Mini test: Sandisk Desk Drive 8TB

Posted on Jul 29, 2025 by Pro Moviemaker

Drowning in Raw video, proxies and project files? We tested the 8TB Sandisk Desk Drive – a sleek, high-speed SSD

When your filmmaking data includes high-resolution Raw video, proxies, project files and audio assets, the data adds up fast. That’s where the Sandisk Desk Drive is useful, as it’s a desktop external SSD with a large 8TB capacity that’s been purpose-built for anyone who wants fast speeds and plug-and-play simplicity.

Sandisk is known for its rugged cards and portable drives, but the Desk Drive marks a shift into the SSD desktop storage arena. It’s designed for creatives who have massive files but might not want to invest in the complexity of a full RAID system or NAS set-up. Of course, you should really also have a separate and fully redundant backup system for long-term storage.

Right out of the box, the Desk Drive has a minimalist look, as it’s compact and designed to live on a desk without taking up too much room. Plug it into the mains with the included adapter, and a single, included USB-C cable is used to link it to your computer. It comes with a USB-C to USB-A cable too, for old-school legacy devices. We tried it on a Macbook Pro and Mac Studio and it was instantly recognised as an external storage device. No extra formatting was needed.

Using the fast and silent solid-state storage tech, it delivers read speeds up to 1000MB/s. While this might not match NVMe-level portable drives on Raw benchmarks, in practice it’s an excellent balance of performance and reliability. You can easily edit 4K and even 8K ProRes or H.265 footage straight from the drive without the dreaded playback stutter. Importing footage from cards is painless and quick too, even during backups and file wrangling at the end of shoot day.

The headline feature is, of course, capacity. A large 8TB capacity in a single external drive is no small feat, especially for an affordable device. A 4TB version is also available, but 8TB hits the current sweet spot between size and price. It can store an entire feature project, with room to spare.

The Sandisk Desk Drive 8TB offers high speed, generous capacity and pro-grade reliability without the intimidating learning curve or price tag of enterprise storage solutions.

Whether you’re cutting together a short film, managing client projects or backing up lots of footage, the Desk Drive earns its keep. Quiet, fast and capacious, it offers peace of mind, as it removes the worry that a spinning HDD will eventually fail. If you want to include it as part of a RAID set-up, and can afford it, buy two and mirror them to get a superfast backup.

£585/$640

sandisk.com