Why it matters: Verbatim has announced a new solid-state drive designed specifically for long-term storage. The company's WOV Series is an external SSD that packs 128GB of NAND flash and connects to your PC via USB 3.2 Gen 1. Verbatim is pitching it as a write-protected SSD, meaning you can only read from it under normal conditions.
In order to write to the drive, you must first install a dedicated piece of software that is only compatible with Windows 10 or Windows 11. The drive does work with Windows, Mac, and Chromebook, but is limited to read-only mode. The idea is to protect mission-critical files from being accidentally deleted or overwritten.
Read and write speeds are rated at 540 MB/s and 180 MB/s, respectively. You'll have to take Verbatim's word for this as the drive will error out when attempting to run a benchmark program.
Verbatim said it used high-quality MLC NAND flash in the drive. Because it isn't being recorded over again and again, there is very little deterioration to worry about. As such, Verbatim claims users can expect data to remain intact for 10 years or longer when stored at a temperature of 55 Celsius or cooler.
Speaking of, the drive is backed by a 10-year hardware warranty in which Verbatim will replace a bad drive during this period. Notably, the warranty does not guarantee stored data so you'll likely want a secondary backup as a fail safe. What's more, Verbatim says data cannot be erased and the only way to effectively do so is to physically destroy the SSD.
No word yet on when the Verbatim WOV Series SSD will launch or how much it'll retail for.