Western Digital Black SN750 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB

My CCL-built custom computer dual boots with Windows 10 and Linux Ubuntu MATE. Each operating system was on its own Fireacuda hybrid hard disk, and the computer ran quite quickly. I decided to try putting the Linux onto a Western Digital Black SN750 M.2-2280 1TB to see if I could get even more speed. I'll use the now spare Fireacuda hybrid hard disk for BBC iPlayer downloads.It was very easy to fit the SN750 onto the motherboard, though I needed to remove my video card to access the slot. The SN750 just needs one mounting screw. (I found the required "stand-off" screw already on the motherboard. You don't get one packaged with the SN750, so make sure that you have one.) Once I had re-booted (into Windows), the computer recognised that the SN750 was present. I then ... MoreMy CCL-built custom computer dual boots with Windows 10 and Linux Ubuntu MATE. Each operating system was on its own Fireacuda hybrid hard disk, and the computer ran quite quickly. I decided to try putting the Linux onto a Western Digital Black SN750 M.2-2280 1TB to see if I could get even more speed. I'll use the now spare Fireacuda hybrid hard disk for BBC iPlayer downloads.It was very easy to fit the SN750 onto the motherboard, though I needed to remove my video card to access the slot. The SN750 just needs one mounting screw. (I found the required "stand-off" screw already on the motherboard. You don't get one packaged with the SN750, so make sure that you have one.) Once I had re-booted (into Windows), the computer recognised that the SN750 was present. I then installed a second copy of Linux Ubuntu MATE onto the SN750. I was pleasantly surprised how quick and easy that was. It took only a few minutes to set up. I'm using Ubuntu's encryption on ZFS.When I tried to boot into Linux, the computer would not recognise the Linux copy on the SN750, only the copy on the hard disk. That was quickly rectified by adjusting the boot priorities in the UEFI (BIOS).It then booted -- and wow!...This simple upgrade has brought me into the modern world of computing. It's much faster and quieter than before. Yes, I would recommend this for Linux.I have yet to try the SN750 with Windows but I'll wait till Windows 11 comes along in the autumn; not that I really need Windows now.

BEWARE serious thermal issues

Like others I decided to replace a perfectly functional Samsung NVMe drive to get some extra space and speed. The Samsung had worked flawlessly in my MSI Apache Pro laptop for a couple of years. The WD BLACK SN750 without a heatsink has been nothing but trouble. I have made multiple attempts to work around its serious limitations. But it really cannot handle simple 1080p video rendering without a thermal shutdown less than 30 minutes into the process. There is a HEAT PROBLEM here folks. It is now clear to me why there is a heatsink version. If you know you have a performance laptop with some heat buildup do yourself a favor a run away from this overpriced dainty drive that cannot handle heat. It will only cause you grief and make you wonder why you didn't get the ... MoreLike others I decided to replace a perfectly functional Samsung NVMe drive to get some extra space and speed. The Samsung had worked flawlessly in my MSI Apache Pro laptop for a couple of years. The WD BLACK SN750 without a heatsink has been nothing but trouble. I have made multiple attempts to work around its serious limitations. But it really cannot handle simple 1080p video rendering without a thermal shutdown less than 30 minutes into the process. There is a HEAT PROBLEM here folks. It is now clear to me why there is a heatsink version. If you know you have a performance laptop with some heat buildup do yourself a favor a run away from this overpriced dainty drive that cannot handle heat. It will only cause you grief and make you wonder why you didn't get the Samsung drive instead.

Excellent NVMe SSD drive. Would recommend!

This was my first time buying NVMe SSD drives and I was deciding between this WD Black SN750 and the Samsung 970 EVO. Both drives have similar specs and I ended up going for the WD Black SN750.This drive is amazingly quick compared to what I'm used to and I'm happy with it so far.The specs of this drive are: read speeds of 3430 MB/s and write speeds of 2600 MB/s.To get these speeds your M.2 slot needs to be PCIe x4. One of my desktops has a PCIe x2 M.2 slot so I was not able to get the full speeds on that computer.Windows 10 boots up super quick and I have not noticed any lag when performing any tasks.I would suggest downloading the free WD Black SSD Dashboard software to use with this SSD. The Dashboard lets you monitor your drive and also contains some ... MoreThis was my first time buying NVMe SSD drives and I was deciding between this WD Black SN750 and the Samsung 970 EVO. Both drives have similar specs and I ended up going for the WD Black SN750.This drive is amazingly quick compared to what I'm used to and I'm happy with it so far.The specs of this drive are: read speeds of 3430 MB/s and write speeds of 2600 MB/s.To get these speeds your M.2 slot needs to be PCIe x4. One of my desktops has a PCIe x2 M.2 slot so I was not able to get the full speeds on that computer.Windows 10 boots up super quick and I have not noticed any lag when performing any tasks.I would suggest downloading the free WD Black SSD Dashboard software to use with this SSD. The Dashboard lets you monitor your drive and also contains some additional tools.I did notice that the drive runs a little warmer compared to other SSDs that I have used. I'm seeing an average temperature of 45 degrees Celsius during daily use, which is not excessive and might be normal for this type of drive. I may try a heat sink at some point to see if that helps to bring the temperatures down.Another thing to note is that this M.2 SSD like most others does not come with a screw to secure the SSD to the motherboard.I would definitely recommend this SSD if you are looking to upgrade your desktop or laptop computer.

Execellent choice for MacPro 2019 Desktop computer

Installed 2, 1TB SSD's on aStarTech Dual M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter Card - x8 / x16 Dual NVMe or AHCI M.2 SSD to PCI Express 3.0 - M.2 NGFF PCIe (M-Key) Compatible - Supports 2242, 2260, 2280 - JBOD - Mac & PCPCI Express 3.0 M.2 SSD Adapter Card | For PCIe NVMe and PCIe AHCI M.2 SSDsProduct ID: PEX8M2E2Given the bus and card performance in made no sense to get a faster SSD. Installation was simple and as was formatting and installing macOS on to it. Boots just fine and as fast or faster than the Apple internal drive. Delivery was as promised at the expected time.It was recommended both by WD and StarTech to play it safe and get it with a heatsink. Cost a bit more but eliminates potential issues. Totally functions as expected with excellent presales support.

Great choice memory upgrade to speed up your lapto

I bought this for my Asus laptop to replace it's 1TB standard hard drive with this SSD along with another m.2 SSD to improve performance. Very fast access/read and write speeds along with top notch Western Digital quality. The "Black" label adds further quality and performance per their tiers.Great choice to add to or replace existing storage in a laptop or desktop with NVMe support on motherboard.

Incredible value/ performance

Installed in a ThinkCentre 710t (B450 chipset, i7-6700 cpu) running under Win 8.1. Prior boot was a Plextor M8Se 256gb drive. Cloned drive using Macrium Reflect via an external SSK SHE-C325 USB 3.1 enclosure which worked flawlessly, then used Paragon HD Manager 17 to adjust volumes to a 215gb C: and a 251gb D: . I have the version without heatsink, but having built my own machines for 30 years I had a selection of old heatsinks and modified one to fit perfectly and attached via 2 zip ties with Artic Silver. Swapped drives and it booted perfectly. WD Dashboard confirms it's running full 4 lanes,, run trim but cannot report much else. If you absolutely desire such I guess it's worth spending more for a Samsung or others that furnish a Win 8.1 driver. In fact my Lenovo ... MoreInstalled in a ThinkCentre 710t (B450 chipset, i7-6700 cpu) running under Win 8.1. Prior boot was a Plextor M8Se 256gb drive. Cloned drive using Macrium Reflect via an external SSK SHE-C325 USB 3.1 enclosure which worked flawlessly, then used Paragon HD Manager 17 to adjust volumes to a 215gb C: and a 251gb D: . I have the version without heatsink, but having built my own machines for 30 years I had a selection of old heatsinks and modified one to fit perfectly and attached via 2 zip ties with Artic Silver. Swapped drives and it booted perfectly. WD Dashboard confirms it's running full 4 lanes,, run trim but cannot report much else. If you absolutely desire such I guess it's worth spending more for a Samsung or others that furnish a Win 8.1 driver. In fact my Lenovo diagnostics can access the temp reading of the drive and with my home brew heatsink it idles at 34C and writing large files I've yet to see it above 46C, meanwhile performance has more than doubled, almost tripled in some case, and in the the range of all reviews you have seen for these WD drives. Completely satisfied.

Initial Impressions Very Positive

My initial impression of this product are very positive. Install was trouble-free. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test clocks it at 2723.6 write, 2895.3 read in my system. This is quite good, a full 25% faster than the Samsung 960 Pro product it replaced in my system on write speed (measured, not claimed). Read speed is basically a wash against the 960 Pro. Indeed, this product seems very competitive with the newer 970 Pro in terms of speed, endurance spec, and warranty. Of course, endurance spec is one thing and actual endurance is another, so time will tell, but off the bat this product seems to deliver very close to class-leading performance at a really excellent price-point. My only qualms so far: First, as far as I can tell, the heat sink and non-heat-sink versions of ... MoreMy initial impression of this product are very positive. Install was trouble-free. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test clocks it at 2723.6 write, 2895.3 read in my system. This is quite good, a full 25% faster than the Samsung 960 Pro product it replaced in my system on write speed (measured, not claimed). Read speed is basically a wash against the 960 Pro. Indeed, this product seems very competitive with the newer 970 Pro in terms of speed, endurance spec, and warranty. Of course, endurance spec is one thing and actual endurance is another, so time will tell, but off the bat this product seems to deliver very close to class-leading performance at a really excellent price-point. My only qualms so far: First, as far as I can tell, the heat sink and non-heat-sink versions of this product are identical in absolutely every regard, aside from the block of aluminum. Temperatures on mine are well within tolerances, even after hammering 4K video writes to it, so the heat sink appears to be purely decorative in function in a system with adequate cooling. This is not to say it doesn't work, only that the underlying product is identical in form and function without it. The manufacturer could just say as much and save customers some time. Second, buried in the fine print of the manual is a binding arbitration clause. You can opt out but you have to write to WD to do so. That fact that you now need to take extra steps buried in the fine print in order to access consumer protections that we consider normal in the United States (i.e. the right to recoup your money in a class action suit if a product turns out be defective) does not give me a warm-and-fuzzy feeling about WD. TL;DR: Seems great so far, if you are looking for high-performance but concerned with value as well this appears to hit the sweet spot. Just don't waste your money on the heat sink. My environment is a Gigabyte z370/Intel i9 8700k under Mac OS 10.13 (High Sierra), APFS formatted. I am using this product as for project file storage for motion graphic applications (Adobe After Effects).

My second M.2 & second Western Digital product

This is my second M.2 SSD and my second WD product. I purchased this M.2 back in 7/2/2020 and arrived to my Honolulu residence on 7/8/2020, which I installed on the same day. I bought this M.2 as I needed more space than the original 500GB M.2 in my 3 y/o Dell XPS 9560 15" laptop can provide. I did no benchmarks on this WD M.2, and I did not notice any performance differences between the original M.2 that came with my laptop. Sadly though on 8/15/2020, my Dell XPS would not boot and only displays a blue screen with a QR code. The screen also displayed the following messages: "Stop Code: SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED" & What failed: stornvme.sys". I took a picture of the blue screen for my record. With the WD Black SN 750 still inside my Dell XPS, I attempted ... MoreThis is my second M.2 SSD and my second WD product. I purchased this M.2 back in 7/2/2020 and arrived to my Honolulu residence on 7/8/2020, which I installed on the same day. I bought this M.2 as I needed more space than the original 500GB M.2 in my 3 y/o Dell XPS 9560 15" laptop can provide. I did no benchmarks on this WD M.2, and I did not notice any performance differences between the original M.2 that came with my laptop. Sadly though on 8/15/2020, my Dell XPS would not boot and only displays a blue screen with a QR code. The screen also displayed the following messages: "Stop Code: SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED" & What failed: stornvme.sys". I took a picture of the blue screen for my record. With the WD Black SN 750 still inside my Dell XPS, I attempted to reinstall Windows via USB drive through my Dell XPS' BIOS, but without success. The Windows install would begin, but moments later my Dell would shut down, after turning it back on the same blue screen would reappear. As my next step, I erased all data in the WD Black SN750 using option in my Dell XPS's BIOS, unfortunately Windows still failed to install. The third step I took was removing the WD Black M.2 and installing it into my brother's Dell Inspiron's spare M.2 slot, low and behold the blue screen also appeared; just to make sure I removed my WD Black M.2 from the Inspiron, then turned it on again, which it did not have boot up problem. Since Newegg's 30-day return policy has expired, I will contact Western Digital myself during my next free time order to utilize the M.2 five year warranty.

Obscenely fast

I'm going to start off this review by saying that I was an early adopter of SATA SSDs way back when. I was blown away by the performance relative to spinning-disk drives which were standard at the time. In my (admittedly brief) experience, this drive represents the same sort of performance leap. My current rig was primarily run off of a 1 TB Samsung 960 Evo SATA SSD, which I was pretty happy with. I needed more space, and decided to add an NVMe SSD into the mix.The install, as with all of these, was straightforward (save the annoyingly tiny screw to anchor it to the motherboard, but that's my fault for not having a magnetic screwdriver). I had decided to start clean with my Windows installation, so I plugged in my USB 3.0 flash drive with a Windows 10 ISO, ... MoreI'm going to start off this review by saying that I was an early adopter of SATA SSDs way back when. I was blown away by the performance relative to spinning-disk drives which were standard at the time. In my (admittedly brief) experience, this drive represents the same sort of performance leap. My current rig was primarily run off of a 1 TB Samsung 960 Evo SATA SSD, which I was pretty happy with. I needed more space, and decided to add an NVMe SSD into the mix.The install, as with all of these, was straightforward (save the annoyingly tiny screw to anchor it to the motherboard, but that's my fault for not having a magnetic screwdriver). I had decided to start clean with my Windows installation, so I plugged in my USB 3.0 flash drive with a Windows 10 ISO, formatted the drive, and walked away to make some tea. By before the water boiled, Windows was finished installing. I was absolutely floored, and ever since this drive has continued to impress. I don't do large file-heavy work on this machine, so I can't speak to sustained work, but the drive outpaces everything else I throw at it. Highly, highly recommend. My only regret is not getting the 2 TB version.

Western Digital WD BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2 2280 500GB with heatsink

Received this ordered drive from Newegg, well packaged and sealed in its product box in a very timely manner and no damage. Disconnected all drives from my MSI X470 Gaming Plus Motherboard with the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G cpu and 16GB (2x8) G.Skill Flare X 3200 14cl ram. Installed the WD SN750 after moving motherboard M.2_1 socket mounting standoff from last hole to the 2280 position. M.2 hold down screws came with the MSI motherboard. I had already created a Windows 10 ver 1903 USB stick with the media creation tool. I wanted a new OS install on this drive. A boot into UEFI BIOS showed the drive as detected. I shut the PC down and inserted the created Windows 10 USB stick, turned PC on and hit F11 for boot menu, selected the USB Windows 10 install drive. The install ... MoreReceived this ordered drive from Newegg, well packaged and sealed in its product box in a very timely manner and no damage. Disconnected all drives from my MSI X470 Gaming Plus Motherboard with the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G cpu and 16GB (2x8) G.Skill Flare X 3200 14cl ram. Installed the WD SN750 after moving motherboard M.2_1 socket mounting standoff from last hole to the 2280 position. M.2 hold down screws came with the MSI motherboard. I had already created a Windows 10 ver 1903 USB stick with the media creation tool. I wanted a new OS install on this drive. A boot into UEFI BIOS showed the drive as detected. I shut the PC down and inserted the created Windows 10 USB stick, turned PC on and hit F11 for boot menu, selected the USB Windows 10 install drive. The install booted and had the WD SN750 selected for install, I just clicked next since I was giving Windows the whole drive. Windows set the drive GPT and setup its needed partitions. The install went fast and smooth, (internet was connected at all times). ONE thing I noticed on this new install, there was no choice to use local administrator account, I had to set up a Microsoft Account because the screen would not progress forward until email address was entered. So I let it create a new account at outlook.com. It said Windows was not activated. I rebooted and clicked on the Windows update and let it process. Checked activation again and it was activated with a digital license. Installed motherboard chipset drivers and network adaptor drivers. Rebooted and ran chkdsk, ran sfc /scannow, it reported some corrupt files it could not repair. Ran DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth, after it completed ran SFC /Scannow, it found the corrupted files and repaired them. All is good. Crystal Diskmark reports WD SN750 reads 3450 writes 2550, drive temp 37 deg. In user accounts selected to create local administrator account, went through process and now on local accounts, added standard user account for everyday use. All is running well.