up to and from networks, and is one of the rare backup programs that supports optical discs.

I was psyched at the feature list and assumed that in the 10 years since I last visited NTI’s flagship backup program, it would be finely honed and bullet-proof. However, first in 2024, and now in 2026, there are still numerous glitches of various types. In the end everything works, but with this much time on the market, it should be rock-solid in all aspects.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best backup software for Windows for comparison.

What are NTI Backup Pro 7’s features?

As I mentioned, NTI Backup Now Pro 7 offers file and folder backup, drive and partition image backup, continuous backup, and cloud backup. Continuous backup is file and folder backup where changes are backed up as they occur. Cloud backup is also file and folder backup, but to NTI’s own, extremely pricey online storage.

The plain file/folder, image, and online backups are stored in proprietary container files (single large files with all the data contained inside), while the continuous backup is a browsable plain file backup — i.e., files are copied as you would using Windows Explorer. Older revisions of files are kept in a separate folder.

The Backup Now Pro 7 interface is very straightforward, though unlike the EZ version, there’s no hand-holding when it comes to selecting data to back up. No biggie, but it could be just a tad friendlier.

The just-mentioned NTI EZ Backup Now 7.5 (which is $10 less per license) has a slightly more intuitive workflow, though the interface is not one of the prettiest. It lacks the Pro version’s continuous backup, but is otherwise roughly feature equivalent.

Back to Pro…. There’s granular scheduling (in addition to the continuous, of course) available, as well incremental backups to save space, and automatic maintenance of destination storage by purging older files when necessary. Encryption and password protection are also provided.

An NTI Backup Now Pro 7 feature that I absolutely love is the ability to choose multiple local destinations (a secondary internal drive plus external drive, etc.) for a backup job. It would be nice if you could combine local with network locations and the NTI Cloud, but hey, it’s a start

And yes, the program will back up both to and from network locations. As well as to FTP. And, as mentioned up top, Backup Now Pro 7 even supports optical discs.

How much does NTI Backup Pro 7 cost?

At the time of this writing, NTI Backup Now Pro 7 was on sale for $50 (it was $40 two years ago), down from the normal $60 retail price. The EZ version without the continuous backup was $35, $15 off of full list. The continuous backup-only NTI Shadow program is also $30 on sale.

An NTI Backup Now Pro 7 feature that I absolutely love is the ability to choose multiple local destinations (a secondary internal drive plus external drive, etc.) for a backup job.

NTI Cloud (required for cloud backup) is free for one-month of 16GB, $5 a month for 32GB, $10 monthly for 64GB, $20 a month for 128GB, $40 per month for 256GB, $100 a month for 640GB, and $200 a month for 2TB.

Google Drive offers 15GB for free. No matter which way you cut it, the NTI Cloud is extremely expensive. As it’s the only online storage service supported, Backup Now’s online backup is not well suited to the average user.

Note that you can use just about any backup program, with nearly any online storage service, by employing a cloud storage manager.

How well does NTI Backup Pro 7 perform?

The interface scaling issues I experienced during my last look two years ago were gone on one test bed, but I still had to override High DPI settings on another to get Backup Now Pro to render properly. It’s still very slow to enumerate the storage tree and the program in general is less than sprightly — aka, slow. Given that our test bed is quite fast, there’s no excuse

Seemingly, it doesn’t query the file system pre-emptively as is common practice. While all these idiosyncrasies may seem picayune, they add up, and do nothing to reassure me that the actual backup functionality will be bullet proof. As it turned out….

While file/folder and continuous backups to local media went off without unusual glitches, imaging proved an issue — as it turns out, because we remote control the test beds using Microsoft Remote Desktop. Backup Now Pro 7 didn’t like this, cancelling every image job before it was five seconds old.

After over a week of back and forth, and hours of troubleshooting, NTI explained this as a security “feature.” However, the logic behind it escapes me, and it’s hard to consider it a feature when no other program exhibits the same behavior. R-Drive Image, Acronis Cyber Security Home Office, Aomei Backupper, and Macrium Reflect Home all backed up without a fuss.

I checked NTI’s EZ Backup Now 7.5 (see above) to see if it suffered the same ‘feature,” and while it failed initially, on the the second try it imaged a partition correctly. Apparently, a partial implementation of said “feature.”

Another annoyance was that choosing to stop a 7GB cloud backup job at 30 percent didn’t stop the backup. I waited a full 10 minutes, then killed the process to cancel the job. Perhaps I was impatient, or perhaps the stop request wouldn’t have been processed until the current 7GB container file was completed — i.e., at 100 percent.

A smaller online backup of the documents, desktop, and downloads folders proceeded without incident, as I’m sure the larger one would have too, if I hadn’t needed to cancel.

On another positive note, creating a recovery disc went without a hitch and booted on both test beds. The image that I was eventually able to create was restored successful as well.

Should you buy NTI Backup Pro 7?

In the end, NTI Backup Pro 7 worked as advertised, but the unfixed annoyances I encountered and the super-high cost of the cloud storage leave me less than enthusiastic. You can give it a spin and see if it’s right for you, but EZ Backup Now 7.5 is likely a better fit for most users

Also, there’s a whole lot of feature-equivalent, less buggy competition out there in the form of Easeus ToDo Backup and Aomei Backupper, not to mention the free version of Macrium Reflect and Windows own File history, which is integrated into operating system.

Note that NTI hinted at big changes for the next version, including porting to a better development platform. Here’s hoping.

How I test software

All software is installed on an AMD Ryzen 3700X system utilizing an MSI MEG X570 motherboard with 64GB of Kingston DDR4 memory, and several PCIe 4 NVMe SSDs. The operating system is Windows 11 21H2, to which only security updates are applied to maintain a level playing field over time. The test bed is largely kept off the Internet unless testing the software demands it. All pertinent features are tested and the program rated for stability, suitability to task, ease of use, and feature set.

Should issues arise, all possibly conflicting applications are uninstalled, and if that doesn’t fix the problem, Windows is reinstalled. And as off this writing, controlling the test bed remotely will be checked.

Whether you’re buying a laptop or building your own PC, you’re going to want an SSD as the main storage drive — and you’re also going to want to make sure it’s the right size for your needs.

Sure, you might be able to crack open that laptop and swap out the main drive for a bigger one, or even install a second drive alongside it for additional storage. And yes, you can definitely do that with a desktop PC.

But if you have zero affinity for computer tinkering, then it’s just way more convenient to buy the right amount of storage from the get-go. Working on a computer with a too-small-for-your-needs SSD can be miserable, but you also don’t want to overspend on unused capacity — especially in these shortage-plagued times, when SSDs are going for more than double their previous asking prices.

Here’s everything you need to know about how much SSD storage space you should have in 2026, as well as how big you can reasonably go without wasting your hard-earned money.

64GB storage is too little

Officially, Microsoft’s system requirements for Windows 11 say that 64GB of storage is the absolute minimum for the operating system.

Yet while you might be able to cram Windows 11 onto such a small drive, it won’t be comfortable. You won’t have much — if any — room to install third-party applications, download files, or manage PC games.

That said, a computer with a 64GB SSD can technically run Windows 11 as long as you’re willing to forego lots of applications and store all of your files on the cloud, on an SD card, on a USB drive, or a separate SSD. If you do that, it might be usable. But I don’t recommend it.

128GB is the true bare minimum

In 2026, 64GB of SSD storage simply isn’t realistic for most users. To me, a 128GB SSD is the actual bare minimum.

If you aren’t doing a lot of demanding stuff — meaning as long as you stick to lightweight applications, avoid downloading huge files, and don’t store everything on your primary drive — then you could get away with an SSD that has a 128GB capacity.

But 128GB really isn’t a lot these days, especially if you’re a gamer. Plenty of modern PC games take up between 20GB to 30GB each, and then you have games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and God of War Ragnarök that are each larger than 150GB and wouldn’t even fit on an SSD of that size.

On top of that, SSDs that are too full and near capacity begin to slow down and lose performance, so you can’t truly utilize the full 128GB of space on your drive without consequences. Do you really want to be micromanaging your files and storage space all the time?

Related: Buying a budget laptop? Don’t go below these specs

256GB is enough to get by

A 256GB SSD is a much more reasonable size and adequate for most typical users. With 256GB of space, you can install some large applications, store many gigabytes of data, and still have room to spare. You don’t have to think about your storage limit as often.

256GB also happens to be the minimum SSD size requirement for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs. More and more PCs will likely settle on this as a “new minimum” as Copilot+ PCs become more mainstream. That makes this a good minimum capacity to hit if you care about future proofing — though most people would be better off snagging a 512GB laptop if possible. This is enough to get by, but you may have to make rough decisions in a few years.

512GB (or more) for avid gamers, downloaders, and power users

When you move beyond 256GB, it really starts to become about your specific needs. For basic web browsing, office work, and streaming media, 256GB is more than enough — but if you plan on storing lots of big video files or installing PC games, you’ll want more.

For PC gaming, the more storage the better. As mentioned before, PC games are massive and only getting bigger, so you’ll likely want at least 1TB of SSD capacity if you’re a heavy gamer who digs AAA titles. But it really depends on the types of games you play. You could get by with just 512GB if your Steam library is mostly small, niche, indie games.

Likewise, for content creation and media editing, files are usually quite large. Depending on bitrate, an hour of 4K video footage could reach 50GB or even double that. (Then again, if you create and edit content, you probably already have some idea of how much space you need for the type of files you work with.)

If you’re a data hoarder, the situation is a little different. You’d likely be better off with a moderately sized SSD and storing your big data files on external drives connected over Thunderbolt. In fact, for long-term storage that’s infrequently accessed, HDDs still prevail over SSDs. (Unfortunately, hard drive prices have also skyrocketed in 2026.)

Related: The best external drives for backups and storage

How big should your SSD be? In a nutshell

When in doubt, shoot to have at least 256GB of SSD storage if possible. While you could get by with 128GB in a pinch, it’ll be a lot less comfortable. And don’t even consider dropping down to 64GB — it may be technically possible, but it won’t be fun at all.

If you plan on playing modern PC games, you’ll want at least 512GB of storage, but aim for 1TB or more if your budget allows. If you work with large files, you should have a good idea of what you need. It isn’t unusual for power users to want 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, or more.

How much does SSD storage cost?

The only real downside to a bigger SSD storage size is the cost. Bigger capacities can be cheaper per gigabyte, but they still cost more overall and you don’t want to overspend for unused space.

Here’s a rough ballpark of prices for internal SSDs these days, though premium models can charge premium prices:

• 256GB: $30 to $65
• 512GB: $60 to $110
• 1TB: $130 to $250
• 2TB: $250 to $400+

If you’re buying a laptop or a pre-built desktop PC, upgraded configurations with larger SSDs may be more expensive than opting for a cheaper configuration with a smaller drive and upgrading the drive yourself. If you can buy the drive on sale, even better.

Further reading: Ways to repurpose an SSD you no longer use

If you buy an external SSD or a USB stick today that’s being offered at a bargain price with astronomical storage capacities, you should be rather skeptical. The reason: The market is currently being flooded with sophisticated counterfeit storage devices.

Manipulated controller firmware can trick the operating system into believing the device has more capacity than physically exists. Here’s an example: Imagine you’ve bought a supposed 4TB SSD on a well-known online platform and your Windows Explorer also displays this capacity.

In reality, however, the drive contains only a comparatively tiny 64GB chip. The insidious thing about this manipulation is that the controller has been programmed to appear to acknowledge write operations successfully, even when the physical storage has long since been exhausted.

As soon as the actual capacity is exceeded, the drive either starts overwriting the oldest data at the beginning of the storage or simply dumps new data packets into a digital black hole, while the file system continues to report an intact structure.

The rude awakening usually only sets in weeks later, when you try to open your supposedly backed-up holiday photos or documents. Instead of the content, you’ll only get error messages or find corrupted file fragments. We must make this absolutely clear: The operating system is not a reliable indicator of a drive’s integrity.

It merely retrieves the information provided by the controller. And in this case, the controller has been tampered with. To expose these deceptions, you need tools that scrutinize every single bit. You should therefore check every new drive immediately upon receipt using the Validrive tool: Launch the program with administrator rights and select ‘Check USB Drive.’

Now insert the storage device and allow the program to recognize it. Click on ‘Validate THIS drive’ to start the check. The tool carries out a quick, targeted check by writing to random sectors across the entire declared range and reading them back immediately.

As Validrive measures and analyzes access times during this process, it is able to determine very quickly whether there is actually a physical cell behind a logical address, or whether the controller is simply suppressing an error message.

Related content

• How to tell if your USB cable is hiding malicious hacker hardware
• Is your USB flash drive trustworthy? These tips will tell you
• Hard drive, SSD, or USB flash drive: Which portable storage is right for you?

Price When Reviewed

2TB: $158 I 4TB: $208

Best Prices Today: Seagate One Touch Portable

Seagate has expanded its One Touch line to include 2.5-inch hard drive models such as the One Touch Portable reviewed here. In short, there’s nothing revolutionary about the One Touch Portable, but it’s the fastest such beastie I’ve tested. It’s simply a very capable, attractive, and portable USB hard drive that will set you back a lot less per TB than a similar capacity USB SSD. A lot less.

What are the One Touch Portable’s features?

The One Touch Portable carries forth the sculpted, wavy styling of its 3.5-inch sibling and offers the same Type-C connectivity. It’s available in gray, ivory, and dark blue, at 2TB or 4TB capacities.

The drive measures approximately 4.65-inches long, by 3.15-inches wide, and 0.5-inches thick. Weight is a mere 4.6 ounces. Yup, portable. A Type-C to Type-C cable is included with the drive.

Seagate was specific about the flavor of USB involved, but it really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s 5Gbps or 10Gbps as both offer far more bandwidth than any hard drive can use.

The company’s Toolkit software is included and provides diagnostic and backup capabilities.

Seagate warranties the drive for two years with data recovery (where available?) for the same period. Why not three or five years? It is a hard drive with spinning platters and a mechanical read/write head moving about, after all. It’s also portable and likely to encounter at least moderately rougher handling than a desktop hard drive.

How much is the One Touch Portable?

The One Touch Portable is $158 in its 2TB capacity, and $208 for 4TB. That’s about half the current SSD price per terabyte, though quite a bit more than 2.5-inch drives were going for just a couple of years ago. The price per terabyte is also greater than 3.5-inch hard drives such as Seagate’s Expansion Desktop, One Touch USB, and X Vault, but not ridiculously so.

Note that after a slight dip in August 2026, SSD prices again soared in September. This surprised me just a tad, but if you need capacity, hard drives are by far the more affordable option at the moment and likely to remain so for the immediate future.

How fast is the One Touch Portable?

For a 2.5-inch USB hard drive, the One Touch Portable is actually quite fast — a couple MBps faster than the other 2.5-inch drives I’ve tested. It’s not for moving vast amounts of data in a hurry, but it’s more than adequate for unattended backup, streaming media, and other tasks.

Note that streaming even high-resolution movies doesn’t require nearly as much bandwidth as some people might think. Less than 50MBps generally speaking.

I included the 3.5-inch Seagate One Touch along with the WD My Passport, Works with USB-C and WD My Passport Ultra for Mac (yes, those are actually the names) just to show you how much faster the larger drive is.

As for the 2.5-inch competition, the One Touch Portable easily motored past the older WD My Passport drives in all our tests, including CrystalDiskMark 8 (shown below). The 4K tests are not included because the performance in those is generally only a MB or two per second and the chart looks a bit ridiculous.

If you need capacity, hard drives are by far the more affordable option at the moment and likely to remain so for the immediate future.

The One Touch Portable also banged on the competition in our 48GB transfers.

Shaving nearly 13 minutes off the 2.5-inch competition is no mean feat for the One Touch Portable. Here again, however, you can see the speed advantage of a 3.5-inch hard drive, which lopped off another 23 minutes.

For a 2.5-inch USB hard drive, the One Touch Portable hauls the mail. That said, it’s still about the slowest type of external storage you can buy these days. Buy 2.5-inch for capacity and portability.

Should you buy the One Touch Portable?

If you need both capacity and portability, this buy makes sense. It’s the best 2.5-inch hard drive I’ve tested. You can get more capacity and speed with a 3.5-inch hard drive, but those are significantly less convenient in the haul-around department. Given the SSD’s rising price per TB, we’re currently favoring hard drives for a lot of storage missions.

Further, the 4TB unit is our choice between the two capacities thanks to a $52 versus $79 price per terabyte. Thank me later.

Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (128GB of memory total).

Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs involved in testing are mounted in a Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks (to keep article length down, we only report one) to find the storage device’s potential performance, then a series of 48GB and 450GB transfers tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what users will see during routine copy operations, as well as the far faster FastCopy run as administrator to show what’s possible.

A 20GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used as the second drive in our transfer tests. Formerly the 48GB tests were done with a RAM disk serving that purpose.

Each test is performed on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This issue has abated somewhat with the current crop of SSDs utilizing more mature controllers and far faster, late-generation NAND.

Note that our testing MO evolves and these results may not match those from previous articles. Only comparisons inside the article are 100% valid as those results are gathered using the current hardware and MO.

It’s been a brutally bad year for anyone who needs more storage or RAM, but Amazon’s Prime Day is ready to rescue you from misery. Today and tomorrow, you can grab the fantastic 1TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD for $207 – assuming you’re a Prime subscriber of course. (Here’s how to get Amazon Prime for free if needed.)

I won’t try and oversell that by saying it’s “only” $207 when storage prices have skyrocketed over the past year (thanks, AI). But in this current hellscape, you could do a lot worse. That $207 price is a whopping 39 percent off the drive’s stated $340 MSRP, as well as a solid $40 discount below the $250 price the drive has sat at (or above) since April.

And the Samsung 9100 Pro is flat-out great. Our review hailed it as “the return of the king” upon launch a year ago, praising its chart-topping performance and abundant features. “In the right system with the right software, the 9100 Pro will run rings around the competition,” our veteran SSD tester reported.

If you’re going to spend an arm and a leg for an SSD, might as well spend that money on one you’ll have zero regrets about – especially when you can get it on a rare, substantial discount. Be sure to snag the 1TB Samsung 9100 Pro for $207 before Prime Day turns into a pumpkin at midnight Pacific time, and also make sure you check out PCWorld’s big Amazon Prime Day tech deals roundup for even more juicy sales.

Get the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD for $207 at Amazon

Price When Reviewed

$329.99

Best Prices Today: Orico TB5 dock with NVMe storage

Yes, the Orico TB5 is a Thunderbolt 5 hub/dock. But as it also offers lightning fast storage performance, we thought users might be interested in just how fast said storage is. Long story short — very.

Of course, I tested it as a dock as well, but only to confirm functionality. Okay, I lie. I kicked the dock features pretty thoroughly and cover them below, but it’s not my beat so I’ll just say it’s easily one of my favorites in that regard. Right up there with the OWC StudioStack.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external SSDs and best Thunderbolt docks for comparison.

What are the Orico TB5’s features?

The TB5 is compact, measuring approximately 6.7-inches wide, by 3.5-inches deep, by 1.35-inches tall. The hub/dock/NVMe enclosure controlled by Intel’s JHL9480 weighs around 15 ounces including the NVMe SSD.

I must say, I was impressed with the location and access to the TB5’s single PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe port. It’s on the bottom of the unit (see the image below), walled off by a magnetically secured access plate. You can pry the plate off with a finger, yet it’s not going anywhere unless you want it to.

I was slightly perplexed to see that the SSD retaining screw wasn’t already in place — but sure enough, there was one in a mini-baggie in the box. Kind of a waste of plastic in my book, but what the heck.

As the TB5 is primarily a hub/dock, it makes sense to list all the ports that it provides. On the back are the power jack, full-sized HDMI and DP ports, the upstream (PC) Thunderbolt 5 port, a single downstream Thunderbolt 5 port, a 2.5GbE (Ethernet) port, and a headphone jack.

The front is home to SD and TF 4.0 card slots, four 10Gbps USB ports (three Type-A, one Type-C), a second downstream Thunderbolt 5 port, and the power button. Personally, I find the front/back allotment of the ports fits my needs perfectly, with a major caveat that I’ll discuss in a bit. It’s a matter of taste, but I like the USB on the front.

The TB5, as all Thunderbolt 5 docks do, ships with a very beefy power supply. In this case a 20 volt, 9 amp brick that weighs around 1 pound , 7 ounces. Like I said, beefy.

Orico advertises 120Gbps as the TB5’s maximum speed, as do many Thunderbolt 5 docks. However, with Thunderbolt 5 standard, 120Gbps is only for uni-directional downstream video to allow more high-resolution displays and/or greater resolutions. Storage, being bi-directional is capped at 80Gbps, or around 6GBps sequential throughput.

How much is the Orico TB5?

At $330 the TB5 is hardly an impulse buy. Depending on your impulses, of course. That said, keep in mind that Thunderbolt 5 storage enclosures sans accouterments already run around the $150 mark.

If you need to kill two issues with one device — the need for more easily accessible ports and fast external storage — then a hybrid dock with storage is well worth considering. It certainly cuts down on the clutter — until you start cabling other devices, that is.

You’ll need to provide your own NVMe SSD for the TB5, which isn’t going to be cheap these days. In case you go bargain hunting in this NAND/DRAM-challenged market, even a PCIe 4.0 SSD is fast enough to saturate the 80Gbps bus.

A PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD will still get you two-thirds of the way there with around 4GBps sequential transfers. PCIe 5.0 is overkill and a needless expense. Just sayin’

How is the TB5 as a hub/dock?

As I mentioned, I kicked all the ports on the TB5 thoroughly. All ports worked as advertised and to speed. I had only a 4K display with which to check the HDMI and DP ports, but they were fine at that resolution at 60Hz. 80Gbps storage performance via the two downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports was mostly on par with the internal storage discussed in the next section.

I do have two complaints: First, the unit doesn’t power on with your system — you have to press the power button. I’d prefer that the TB5 power on, then allow the option of turning it off with said power button. A piddling gripe, that.

More annoyingly, the front USB ports are spaced too close together if you want to use a thumb drive in each. The three Type-A’s are approximately 0.75-inches from center to center and the rightmost is only 0.65-inches from the center of the 10Gbps Type-C.

Most thumb drives are a tad wider than 0.75-inches. I could not fit three abreast in the Type-A ports, or use one in the rightmost Type-A port and the Type-C port at the same time. I could squish two thumb drives into adjacent Type-A ports, but only with one at a slight angle. Doable, but hardly optimal.

Obviously, this will not be an issue with devices that attach with cables and their thinner connectors, but if you’re rife with thumb drives, take note. You could, of course, use USB extension cables, but that’s an unsightly kludge if you’re opposed to cable clutter.

In the next iteration, Orico should consider spacing the ports more widely, or orienting them vertically. Perhaps move the power button to the back, where you’re likely using cables anyway?

How fast is the Orico TB5?

The Orico TB5’s storage performance lived up to the company’s 6GBps claims. In fact, it even finished first in a couple of tests and is currently the third-fastest external SSD I’ve ever tested. Note that this was in no small part due to my populating the M.2 slot with a PCIe 5.0 Crucial T705 — an SSD capable of over 14GBps.

Though not the fastest in CrystalDiskMark 8, the TB5 was within shouting distance of the leaders in most tests.

With CrystalDiskMark’s 4K tests, it was right on par overall, as well as the fastest writing with 32 queues. Note that Windows Explorer, even more than a decade out from the advent of NVMe, still does not use queues. Maybe if Microsoft concentrated on making its OS perform better rather than be more intrusive, this might change. Until then, use FastCopy.

The TB5/T710 combo was no slouch in the real world either, turning in a stellar 48GB transfer performance in Windows Explorer.

The TB5 came close to the best time writing 450GB, falling a bit short but still within 10 seconds of the number one OWC 1M2 80Gbps (not listed).

The TB5’s internal storage is indeed fast. An 80Gbps SSD (the number one OWC 1M2 80Gbps) attached to the downstream Thunderbolt ports read just as fast, but write performance was a good 2GBps slower. Still 4GBps while placing data in cells ain’t half bad.

Should you buy the Orico TB5?

Just for storage? No. You can get by a whole lot cheaper if that’s all you’re interested in.

However, if you’re looking for a full-blown dock that doubles as very fast Thunderbolt 5 storage, then that’s a yes. It’s basically on par performance-wise with any Thunderbolt 5 storage I’ve tested.

Just mind the narrow USB port spacing on the front of the unit.

How we test

Our storage tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on a Z790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system.

Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors.

The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means — let us know.