SanDisk Extreme PRO 240GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD)

The SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB SSD arrived about a week ago to rejuvenate my mid 2010 15 inch Macbook Pro, 2.4 Ghz Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM running OS X 10.7.5. Ive been an IT professional for the last 26+ years and this is one of my top personal use purchases ever, considering bang for the buck. It was the 10-year warranty coupled with a reasonable price that sold me. I had a 1TB Toshiba drive that was always agonizingly slow for any I/O operation: booting, logging in, app launches, shutting down, and especially running virtual machines under VMware Fusion. I know its sad, but Im in lust with this drive. Im parked at home recovering from a surgery so Ive had time to really put it through its paces. Now, instead of putting my laptop to sleep when I set it aside, I shut down since boot-time and login are so fast. Launches of my standard apps are nearly instantaneous with everything Ive tried: Word, Excel, Chrome, Firefox and VMware Fusion. Id say that Fusion has benefited the most; whether I start a Linux, Windows XP or Windows 7 VM they all run as if theyre on native fairly decent hardware. Installation was easy, although it took a few hours to complete. First I got a fresh Time Machine backup using my external USB 3.0 drive. I removed the itty-bitty case screws and back cover and backed out two screws holding a bracket intended to keep the HD stationary. I took out the old drive, applied the little stick-on frame supplied with the SSD to improve the fit and put it all back together. I connected my USB backup drive and rebooted while holding (iirc) command+r. I was prompted for the wifi encryption key I use, then It took a few minutes to download and boot the recovery/utility image from Apple. It found the backup disk, but since the SSD arrived unformatted it wasnt presented as a target to restore to. A glance at the top of the screen showed the Disk Utility menu. Moments later the SSD was partitioned and formatted using what had been the default choice from Disk Utility - basically, it was the make this a bootable device option although I dont recall the moniker. I started the restore of my 200GB of data, made sure the power was connected, and after about a 3-hour wait I booted into digital nirvana. Seriously, its like I have a brand new, screaming-fast laptop.

There is not a lot new here that I am going to be able to share, that many others have already shared in these reviews. This SanDisk Extreme Pro is currently the Performance favorite at the Toms Hardware website, and the reviews tell the deeper story. I have the 480 GB version of this drive, and I purchased it to use as my Operating System drive in a new Intel based Z97 Computer, and did not want to go with a PCIe X 4 M.2 Drive quite yet. Having already used the Samsung and Crucial SSD SATA drives in the recent past, I decided to read up and see if there was anything else new to research, and I came upon the reviews for this drive. Yes, the Samsung is a great SSD, and is faster in short data bursts, but if you are doing any heavy duty data transfer or processing, this is the SSD to go with. The SanDisk Extreme Pro will tear through large random data transfers and maintain high speed and not get bogged down. Using this SSD to load Windows 7 Pro for the first time was incredible due to a very short load and set up time. This SSD is a real powerhouse, and the 10 year warranty is pretty nice too. Very glad I purchased this, but I will be looking for a PCIe X 4 M.2 SSD to make things even faster. I want to see SanDisks entry into that Market, which I believe will explode soon.

This is the best SSD drive I have ever seen. I really did my research before I decided to get one. My old SSD drive was only 150 gigs and not nearly as fast as this one. I kept getting messages saying that I was running out of space. I wanted to get the best SSD drive out there and this one was ranked as one of the fastest and I also loved the size of the SSD drive. It was so incredibly easy to install. First I got a cable so I could plug the SSD drive into my USB port and then I formatted the drive. I then cloned my drive C and just swapped the drives. The old Drive Im going to hold on to and use it as a back up just incase anything should happen. I dont think anything will happen they give a 10 year warranty and they wouldnt give a warranty like that if it wasnt any good.

TIP for those using this as their primary hard drive: turn off unnecessary WINDOW SERVICES that read and write to an SSD. Reading and writing to this SSD, reduces lifespan. I will try later to update this sharing with you what services I have turned off that are unnecessary and believe me, a LOT of MS services ARE unnecessary, like ANY of the Remote services IF YOU DO NOT LOGIN TO YOUR HOME PC FROM ELSEWHERE. If you dont, turn these off as they are a security risk to begin with. I will be back later to give you all a list. OH, and be sure the TRIM feature is on by installing the SanDisk tool. Go to their site to download it. It will sit in your task bar and let you know temperature, read/write status, capacity, etc. TRIM is auto set when you install this drive, but default. Also, an SSD are CHIPS, not platters. TURN OFF: ANY disk defragger (SSDs do not require defragging) ANY read/write utilities (NOT apps like MS Office that you install) Windows INDEXING and SEARCH (turn BOTH off!) IF YOU HAVE A HDD SLAVE DRIVE like a Western Digital SATA drive (not another SSD): Move your PAGEFILE to the slave drive root for reading and writing. To save time, go to these sites and follow their instructions which fit your situation: (...)

Pros: Fast read/write speeds, decently priced Cons: None When it comes to SSDs, there are manufacturers who use their own controller and there are ones who use third party controllers. SanDisk uses Marvell controllers, which are pretty popular. This SSD is built for performance with similar specs to the Samsung 850 Pro. The Samsung, however, uses its own controller, which you can argue is better because they have direct control over the components that go into the SSD, but you probably wont be able to really tell the difference during normal usage. At the time of this review, the Sandisk is $189 vs $217 for the Samsung. If youre looking for a primary SSD for your OS, this wouldnt be a bad choice. The Samsung 850 and 950 are also good, but they tend to be a bit more expensive with similar specs. Intel SSDs are also top of the line, and the price reflects that.

I had to add a third solid state since I had filled up the 500gb model I had with games and my main drive is only for windows. Its fast with a small footprint compared to the standard hard drives I used to use which is true of almost all solid states. Having a third drive did slow my boot time slightly but only enough to barely notice, compared to other computers it is a fast boot up. Its a good solid state drive and am happy with my purchase.

Ok, you probably have read most the reviews for this product. So the only thing i would like to point out is, if you connect this SSD to a PC via a enclosure for the firs time, (at leas in my case, using ORICO 2588US3 USB 3.0 2.5 - inch SATA External Hard Drive HDD Case.), the drive will not be recognized at all, which is in contrast to what some of the reviewers commented on this product(it will show up in the windows as a hard disk ). What you have to do is (in Windows 8, Im sure for windows 7, it will be pretty much the same), go to control panel --> Administrative tools ---> computer management --> > Disk management, then you will be prompted to initialize the drive/disk. As I wasnt aware of this (i.e. initialization has to be done first) when I got the drive, I thought the disk was defective (I even took the drive to best buy to have it inspected, they thought so too). So I had to return to Amazon, asking for a replacement drive. I think the manufacture should have mentioned this step somewhere on the instructions manual sheet coming with the product. Thats why I took one star. Other than that, this drive itself is super fast. I cloned my existing hard disk (128 GB SSD ) in the laptop I just bought to this SSD drive, it took only less than 10 seconds (could be much less). A side note, Amazon makes the return REALLY easy. just print the shipping label provided by Amazon, you can either drop it off at UPS or have UPS pick it up. The replacement drive arrived even before they receive the drive Id returned. Speechless ! Thats SERVICE!

i7 Quad Core/ 16GB/ MacBook Pro early 2011. Has worked flawlessly. Apps like Mail and iPhoto that took 30/50 secs respectively to load (I have lots of mail and photos), now launch in 3/5 seconds. Used USB Sata cable and Carbon Copy Cloner to copy system to drive, swapped drives and everything worked, all licenses transferred (except Google Drive needed to be rebuilt). Speed tests (Blackmagic) Show average 515 MB/sec read and 435 MB/sec write. No degradation in speed from first test (a few weeks ago) till now. I think Apple tests their OS with flash drives, so as they increase the Input/Output read write counts when adding features/security protections, they dont notice the issues caused in systems with using hard disks. If you have Yosemite, you need a drive like this. Unfortunately, because apple doesnt support Trim for macs w/3rd party SSDs, you should also plan to replace your drive every year. I do upgrade my drive each year, as I need lots of speed and space. The last three were hybrid SSD/HDD (512MB Seagate/1TB Seagate/1TB Toshiba). The hybrids were slightly faster than a 7200 RPM disk initially, but after a year, each was slower than a stock clean 5400 RPM.

I used this in an IBM Thinkpad T530. Works very well. For me, I took out the dvd tray, slapped in a hard drive caddy with this ssd, then used MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1. In their software its an easy migrate to new HD/SSD button, hit apply, it reboots, and copies everything to the new drive. Then I replaced the hard drive with this ssd, put my dvd rom back in, and rebooted. With a desktop, just connect this to an empty SATA slot with the power cord, and run the same software. Windows 10 came back up without any issues. Easy and painless. Loving the additional speed and size. 10 year warranty gives me peace of mind.