Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,400 MB/s - WDS100T2B0C, olid State Hard Drive

I’ve been using this WD Blue SN550 1TB as my boot drive since September 2021, and it’s been absolutely solid. It runs Windows 11 and all my core software without issue, with snappy boot times, quick application loads, and no thermal or stability problems even after years of daily use.Installation was easy, and it slotted right into my motherboard with no need for tweaking. While it’s not the fastest Gen 4 drive out there, for Gen 3 NVMe it’s fast enough to make a huge difference over SATA SSDs or any HDD.If you're looking for a reliable, affordable NVMe SSD with proven performance, the SN550 is a great choice. It’s been powering my PC for nearly four years now, and I’d absolutely trust it in another build.

My old Samsung 850 EVO 250gb SSD boot drive was consistently getting too full so it was time to upgrade. This is my first NVME drive and it does not disappoint. Plenty of storage and it's nice and fast. Sure there are faster NVME drives out there but for general use you don't really need anything faster than this (And you probably wouldn't notice a big difference anyway). It was super easy to install in the system and I like that there are no power or data cables to mess with.A couple counter-points based on other peoples reviews:1) It does not come with a screw to secure it to your motherboard. This is not Western Digital's fault, stop blaming them or any other drive manufacturer for that matter. The screw should be supplied by your motherboard manufacturer (if you built your own system) or your system builder (if you bought a pre-built PC)2) Cloning Software: Several buyers complained that this does not come with software to clone your old drive to the new one. Free software is available and Western Digital could have done a better job advertising this. They have a free version of Acronis True Image WD Edition Software available to on their website anyone can download. Personally I would recommend doing a clean install anytime you replace your boot drive to clean out old junk you don't use anymore and make your system perform better overall. If you choose to reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 10, get the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and use it to make a bootable USB drive. Just make sure to plug it into a USB 2.0 port when you install. Using a USB 3.0 port sounds like it would be faster but it's not, it will result in the install processing getting stuck, trust me...I also encourage you to do your research before purchasing, studying my motherboard manual a little closer would have saved me a little frustration. You may find yourself in a similar situation.My motherboard (Gigabyte Z170X - Gaming 5) has two M.2 slots. I could only get it to boot to Windows from one of the slots, the other would recognize the drive for storage it just wouldn't boot from it.The slot it requires me to use to boot also disabled 4 out of the 6 SATA ports on the motherboard (as the NVME drive now used those PCI-E channels to communicate). This meant I had to reconfigure how my other drives were plugged into the motherboard and I ultimately had to unplug three of my other SATA devices since they had nowhere to plug into. Again, not the NVME's fault; it's a configuration issue I should have seen coming.Overall, this is a great drive for the price and I'm looking at purchasing another one in the near future for the second M.2 slot on my board.

There are several choices when it comes to moving from USB3 flash drives, which have good read/write speeds initially but deteriorate over time to the equivalent of USB2 under moderate-to-heavy use, to a truly SSD-based USB3, which support sustained high-performances throughout its lifecycle.The easiest choice is to select a vendor who has put an SATA-based SSD into an SSD USB3 enclosure and sells it as an integrated product. Examples include: “ RAVPower Mini External SSD Hard Drive Portable SSD USB-C Solid State Flash Drive ” and its Pro version. Neither worked for me for following reasons:The original version (i.e. the non-Pro version) worked fine initially but failed to get recognized by my XP/Vista/Win7/Win10 after a few weeks.The replacement Pro version ended with a similar fate.The 2 nd choice is to buy, separately, an SATA-based SSD and an USB3 enclosure, and put them together oneself. The advantages include: Newer chipset used in the SSD USB3 enclosure and wider selection of SSD. The downside is lack of future proof when one upgrades computer with an NVMe based motherboard, which allows an NVMe-based SSD to double its transfer speeds but not SATA-based SSD.The 3 rd choice is to buy an NVMe-based SSD and an MVMe USB3 enclosure, and put them together oneself. I selected this future-proof route by purchasing “ WD Blue SN550 1TB NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280 - WDS100T2B0C” and “ Sintech USB 3.0 NVMe SSD enclusure,USB 3.1 M.2(NGFF) M Key NVMe SSD External Case Box (USB 3.1 Heatsink Case)”.This combination worked fine on my XP/Win7/Win10, but not on my Vista that had a “ StarTech 2 Port ExpressCard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter with UASP”. The Sintech’s enclosure uses JMS583 as the bridge adapter’s controller chip, and it did not seem compatible with StarTech’s ExpressCard USB3 adapter that is based on ASM Chipset Renesas uPD720200.So I replaced StarTech’s adapter with “ 5Gbps 2 Port Hidden Inside USB 3.0 HUB to Express Card ExpressCard 54mm Adapter” that uses ASM Chipset Renesas uPD720202, hoping the newer chipset would work with JM583-based bridge adapter.No, it didn’t. So next I replaced Sintech’s JMS583-based bridge adapter with RTL9210-based “ Extractme M.2 NVME to USB Adapter, Upgraded RTL9210 Chip M-Key M.2 NGFF NVME to USB 3.1 Card Reader, 10Gbps High Performance M.2 USB Adapter”. And it worked across XP/Vista/Win7/Win10.However, the SSD using this RTL9210-based adapter would go sleep after a short period of inactivity and change to USB2 transfer speeds after waking up from sleep, until it was unplugged from and re-plugged into the USB3 port. It would also change to USB2 speeds after the computer wakes up from sleep.After upgrading the adapter’s firmware from a download maintained by Plugable Technologies’ website, the SSD no longer goes to sleep due to inactivity. And the label of the WD Blue SN550 1TB NVMe Internal SSD (i.e. WDS100T2B0C), rather than that of the RTL9210-based adapter, is now passed through from the adapter to the computer, and it is visible in Device Manager -> Disk Drivers.During idle, the RTL9210-based bridge adapter remains much cooler than JMS583-based adapter, whereas short-duration performance benchmarks are similar to each other. In long-duration performance tests, however, the former is able to sustain high throughputs, while the latter would throttle in the mid of large file transfer (e.g. 50GB) to avoid overheat.