A good portable SSD should be small, fast, and able to connect to devices through the almighty USB-C port. Samsung’s new T7 Touch checks all of those boxes, plus another big one: it’s more secure than your average SSD. There’s a capacitive fingerprint reader built into the top of the drive, which works like the one you might have on your phone or laptop. After you’ve enrolled a fingerprint via the free companion app, it will require authentication before it mounts to your computer or phone. This feature — backed by AES 256-bit hardware encryption to lock down your biometric data and the drive’s contents — makes it so that not just anyone can plug it in and see what you have stored. It works exactly like I thought it would.
Samsung’s software for the SSD (compatible with Windows 10, macOS, and Android) is simple to use. The software even comes loaded onto the drive for easy installation, with the exception of the Android version, which is available from the Google Play Store. You’ll need to create a password in the software to use the sensor, and you can enroll up to four fingerprints that can unlock it. The most obvious choice might be to log a few of your own fingers. But if you plan to share this with a classmate, your family, or colleagues at your company, the better move is to register other people’s fingerprints with the drive, too. That way, it can be passed back and forth without much worrying.
