WD Blue Solid State Drive

Bought this one for games from my Steam library to cut down on load times. Didnt cut it down by much, but definitely gave me reduced load times.Dont remember which games it was exactly-- I had TERA, CS:GO, RAGE, Aion, Mortal Kombat X, maybe Team Fortress 2, other stuff like that-- larger-scale games along the lines of modern First-Person Shooters, action-MMORPGs and 3D-graphics-style 2D Fighting Games... Right now Im using it primarily for ARK: Survival Evolved and I can generally finish map loading on my best friends ARK server (on the Ragnarok map, somewhere between Day 3300 and Day 3600 in terms of ingame day/night cycles elapsed, and hes been building a lot) in about 25 to 35 seconds tops. Havent had any hardware trouble with it so far and its been installed for at least a half a year. I named it ARK Drive with Windows 10s drive management in a nod to the storyline in RAGE.

For a TLC drive this performs exceptionally well - both in its sequential reads and writes as well as its random performance. As others have stated this is a result of a merger between WD and Sandisk. The drive unfortunately comes with a shorter warranty than the Sandisk badged drives. This drive is not for power users, although the performance on this drive is better than I expected. I attached a screen shot from a CrystalDiskMark test I ran on the drive that shows how the drive performs conducting both sequential and random reads and writes to the disk. Although the test reveals the sequential writes as going over 530 megabytes per second, the reality will be a little different. Once the drives buffer fills up the write speed will drop into the mid 200s - still very fast for a TLC budget drive. Random reads are about 46 megabytes per second while random writes come in at 160. I would expect that number to drop under a sustained heavy load as well. All in this is a decent performing drive. But you may want to look at the Sandisk X400 which is the same drive and a little faster on sequential writes and gives you a 5 year (vs. 3 year on the WD) warranty.

Putting this WD SSD in my wifes 1 year old i7 laptop finally woke that thing right up. Before that, she pretty much refused to even use it, much preferring my 6 yr old i5 laptop, with its retro-fitted Samsung SSD, since that old thing was vastly outperforming her new one! Now I finally have my old laptop back! The cloning software, from WDs websight worked perfectly to copy her original HD & OS over to the new SSD, along with the use of a portable SATA HD enclosure that I already had on hand. Those inexpensive enclosures are really worth buying, anytime you upgrade to an SSD, since you can then use your original drive as a removable drive or for an OS & file back up.

It is an excellent upgrade from a traditional hard drive. I now have my operating system and important software on this SSD, and my games and other non-essentials on a 1TB HHD. My system now boots up in 15-20 seconds (previously 1.5-2 minutes on my HHD), from BIOS (Quick Boot disabled) to login (Windows 10). It would boot much faster if I still werent using my Q9650 processor (nine years old and still kicking!). Depending on your computer, you might need a 2.5 adapter to make this fit, if you dont already have a spot for it.

This drive is great. The only problem I had was that my MS Office had to be reactivated, and that is not the fault of the drive; but Microsoft. My laptop runs a bit smoother now. I dont have long boot times and logins any longer, and this drive is loaded with even more software than the one I cloned it from. Processes happen a whole lot faster. I have been a WD fan for a while, so Im glad this drive did not disappoint. Ill be back as these drives become an even more affordable standard.

I wasnt optimistic about this drive because of the price, especially compared to similar drives from Samsung, but I have been very pleased. My PC usually boots to the Desktop in about 5 seconds, files read and write very fast, and this is overall a great drive. Its not as fast as comparable Samsung EVO or PRO M.2 drives, but also about 1/5 the price.

I purchased this to replace my hard drive in a Late 2012 MacMini. This is a wonderful upgrade. It has really sped up my computer and lowered the temperature. Installation was pretty straight forward. I also purchased a tool kit that had the right tools to disassemble the MacMini. Took about 15 min. Restoring the drive took about 6 hours from my Time Machine I always stick with WD drives just because I have always had good luck with them and never had one fail yet.

Great little drive. I love how fast it is. However, there is a problem with my system freezing that doesnt happen with my other m.2 drive. Not sure if I just happened to find the one drive that would have a minor stability issue. Its still working and hasnt failed, but the next m.2 I buy will be of a higher quality.

Using this as a boot drive for a new Ryzen build. MB read it first try, loaded windows 10 on it and away I went. From power button to having comodo open to its homepage is just under 20 seconds. I think I can cut that down as well since I am only running 8gb of ddr4-2400 and Ive heard that my MB runs a memory test every boot up that can be disabled. Bought many WD products in the past and trust them with my data storage needs. This is cheaper than the Samsung ones out there but just as fast. Fast enough for gaming or whatever your needs are.

When I got this hard-drive, it looked so small, I almost felt cheated, but its a real-deal 500GB hard drive thats super fast and far more reliable than a standard unit, since its solid state. I tried to get a frame that I could use in my PCs (FX 6800) removable-drive-bay PC, but couldnt get one that positioned the drive correctly. Thankfully, its so small and light, it plugs into the port and sits there without strain. Its easy to format and works flawlessly.