1TB Crucial MX500 TLC 3D NAND 2.5" SATA III Internal Solid State Drive EXPIRED

A solid performer, and per CCC, now the lowest ever. I still like these when treated as portable cartridges, despite being SATA III, since m.2 is so damn wonky with its microscopic screw, etc.

I know this SSD gets posted quite often, but for those unfamiliar with the drive here are the highlights:

1) One of the top 2.5" SSDs (probably barely 3rd behind the Samsung 860 and 870 Evos)
2) Has DRAM
3) 5 year warranty
4) Lower TBW that other similar 2.5" drives, but it would take 98GB written every day for 5 years to reach the TBW (for the 500GB model). If we are being honest, you will probably never hit that limit.
5) Primarily for older systems that cannot use NVMe or M.2.
6) Fakes on Amazon? Maybe, but I've never met anyone who actually received a fake. Neither have I received one from my 3 purchases. You can always check with Crystal Disk Benchmark to verify it has the correct speeds.

tom's hardware has listed it as it's best budget ssd drive four years in a row now too ... once I realized the high ratings tom's hardware and other websites give it, I promptly replaced all the Win 10 drives with these in my PC's (overkill and paranoia probably I know .. was still able to use the former ssd drives for gaming ) .. since then they've been working great for my Win 10 PC's with no issues ...

having said that as unique panther pointed out the m.2 is faster and right now the m.2 crucial p3 drive is selling for $63 as well if your motherboard has a m.2. slot on it

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B25LZ...=UTF8&th=1

tom's hardware feels the crucial p3 is the best budget m.2.. drive

https://www.tomshardware.com/revi...,3891.html

( I keep mentioning tom's hardware only because they've never steered me wrong before.. the helpful folks on their forum have saved my behind with my pc build on numerous occasions too )

edit - Mwink you're absolutely right (and sorry it took me so long to see this and reply ! ) ... I absolutely would use the crucial MX500 as a Windows drive over the crucial p3 drive period.. and my apologies everyone I should have clarified that ...

... due to budget constraints I installed the crucial p3 drive on my son's desktop computer for additional storage for say games or .. and hopefully it holds up to this sort of thing .. his computer science studies as far as programs he has to run on it (if not then I bite the bullet and get the more expensive m.2 drive with dram ) .. but the crucial is definitely intended as a secondary drive not the primary windows "C" boot drive... you can bet that his desktop computer is running that crucial MX500 as the windows drive

Quote from JDHShaw : The MX Crucial SSD storage series has one of the most generous dynamic SLC dynamic DRAM cache which helps make a map of the drives buffer contents; for example if one gets the 4Tb model that comes with 4Gb of DRAM storage, 2Tb that comes with 2Gb of DRAM storage and 1Tb that comes with 1Gb of DRAM storage; that helps with buffering up ones data stream which serves to smooth out ones data streaming experience; the MX Crucial SSD storage series also has a much better endurance rating on the 2Tb of 700Tbw versus BX of only 240Tbw largely because of its new 64/96 layer 3D NAND technology that directly challenges even the highly popular much more expensive Samsung EVO series line of SSD's; the BX Crucial SSD storage series has a five year warranty vs MX series only three year warranty; the MX Crucial SSD storage series has built-in hardware based AES 256-bit encryption controller also as well; just go with the MX Crucial SSD storage series as one is getting quite a lot of worthwhile great added extra value added features and also extra value added reliable performance that is a mere on average only $10 added per 1 Tb SSD storage which approaches the near feature and value added SSD storage feature set of even the Samsung EVO series.

There's a few inaccuracies in here that I'd like to clear up. The 4TB MX500 does NOT have 4GB of DRAM, it only has 512MB. The smaller models do have 1GB DRAM per 1TB of NAND. The MX500 has a 5 year warranty. The BX500 has a 3 year warranty. The 2TB MX500 has a warranted endurance of 700TB. The 2TB BX500 has a warranted endurance of 720TB. This is quite stupid, as the BX500 is a DRAM-less QLC drive (at that capacity) and almost certainly won't actually last as long as the comparable MX500. I suspect Crucial was more conservative with their ratings when the MX500 was released (the warranted endurance has not changed since the model was released, years ago). Also, the MX500s sold today almost certainly have either the 96 layer or 176 layer Micron TLC NAND. You can potentially tell by the firmware version. I believe (but am not certain) that the firmware version ending in 23 is the 64 layer, ending in 33 is the 96 layer, and ending with 40-something is 176 layer. I'll end by adding that, in my opinion, the MX500 is a great SATA drive but the BX500 is garbage.

Quote from Andrepartthree : tom's hardware has listed it as it's best budget ssd drive four years in a row now too ... once I realized the high ratings tom's hardware and other websites give it, I promptly replaced all the Win 10 drives with these in my PC's (overkill and paranoia probably I know .. was still able to use the former ssd drives for gaming ) .. since then they've been working great for my Win 10 PC's with no issues ... having said that as unique panther pointed out the m.2 is faster and right now the m.2 crucial p3 drive is selling for $63 as well if your motherboard has a m.2. slot on it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B25LZ...=UTF8&th=1 tom's hardware feels the crucial p3 is the best budget m.2.. drive https://www.tomshardware.com/revi...,3891.html ( I keep mentioning tom's hardware only because they've never steered me wrong before.. the helpful folks on their forum have saved my behind with my pc build on numerous occasions too )

I will take a SATA TLC drive with DRAM over a DRAM-less NVMe drive with QLC any day. Side note: M.2 is the physical slot. It can potentially support SATA or NVMe. There is even a M.2 version of the MX500, with identical performance to the 2.5" version.

Quote from UniquePanther652 : I know this SSD gets posted quite often, but for those unfamiliar with the drive here are the highlights: 1) One of the top 2.5" SSDs (probably barely 3rd behind the Samsung 860 and 870 Evos) 2) Has DRAM 3) 5 year warranty 4) Lower TBW that other similar 2.5" drives, but it would take 98GB written every day for 5 years to reach the TBW. If we are being honest, you will probably never hit that limit. 5) Primarily for older systems that cannot use NVMe or M.2. 6) Fakes on Amazon? Maybe, but I've never met anyone who actually received a fake. Neither have I received one from my 3 purchases. You can always check with Crystal Disk Benchmark to verify it has the correct speeds.

I'm not disagreeing but it's kind of unfair to compare it to the now discontinued 860 EVO (which I'd actually prefer over the 870 EVO, due to concerns over elevated failure rates). The MX500 has long been considered the second best consumer SATA drive. The WD Blue 3D/Sandisk Ultra 3D were considered the third best but I have serious concerns about the new versions of those.

I have heard one plausible (but not confirmed) claim of receiving a fake MX500 from Amazon. I would NOT depend on CrystalDiskMark to determine if it's fake. There are plenty of garbage drives that produce impressive benchmarks, until the pSLC cache fills up. Though I would not recommend this to most people, the simplest way would be to open the drive and make sure it has the right components. The MX500 can be opened without breaking any seals or clips. It just has 4 screws.

I keep an old, spare Crucial MX SSD on hand to use the Acronis Clone Disk utility they offer free to Crucial MX / BX drive owners. Back when it was in use as an active drive, it served well. Only became a "spare" because the system eventually outgrew the 500GB capacity it offered.

For instance, I needed to clone a slower pre-installed 256GB NVMe drive over to a faster 1TB NVMe drive (that would then replace the stock one as the primary system drive). With both NVMe drives installed to the motherboard internally, connected my old Crucial MX SSD via SATA III to USB A adapter to a USB port on the PC. Since the program needs to "see" a Crucial MX or BX drive "installed" on your system in order to run (for free), it let me use Acronis True Image for Crucial to do the clone job I needed done on the two NVMe drives (neither were Crucial branded). Once done, I unplugged the old Crucial MX drive from the USB port and back into storage it went.

https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/pro...-download/

TL;DR - Keep an old Crucial BX or MX drive around if you like using Acronis to perform cloning and backup jobs.

Not computer ssd savy but is this worth adding to a PS5 for gaming

Quote from RevOne : I keep an old, spare Crucial MX SSD on hand to use the Acronis Clone Disk utility they offer free to Crucial MX / BX drive owners. Back when it was in use as an active drive, it served well. Only became a "spare" because the system eventually outgrew the 500GB capacity it offered. For instance, I needed to clone a slower pre-installed 256GB NVMe drive over to a faster 1TB NVMe drive (that would then replace the stock one as the primary system drive). With both NVMe drives installed to the motherboard internally, connected my old Crucial MX SSD via SATA III to USB A adapter to an USB port on the PC. Since the program needs to "see" a Crucial MX or BX drive "installed" on your system in order to run (for free), it let me use Acronis True Image for Crucial to do the clone job I needed done on the two NVMe drives (neither were Crucial branded). Once done, I unplugged the old Crucial MX drive from the USB port and back into storage it went. https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/pro...-download/ TL;DR - Keep an old Crucial BX or MX drive around if you like using Acronis to perform cloning jobs.

My old SSDs with a SATA to USB cable have replaced my flash drives when I need to transfer files around. Unless I need a pocket size drive I'm using my old SSDs this way.

SSDs are so cheap now, I wouldn't buy flash drives unless the small form factor is required for your usage.

Quote from Slickdeezee : My old SSDs with a SATA to USB cable have replaced my flash drives when I need to transfer files around. Unless I need a pocket size drive I'm using my old SSDs this way. SSDs are so cheap now, I wouldn't buy flash drives unless the small form factor is required for your usage.

Absolutely I have a few in plastic 2.5" drive USB enclosures that I do the same with (mostly older 128GB - 256GB drives that aren't in use anymore). They're flat/compact enough to slide into a pocket of most laptop bags quite conveniently (or even a big enough pant pocket, if one is so included).

Is this close to the lowest price you folks think it will go till the end of the year? I was gonna wait till BF or CM to pull the trigger for a 1TB MX500 SATA.

I'd like to get a replacement for an old (6+ years) SSD, which SMART is saying has "Life Remaining" at 28 with a threshold of 10. Not sure what that exactly means, but considering its age, I'm guessing it's nearing the end even though it hasn't really shown any problems yet. I plan to repurpose the old SSD as a USB3 drive using an enclosure I have laying around.

Quote from DeeDon : Is this close to the lowest price you folks think it will go till the end of the year? I was gonna wait till BF or CM to pull the trigger for a 1TB MX500 SATA. I'd like to get a replacement for an old (6+ years) SSD, which SMART is saying has "Life Remaining" at 28 with a threshold of 10. Not sure what that exactly means, but considering its age, I'm guessing it's nearing the end even though it hasn't really shown any problems yet. I plan to repurpose the old SSD as a USB3 drive using an enclosure I have laying around.

Why not just buy it and return later if the price really goes down. This is the lowest I've seen it in a while.

As a first time pc builder, I am planning to get a 500gb samsung nvme and this 1 tb 2.5 inch. And skip buying hard disk totally. Is that a good call? Please suggest

Quote from gregchapy : As a first time pc builder, I am planning to get a 500gb samsung nvme and this 1 tb 2.5 inch. And skip buying hard disk totally. Is that a good call? Please suggest

sounds good to me. game load times etc benfit from being on an ssd and at this price its a steal. Just make sure the price you are paying for the 500gb samsung is not close to the 1tb price. as sometimes with sales like you have here the increase to 1tb over 500gb can be worth it.

Would this be a good buy as extra storage for a PS5?