Some days it feels like I live out of an aisle seat. Running between gates, finding power where I can and dealing with idiot passengers is the story of my life. If you see me in an airport, you'll always see my trusty GORUCK GR0 with me and the contents inside rarely change since only the most critical things are allowed in there.

You'll find my iPad, Field Notes notebook, a couple of magazines, a Cliff Bar, flashlight, laptop, cable bag, Jackery charger, portable hard drive and my camera gear.

When I'm on the road taking photographs and capturing stories, I need my gear to be reliable and perform as needed. I'm not a fan of trying out new things on the road where if they fail I'm stuck.

Recently, Samsung sent me one of their new Portable SSD T1 drives to use as being a Samsung Imagelogger.

Solid state drives are great because of their speed and size, but I've never owned one.

My first impression was "damn this thing is small!"

The drive is smaller than anything else in my bag. It is even smaller than my wallet in all directions.

I received a 500 GB model, but it also comes in 250 GB and 1 TB models.

As I plugged the T1 in to my computer I was surprised to see that it needed special software installed. It only took a few seconds to do so and then another new feature popped up that made my day.

Not only are you allowed to name the drive for easy organization, but it allowed me to assign a password to it.

Now, if I lose the drive when I'm traveling I don't have to worry about someone getting at my files and data on it because I've password protected it. Sure, this adds another step before I can get to the files on it, but you should care more about your security than a few seconds. Kudos to Samsung for putting this feature on the drives.

Speed wise, it lives up to the hype. Since it connects via USB 3 it is super fast and even when doing a dump of RAW images straight from my NX1 also plugged into my computer it took no time to copy gigs of data.

I wonder if at some point Samsung will make it possible to plug the drive directly into their cameras to back up the files. THAT would be an awesome upgrade if the engineering team is reading!

If there is any drawback to the Samsung T1 it is the USB 3 cable. It is the only device I current own that requires this cable.

It is normal for me to have backup cables with me and I need to remember to purchase a second USB 3 cable so I'm never without one. As more devices migrate to this standard it won't be a problem and for most people it probably won't be an issue. I live by the "two is one and one is none" motto so it is a minor drawback for me.

All in all, I'm impressed by the drive and as I read rumors of even larger capacity ones on the horizon it gets me excited. The days of stacking bricks of hard drives will be no more!

Watch this official video from Samsung to see and learn more about this tiny marvel.

Disclaimer - Samsung sent me this drive for free as part of the Imagelogger program. Many links are affiliate links. Thoughts, words and photos are my own.