15.9.2019

Needed desperately to update or renew an ageing Toshiba C850 laptop that was to put it politely, slow to do anything, lagging, slow to react, webpages freezing, and boot time was turn on, make a cuppa, return to laptop..... I have a main desktop PC, but the laptop is handy to have around for browsing etc whilst watching the goggle box... the C850 was still with its factory hardware and a few months back did a fresh install of Win 8.1 which was a rollback from win10 (yes I did get the free win10 update but it was almost unusable). ... bearing in mind, this lappy is equipped with a 1.8mhz Celeron processor, 4Gb DDR3 Ram, and a Sata 2 5400 spin 500 GB HDD so it's never going to break any speed records.I decided to do a firmware upgrade, knowing the speeds gained from fitting SSDs as have done my own and a couple of other PCs to great advantage, usually buying Samsung drives but not wanting to go overboard on the price for this machine I went with the Crucial MX, and an 8GB stick of Crucial RAM just to finish things off.first things first,before purchasing I searched online for a video for my model lappy on how to get things apart (I have built several PCs, but apart from keyboard changes never played with laptops)... looked easy enough to install (it really was too) ....... So, I installed the Acronis clone software from Crucial, and connected the new drive via USB3 using the Ugreen USB - SATA cable (available on Amazon, can also do 3.5 drives too as has a power cable if required, but not needed for SSD)... note: the Crucial version of the software will not work unless you have a Crucial drive connected... it found the new drive, took a few minutes to set it up and successfully cloned my existing drive in about 30 minutes... Then following the afore mentioned instructions, I installed both the new RAM and drive to the machine, literally under 10 minutes later, battery back in and rebooting the machine.... boot time was greatly improved, as said before, not blisteringly fast due to other restrictions, but several minutes quicker than before, under 30 seconds for fully loaded.... no need for a new laptop, this old gal is perfectly usable for what I require now and programmes etc install a lot faster and have had none of my previous, freezing / lagging issues...... the only issue I had was that for some reason the sound device driver needed reinstalling, was on the drive but for some reason didn't work...a 1 min jobI picked Crucial, because I have used their RAM in many applications before, with no issues, their Micron branded chips are used by other manufacturers (inc the WD blue 3D nand SSD) and they are priced quite reasonably.... possibly being one of the "best of the rest" after Samsung in the SSD market, obviously using the SATA 3 format, speed is restricted by the actual format itself, but some improvements can be made further by installing Crucials own SSD software, this has a function whereas the cache is used to speed things up even further, and allows you to monitor the health etc of the drive... One question remains though, and this one is for Toshiba, with the laptop having a SATA2 drive factory fitted, I was expecting speeds around the 250-280MB/s mark, as S2 tops out at 300 MB/s, so imagine my joy when testing immediately after install a test mark of 551MB/s read and 518 write... the motherboard is actually a SATA 3... so happy days..here are the Seq Q32T1 speeds taken from crystaldiskmark, for the old HDD, the SSD and then the SSD using crucials Momentum Cache softwareHDD read 105.4 MB/s - write 99.12 MB/sSSD read 551.2 - write 518.4MC read 1504.1 - write 1609.7as you can see, speeds are greatly improved and the momentum cache software is pure witchcraft.... bottom line, with a little bit of knowledge, research and confidence you can breath new life into an ageing machine (Laptop or desktop) with great success for a lot less than a new machine, better still you can then just use your existing HDD as an external backup for photos / documents etc using the same cable you used to clone the original (wipe it first)The cable I used is Amazon item number 20627, this is ideal for using 3.5 HDDs as well as 2.5 and SSDs due to the power cable, they also sell a non powered version for around a tenner less which would be fine if only ever going to be used with SSDs

21.4.2019

I’m up and running again on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (Mojave) - and it has transformed it. It might be faster than when it was new!However... note that I am running Mojave. There were some issues that needed some research. Crucial have an excellent guide everyone should follow, but there are some changes if you are post-Sierra.1. Attach the SSD via USB to your MacBook. The cables/docks are USB 3 and the MacBook is USB 2 so I also have a FireWire to USB 3 adaptor for data and a powered dock for power. The adaptor is not cheap but transforms Time Machine.2. Use Disk Utility to Initialise and format the SSD (to APFS for Mojave). I think a lot of grief in these reviews comes from people not noticing the initialise step.

26.11.2018

I purchased this 250GB SSD and a USB 3.0 to SATA cable to facilitate the replacement of a struggling 1TB 5400rpm HDD.. The gen 3 I5 processor and 8GB of ram where not being fully utilised but the HDD was continuously being thrashed and much of the space was not being utilised. I chose the Crucial SSD because of it's high ratings and it was one of only two SSD's I could find that were SATA I backward compatible. The Crucial.com website also has a "Upgrade my device" facility that advises on and guarantees suitable upgrades. My boot time has been reduced from around 4 minutes for being usable to around 10 seconds.If you are a novice to upgrading then buy an SSD that's at least the same capacity

19.3.2018

I bought this to breathe new life into my daughter's (late 2011) MacBook Pro, having compared it to multiple other options. I need to stress that her old drive still worked - just - and that she had everything backed up on TimeMachine.You will require specialist screwdrivers to fit this to a MacBook Pro, both for removing the base cover, and separately for removing the hard drive. They are available on Amazon for <£10 (although the latter I ended up getting from a local "pound store"!)I have never changed a hard-drive before, but I found this *was quicker and easier* than they said or than I expected. If anything, that was the easy bit.Getting the OS onto the new drive working was much harder/longer process,

19.4.2018

I 'd recommend this especially for the free software that comes for download with it. This gives the user a brilliantly clear, step by step procedure that really works ! Needing to clone a fast, but nearing capacity 240 gig SSD (my main hard disc, containing Windows 10 operating system) in a desktop PC, I chose Crucial, confident in their reputation and having often bought from them before. I chose the MX 500 SSD, offered through Amazon at a good price compared with other brands. Admittedly if felt less "hefty" than the SSD I was replacing, it came beautifully boxed and protected, with a "spacer not needed in my case.

29.4.2020

Like many of us I’m currently working from home due to the pandemic and found the first couple of weeks frustrating as my laptop is 9 years old and not used to having any demands made of it. I ordered some extra RAM as a cheap and easy upgrade, but after further reading decided it would be worth upgrading the hard drive to an SSD. I used the Crucial website to check which one I needed and then ordered it from Amazon via their link. I also ordered an enclosure to enable me to clone the current hard drive. I figured that if nothing went to plan, I could keep the drive in the enclosure as an external hard drive regardless.The SSD arrived on time - the packaging was fine and it came with a spacer as it’s the slimmer model - I did use this on the SSD in my laptop to ensure a snug fit.

30.6.2020

My old 250GB 5400rpm HDD failed after five years, just after I backed-up the system. *Phew*. An hour later the Repair DVD and a USB had achieved nothing and the HDD had five Repair/Restorepartitions on it. I decided to move to SSD. It was either the MX500 or the Samsung 860 Evo. I must have thought that a tenner was worth saving - it's five bottles of Fuller's 1845 - so I chose the Crucial. The performance gain has been clear, but not consistent: updating antivirus is slow, and Win10 Maintenance takes just as long as ever. On the other hand, boot and shutdown are faster, so is loading Word and so on. The system feels stable.A clean Install was easy. No formatting or partitioning required.

29.1.2019

I used this to replace a standard 5400rpm disk in a frustratingly slow mid 2011 21.5" iMac. There are plenty of videos online showing you how to do this. As with any iMac/laptop/phone there's a procedure to follow and a few very small connectors and cables to be careful of but that's to do with the equipment. The disk is easy to install - just be aware that most SSDs don't have an internal temperature sensor so, if you're doing this in an iMac, you'll also need to find a temperature sensor kit (I used OWCDIDIMACHDD11) which adds £40 or so.Is far as I understand, the computer will work without the temperature sensor but default to fans running at full speed.

8.4.2019

Arrived promptly no problems there...I used a cloner to 'update' my PC from a WD HDD to this SSD (Crucial MX500, 1TB).. Simple as putting the two drives in and hitting "clone"...Dropped the SSD into the PC, booted it up. Hey presto! Less than 30 seconds for a full boot, login and everything started up & synced and fully operational! Less than 30 seconds! This PC would normally take somewhere between 4 & 5 minutes sometimes, with Task Manager showing HDD usage at 100% beyond that. In short, the "old" HDD was jolly slow.When waking from Hibernating it takes as long as placing my hands on the keyboard ready to type the password.Tried mass-multitasking it straight after boot up by starting a bunch of stuff like Edge internet,

17.4.2018

It came with Acronis software to clone the disk (it won't run unless there is a Crucial SSD).I had a problem (with cloning, not the SSD).After cloning windows reported my copy of Win 7 was not genuine (it was).Win 7 would not run.Others have had problems when going to SSD. It is not an issue with this product but can affect any SSD and there are lots of people on the internet who have had this problem (with a variety of SSD makes). Microsoft knows about this issue that can occur if Windows thinks that the hardware change is excessive. Their help is useless (it requires you to log into windows which you cannot do).I have purchased two of these SSDs (different PCs). One cloned with no problem.

22.4.2019

I left my unibody MacBook Pro on the roof of my car over Christmas and dropped it off the roof at 50mph necessitating a new screen and a rebuild. My certified Genius engineer recommended a new SSD and 16Gb RAM upgrade plus a new ribbon cable (Apple MacBook Pro A1278 Hard disk Drive original Cable P/N 821-1480-A 2011 2012) to connect the SSD as the originals perish (symptom unexpected sudden crashes and grey screen). I replaced my 1Tb HD with a 1TB SSD and the Mac fairly flies - what I expected in the first place but never did (actually slower than an early Intel MacBook Pro).Startup times much faster, good read/write with InDesign (I don't use a cloud as too slow)

30.6.2019

I bought this 500Gb ssd drive to install it as my primary drive into a 5 year old desktop computer. I cloned the old hdd to the ssd following a useful YouTube video showing how to clone and resize a hard drive to a smaller ssd using Macrium Reflect. Everything went smoothly and the transfer took about 3 hours. The computer is definitely faster for all tasks. Interestingly, what impressed me the most is the quietness of the computer. There is only a gentle hum from the fans inside the computer while before there was often a lot of noise which I realise now was coming from the old hdd. I initially planned to use the larger old hdd for storing my data but I appreciate so much the silence that I am not going to keep the old hdd inside the case.

19.1.2019

Great drive and really glad i made the move to SSD. My boot up speed now slashed to just a few seconds and the whole system is faster and seems more stable. That said the software to clone your current drive onto this one is totally useless unless your destination drive in bigger than your current one. If you are installing onto a smaller drive as i was then you will need to do a fresh install and mess about in disk damagement obviously. been a while since a messed about with creationing partitions and making active and all that business so it was a whole new learning curve again. It would have been nice to be a bit more prepared for somthing like this but there is no mention of it in the

28.8.2019

I bought this SSD because I had run out of space on C partition and I had reached the limit of what I was prepared to delete, and updates were becoming impossible. The laptop was always slow to boot from new, and although 4GB ram was ok when I bought it, I thought an upgrade to 8GB was overdue. The additional ram went in and improved the boot up time slightly. Then I copied the contents of the old hard drive to the SSD via a cheap USB to SATA lead and the free software supplied by Crutial. The software is well documented and works well in the 'auto' mode recommended for beginners. About five and a half hours later the SSD was put into the laptop in place of the old Hard Drive and the laptop was rebooted.

20.5.2018

Replaced my boot SSD for this one. Works great, faster than last SSD. Below is a a benchmark run on my system (i5 4th Gen)-----------------------------------------------------------------------CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyoCrystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/-----------------------------------------------------------------------* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytesSequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 561.710 MB/sSequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 512.205 MB/sRandom Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 403.464 MB/s [ 98502.0 IOPS]Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 363.559 MB/s [ 88759.5 IOPS]Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 324.015 MB/s [

Crucial MX500 2.5 - Reviews

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