Package

The Drive

The Sabrent Rocket Nano is very compact for a portable SSD, especially when you consider the performance offered.


The case looks great, it is made of thick metal, which gives it an ultra-high quality, rugged look and feel. A single USB-C port lets you connect to the drive. An activity indicator is included, too, look at the first picture, the little hole on the bottom right.


Phison includes this rubber case with the drive. Not sure why you'd want to use that—there's no moving parts inside the SSD so it doesn't need protection against shock. The rubber is also a dust magnet, I definitely prefer the metal look.

Disassembly

Taking the drive apart is not easy and you will most likely scratch it. First you'll have to remove the glued-on "Sabrent" logo, which reveals a screw. Once the screw is removed you can take off the bottom, which requires quite a bit of force due to the thermal pads.


On the PCB we find the SSD controller, and four NAND flash chips.


The flash chips are Hynix 128-layer 3D TLC NAND.


The Phison PS2251-18 (U18) is a fairly recent design that combines the USB interface and SSD controller logic into a single processor. It uses four channels to connect to the flash chips, and has support for QLC and TLC NAND.