- Team Group has launched its T-Create Expert P34F portable SSD
- It features location tracking via Apple's Find My app, and an alarm
- The P34F should go on sale very soon
If you've ever lost an external SSD or USB stick – maybe containing vital, or even sensitive, data – you'll know it can be a traumatic experience, and a new portable drive could put an end to any such anguish around misplaced hardware.
TechPowerUp reports that Team Group has officially launched the T-Create Expert P34F, which is a world-first in terms of being a portable SSD that has built-in location tracking.
The feature works via Apple's Find My app, and the drive can be paired with supported Apple devices for the tracking functionality, meaning the best Macs, iPhones or iPads.
The P34F can be located using said Find My app, and the drive also boasts an internal speaker that allows it to sound an alarm that's audible within a 40m range.
The SSD comes in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities and has a sleek design, weighing 70g with a size of 81 x 43mm and a thickness of 16.5mm. It has a metal finish and is made from a 73% zinc alloy, and offers transfer speeds of up to 1,000MB/s for reads and 900MB/s for writes.
While Team Group says the drive is out now, and the P34F is live on its website, it's still yet to appear at retailers – presumably that's about to happen. We don't have a confirmed price yet, either, but we do know that the SSD benefits from a three-year warranty.
Analysis: portability and security
Note that only the tracking capability is tied to the Apple ecosystem, and you can of course use this portable SSD with other devices including Windows PCs. It has a USB-C connector and supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt connectivity.
It's a clever idea to have this built-in tracking system, particularly on such a small drive. The P34F is smaller than a credit card, in fact, and with that kind of diminutive hardware it's not difficult to misplace or accidentally leave the device somewhere.
At least if that happens, you've got a fighting chance of getting this external SSD back, particularly as it has that audible alarm for locating the drive when you know it's nearby. And that could be an absolute lifesaver if you're storing sensitive data on the P34F – not that you should store such data on anything that's portable and potentially easily lost, of course, but people still do.
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