Crucial MX500 1TB SATA 6Gbps 2.5" Internal SSD

Update (11 Feb 18): I'm not sure whether it is the drive or the solution provided by Crucial in the comments to this review, but I now have a working SSD on my troublesome Windows 10 machine. I followed the suggestion to turn off "Secure Boot" for the clone to see what would happened. I cloned my Win10 HD to a Micron 1100 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-inch MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY using Macrium Reflect (rather than Acronis) with Secure Boot disabled. Cloned fine, installed fine, booted up and...froze. Thought I was going to be in the same place as before. But I hard rebooted, got to the "Windows Repair" screen, rebooted and let it run. This time it fully booted and is running. I've been using it now for about two hours and have only experienced one hiccup where Windows froze for about 30 seconds (I attribute it to "break-in" if there's such a s thing!). Anyway, I started with a 3-star review/rating. Then, when it installed flawlessly into a MacBook Pro I upgraded to 4 stars. Now that I have been able to clone my Win10 machine successfully using the suggestions provided by Crucial I've upped it to 5 stars (maybe I'm wrong, but Micron and Crucial to me are the same company (or used to be, anyway)). Frankly, this is the level of satisfaction and support I've received in the past and come to expect from Crucial. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Original Review: "Ten Attempts Over 4 Days; No Success Attempting A Win 10 Clone. Worked Like A Charm On A Mac" This SSD is a bit of a mess. Previously having great results with Crucial SSDs I should have read reviews at Crucial's web site before purchasing. There are a number of threads that detail issues with Crucial's edition of the Acronis cloning software. Sure enough, I had problems with Acronis locking up. So out with Acronis, in with two other cloning software packages. They didn't lock up, but the computer would always hang mid-boot (Windows 10). Sure enough, there are threads about this drive not playing nice with Windows 10 (on certain laptops?). Finally, I pulled out another computer and attempted a clone with the source drive on USB and the target SSD on USB. And guess what, same problem. Can't even get it to boot far enough to try to put Crucial Storage Exec into action (not that that would have necessarily helped; but it certainly could have). Anyway, after ten or so attempts over four days (and quite a bit of lost sleep) I gave up. (FYI, this is not my first rodeo with SSDs; so while I'm no IT expert I'm not a beginner either.) Next try will be to a Mac OS laptop. Reviews here on Amazon seem to say no worries. We'll see. If successful, will keep and potentially up-rate this drive. If not, it's a definite down-rate and a return to Amazon. Update (01 Feb 18): Installation on my MacBook Pro was a breeze. Cloned using Bombich's Carbon Copy cloning software, installed without issue, ran without a single glitch. Very pleased. So we know the SSD works just fine. What I can't say for sure is if the issue is an SSD construct problem with regard to Windows or a Windows 10 failing. At this point, very disappointed. Will probably give another manufacturer a shot (have also had luck with Samsung SSDs). We'll update as required. 3 stars. Tops (at this point). Update (01 Feb 2018): As promised, rating up one star to 4 stars. Runs like a charm on my MBP13. Very pleased.

X. Fossor · 2018-01-31 · via amazon

My girlfriend's older Dell Inspiron N5110 Laptop was starting to get pretty slow despite being maxed out on ram, so I talked her into letting me install an SSD for her. I had previously installed a 525 gb MX300 on my laptop and was impressed with the results. The MX500 has good reviews, a fair price, excellent reliability, solid performance and a 5 year warranty. C/Net has an excellent article on installing an SSD so I used that as a guide. The hardest part was actually getting to the hard drive. My HP was easy to access, but her Dell required a fairly major disassembly. Luckily I had previously replaced the motherboard to fix a charging problem, so I am familiar with the disassembly. I bought a simple external SSD enclosure with a USB connection so I could clone the old hard drive. C/Net suggested using Macrium Reflect software to create the clone. The program is easy to use and worked flawlessly. Crucial offers their own software, but I was already familiar with Reflect. Compared to the old hard drive, the MX500 is lightweight, fast and quiet. After the installation, I used Crucial's free Storage Executive software to make sure I had the most up to date firmware. My girlfriend was very happy with the significantly shorter boot time as well as the time it takes to open a program. No more lag time and freeze ups. I had done everything I could to speed up her older drive, but nothing worked and it is probably 10 years old.

Matthew C. Halbert · 2019-10-31 · via amazon

I bought two of these. This first review is for the 500GB SSD. My review for the 1TB drive is below. This serves two purposes for me. It greatly speeded up myToshiba i3 laptop as compared to the HDD. Also, the HDD now serves as a backup in case the SSD fails. The original HDD is 500GB so I went for the same size SSD. I downloaded and installed the Acronis True Image software from the Crucial web site. I cloned the drive using a USB to SATA adapter and the software said it was successful. The software runs in the Windows 10 environment. I removed the HDD, installed the SSD and the computer booted up much faster. Programs also start much faster. I did not need the included spacer for this computer. This second review is for the 1TB SSD. I downloaded and installed the Acronis True Image software from the Crucial web site. I cloned the drive using a USB to SATA adapter and the software said it was successful. However, when I installed it into my laptop, the computer would not boot. I put the HDD back in and connected the SSD. Windows Explorer did not recognize the drive, but it was visible in disk management. After spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong, I found cloning software called AOMEI Backupper Standard. This software successfully cloned the HDD to the SSD. The computer boots up and works normally. It greatly speeded up myToshiba i5 laptop as compared to the HDD. After doing more research, I found out that the recommended process is to create a Media Recovery CD or USB flash drive to boot from that, and also to have the SSD installed in the computer and the original HDD connected to a USB to SATA adapter. This will enable the SSD to be bootable after the cloning. However, I believe that the original HDD will no longer be bootable after cloning it using this method. I have not tried doing it this way since I had success with AOMEI Backupper Standard. I needed the included spacer for this computer. I recommend both of these drives since the end result of cloning the HDDs with SSDs is much faster laptop computers, and having drop-in backups of the original HDDs in case a drive fails.

Stew · 2019-05-29 · via amazon

I have an older model Dell XPS 630i running dual 5.5" 1 TB Western Digital WD1002FBYS (Enterprise Storage) drives with 32M cache setup in a RAID 0 configuration in order to maximize read/write operations. I'm also running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I decided to replace that config with a single 3.5" Crucial MX500 1TB drive (no RAID) and I'm glad I did. As others have stated, my performance went through the roof. You might think that a disk really only gets affected when you try to save a file or launch a program. That is really not the case. The disk plays a central role to the overall performance of your system and is directly involved in moving data from physical storage to virtual (memory). Depending upon how much memory (RAM) you have, your system might need to do a lot of paging from RAM to disk. If so, this can clobber your performance especially if your disk is not up to it. If your disk is a clunky, slow mess then your performance will be the same. To give you an idea of how this simple drive replacement affected my system (I won't quote read/write metrics as others have stated those in their reviews) - before the replacement the Microsoft Windows Experience Index (WEI - scale of 1.0 to 7.9) for my machine was 5.9 largely due to the disk. After the replacement my WEI is now 7.0. It would be better if my machine wasn't 10+ years old. (Note: Over the years I've upgraded my graphics & sound card, added a USB 3.0 card, and replaced my RAM a couple of times. I replaced my Western Digital drives about a year ago). So that is all well and good, but how does it actually affect my experience. Well, login used to take about 1-2 minutes from a fresh boot (login, wait until the desktop paints, wait until all my auto-start programs launch and are ready, etc.). Now login takes about 10 seconds. Launching apps like MS Office takes about 1-2 seconds. A couple of things to note about Crucial and the migration process from current to new disk: 0. You need to initialize and format the SSD disk so that your system, and the migration tools, will recognize it. The instructions do not mention this. 1. You need to either purchase a SATA-to-USB cable to connect your drive to a USB port in order to "prep" it, or you need a free bay and SATA port inside your computer to install the drive along side your existing drives.Remember, you need to actually clone your current disk to SSD 2. The Crucial software tools (Software Executive) and migration tool (Acronis Migration) tool just didn't/dont' work. Neither tool could recognize the new Crucial disk and neither would run without recognition. Crucial instructions are to use Acronis to perform the partition migration (clone) to the new drive 3. I used a freeware tool called MiniTool Partition Wizard which worked phenomenally well. It has an option for cloning to SSD. It immediately identified my new disk migrated the partition, wiped my old disk and rebooted my machine. After a couple of hours I came back and simply logged in and was good to go. I ran CheckDisk to verify the files, etc. on the new disk and everything was perfect. I'm super happy with this upgrade and my 10+ year old Dell tower is now running like a brand new machine. If you're thinking its time to buy a new machine, you might want to consider an SSD upgrade first.

Bob the Engineer · 2018-06-28 · via amazon

I have been using Crucial SSDs since 2010. After getting my first one, I never went with a different brand unless there was some unavoidable reason. Crucial has consistently delivered me quality products with excellent performance and longevity. To this day, I still use my first SSD from them and it works just as well as the day I got it. The drives have only gotten faster and cheaper since. The MX500 is no exception. It gives you the vast edge that you want over a traditional HDD. You can't go back after making the switch. Operating System boot time, application loading, and general file access are leagues faster. One of the best things about this product is that once you buy it, you won't need a replacement for a very long time. This will very likely outlive the rest of the computer it is housed in. Mine has outlived several laptop/desktop configurations. Every single one I have bought for myself or others still works. If you do run into an issue, Crucial's tech support is fantastic. I ran into a problem a few years ago where my laptop wasn't detecting the SSD. It turns out that the machine itself was the problem(voltage issue), not the drive. The representative I got on the line was respectful and spoke clear English. They even make the RMA process painless. I fully recommend this product. The MX series from Crucial does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's going to save you time and practically pay for itself over its lifetime.

Zach · 2018-12-06 · via amazon

Best Buy

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VALUE SCORE

Cap

128

Read

550MB/s

Type

NVMe

Cap

128

Read

550MB/s

Type

NVMe