Crucial BX500 2TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD, up to 540MB/s - CT2000BX500SSD1Z

Ok there's a few fake reviews below OR maybe they were written for a different device. Here are the FACTS!. The Sata III interface was designed for and cannot exceed 550 mbps per second. That being said there are a few Samsung drives USING SAMSUNG MAGICIAN SOFTWARE ON A CLEAN WINDOWS INSTALL UNDER LABORATORY TEST CONDITIONS that have hit the 700mbps mark. That is the ONLY exception as of this writing. FACT. Motorized hard drives have a 7 to 10 millisecond seek time before they can read or write files, also under ideal conditions on a clean install of ANY operating system, Linux, Windows or Mac. Solid state drives do not have ANY seek time so they are faster by design. FACT: When you clean install windows or any other operating system it installs itself according to the hardware it is installed to and discards the drivers and code it does not need, and optimizes itself to that machine. If you clone that operating system to the same machine with a new drive IT CANNOT re optimize itself a second time, whether its a motorized drive or solid state. also some drivers may not survive the cloning and you will only get a slight performance gain.. THIS IS NORMAL. The ONLY reason for EVER cloning a drive is because of software or user files that cannot ever be replaced or just being too lazy to do it properly. Nothing can compare to a clean install done correctly. All this being said, this is a great budget drive and for the money its hard to beat FOR EVERYDAY COMPUTING. I have installed and sold several of these and none have ever failed. The performance is better than most average SSD's but it wasn't designed to compete with the Samsung, OCZ or any other so called "GAMING" drives which is a marketing cliche anyway honestly. This is a MAINSTREAM BUDGET drive and done correctly in any machine will perform very well on a clean install and last a long time when properly maintained. When people write reviews you need to be comparing exact apples to apples. I would not recommend this to a performance minded overclocking gamer, they will be disappointed but for every day use its hard to beat and can't be beat at this price point. If you want more performance then get a Crucial MX series drive. The BX series is typical mainstream. The both are built with JMicron chips but the MX is a bit faster, just like ram and other things there are levels to this. I hope this actually helps someone and informs the rest. Don't write bad or negative reviews when your trying to compare a ham sandwich to a lobster or steak dinner. Compared to a PNY or SanDisk, this is definitely a better drive but its not going to keep up with a performance drive, not even in it's own brand. Its just that simple. You get what you pay for.

I bought this SSD for a 5 year old Asus laptop with a simple Core i3 setup with just 6GB RAM. I found free cloning software online, and also bought a wire which I highly recommend, which will come in handy every time you need to upgrade an old laptop to SSD from it's original HDD. The wire you need to make this amazingly easy is USB to SATA. One end is standard USB (works with USB 2.0 and 3.0) and the other end is easy, plug-in to any 2.5" SATA SSD (has both the SATA and power, all in one, wide plug.) Just download your favorite cloning software, plug in the drive, plug in to the laptop, clone, then shut down, unplug and swap out the drives on the inside. Booted quickly without any problem. All programs, apps and data were there, and ran much faster with seek times far better than with the old, standard HDD. IMO, the best value to revive an old laptop. The difference is astonishing, even on a mediocre 6GB RAM, Core i3 rig. Buy that wire. It will come in handy, over and over again, because once you see how easy it is to revive an old laptop, you will be doing it for the whole family and the neighbors as well as they order new SSDs.Bottom line: For less than $30, this Crucial SSD revived a laptop to astonishingly improved speed and boot time. Need more space, splurge for 1TB and have the same speed and quality with even more storage. An easy "clone and swap." (Best with that wire, USB to SATA.) Not included. After this purchase, I bought 2 more, immediately, and did to more laptops. All had the same, flawless result and booted on the first try after cloning.Wild Card: Longevity of the drive unknown, but I hear that Crucial is an excellent brand, even this model being one prior to their newest model. I also bought and installed an "ADATA" brand SSD, and it works as well, but again, we'll see which wins longevity. These days, you should have backups of your important data anyhow.

I have been building PC's for years and work professionally with computer systems. I have upgraded old PC's with SSD's before and noticed improvements in the past, but this latest upgrade was unbelievable. This case, was my mom's old laptop ~ 10 years old and not top of the line at that time either (ancient in PC's years). It was unbearably slow. Luckily she didn't have anything on it she really cared to keep. I was going to clone it over to the new SSD, but decided a clean Windows 10 install would be easier and better overall. The real world performance gains were insane. I did a test before and after the upgrade. The test was timing the moment I pressed the power button, to the time the system started up and was able to load a Google chrome startup page. Before, it almost took 2 minutes. After the SSD install with clean Windows 10, it took about 21 seconds. No, that's not a mistake, you read it right. This laptop is not as good as new, it's MUCH better than new. Yes, the fact that Windows 10 was a fresh install contributed to this improvement, but the biggest factor here is that SSD. Even with the older SATA 2 connection on this laptop, the real world performance gains can't be denied.TLDR, if you're hesitant to upgrade to an SSD because you have a system with SATA 2 and you think it won't give you the full performance, stop hesitating. The real world improvement will be noticeable, measurable, unbelievable and any other adjective you want. The only thing you won't get is the full sequential read/write speed, but that really only affects large file transfers which on a normal daily basis most PC users are not doing. If all you do is transfer large files back and forth, then yes, get a new PC. Otherwise, get one of these and thank me later.