Western Digital WD Blue SN550 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD

Very happy with this purchase. Switched on my PC on Monday morning to get a notice of imminent failure of my 1TB main drive so decided to replace it with an SSD rather than another hard drive. Found this one on eBuyer at a very good price and with free next day delivery!Drive arrived next day and was easy to install and get everything copied over. PC is now so much faster - and quieter and cooler as well. Worth the extra money for SSD over HDD.This was my first time with an M.2 socket - no real problem but make sure you have the riser and securing screw kit that comes with the motherboard.

Decent basic NVMe at a reasonable entry price point

The SN550 is an early generation 3 NVMe which is highly regarded in testing for maintaining read write speeds and reasonable longevity. This was purchased to replace a smaller capacity NVMe as the "C" drive in a windoze desktop. Installation is simple other than dealing with the micro screw which holds the NVMe in place on the motherboard (no fault of WD). It was recognized immediately by the bios and cloning the old NVMe to the new drive was simple using Macrium as was expanding the capacity of the apportioned drive to utilize its full capacity. Again, it isn't a high end, super fast NVMe, but it appears to deliver as promised.

Goodbye, SATA SSDs!

I managed to secure this 1 TB drive on backorder for a mere 85 dollars, which is an absolute STEAL for what you'd normally get at that price point. I bought this to replace my 860 Evo 500 GB from 2019, which, while it served me well, the 500 gb capacity was proving to be a hindrance with how many games I've been getting into this year. Understandably this ate into my drive space. This is my first NVME. Installation was as easy as you'd expect, and I initialized it no problem. I gave it a little stress test by slamming it with 400 gb of data, my entire games library, which it passed with flying colors, peaking at about 50 degrees. I was worried I'd get a dud because the price I got it for was approaching "too good to be true" territory but I've had it for a few weeks ... MoreI managed to secure this 1 TB drive on backorder for a mere 85 dollars, which is an absolute STEAL for what you'd normally get at that price point. I bought this to replace my 860 Evo 500 GB from 2019, which, while it served me well, the 500 gb capacity was proving to be a hindrance with how many games I've been getting into this year. Understandably this ate into my drive space. This is my first NVME. Installation was as easy as you'd expect, and I initialized it no problem. I gave it a little stress test by slamming it with 400 gb of data, my entire games library, which it passed with flying colors, peaking at about 50 degrees. I was worried I'd get a dud because the price I got it for was approaching "too good to be true" territory but I've had it for a few weeks and it's worked flawlessly. I initially planned for a Crucial P5, or anything in that class, but... they sell for as much as the Rocket 4.0, a GEN 4 drive!! Needless to say, I'll be keeping this one for awhile for sure!

Great new drive

Having been told that my home PC wouldn't be able to have Windows11 I did a trawl around the net for a replacement. Well, what I decided to do was rebuild my old one to modern spec and having looked into storage decided to take the plunge into the world of SSD. I bought this 500Gb for storing all my personal work on as I am a firm believer in having personal files away from the main system, preferably on a separate drive. This drive slotted into my new mobo easily and the bios came up with the correct ident straight away. Windows installed the drivers silently and the data transfer from old HDD was done at a much higher rate than before. In use the SSD is a very fast drive and access times are significantly reduced from my old system. Having used WD drives before in ... MoreHaving been told that my home PC wouldn't be able to have Windows11 I did a trawl around the net for a replacement. Well, what I decided to do was rebuild my old one to modern spec and having looked into storage decided to take the plunge into the world of SSD. I bought this 500Gb for storing all my personal work on as I am a firm believer in having personal files away from the main system, preferably on a separate drive. This drive slotted into my new mobo easily and the bios came up with the correct ident straight away. Windows installed the drivers silently and the data transfer from old HDD was done at a much higher rate than before. In use the SSD is a very fast drive and access times are significantly reduced from my old system. Having used WD drives before in different formats I am happy knowing that it should provide me with several years of safe storage. If you are going to make changes to your system then I would recommend this drive to you even if you use it with a pcie adapter you will get faster results

Small, Light, Fast, all the things you'd expect from a NVMe SSD!

So here's the thing. I stabbed this little wafer of silicone into my recently purchased ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 PCIe 3.0 x4 Expansion Card in order to upgrade my computer from ~2012 (Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3). My motherboard can't drive this thing at its full potential, but it still blows the doors (and every other component of a domicile) off my old SATA hard drives and even my SATA SSD. Load times of _whatever_ I put on this SSD were obviously significantly improved over any SATA component I own ... that much I expected. What I didn't expect was that it also improved game performance of titles that I've transferred to it. For instance, I fired up Borderlands 3 on this little baby, and load times were roughly 30-40% faster ... something like from 3:30 down ... MoreSo here's the thing. I stabbed this little wafer of silicone into my recently purchased ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 PCIe 3.0 x4 Expansion Card in order to upgrade my computer from ~2012 (Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3). My motherboard can't drive this thing at its full potential, but it still blows the doors (and every other component of a domicile) off my old SATA hard drives and even my SATA SSD. Load times of _whatever_ I put on this SSD were obviously significantly improved over any SATA component I own ... that much I expected. What I didn't expect was that it also improved game performance of titles that I've transferred to it. For instance, I fired up Borderlands 3 on this little baby, and load times were roughly 30-40% faster ... something like from 3:30 down to around 2-ish minutes. Then ingame, I was able to increase graphics settings (without having changed any other hardware or settings) while maintaining 60FPS (I have the game capped at 60 because reasons). Load times between scenes were also obviously improved. Word to the wise, if you use Steam to transfer a game to an SSD like this one, your config files will probably be reset to default like mine was. I did have to pull it up for BL3 and change the pool size override from -1 to 1 in order to prevent the classic stuttering common to many Unreal Engine games. Meanwhile, while this device works quite nicely for spreading jam on your toast, I don't recommend it because it will get all sticky. You really don't want that in your computer. The only thing that would make me happier with this SSD would be if it would actually just shut up and make me a sandwich already. Well, that and if it contained a tear in the fabric of spacetime which would thus give it all the storage space I could ever want. Who knows, maybe I could even put some book shelves in there.

So Far, So Good

I've been a fan of WD products for a number of years, choosing them regularly over competitors. This is my first purchase of a SSD from them, and so far it appears to be doing the job. It really sped up the boot and program launch speeds of an older system that had crashed-and-burned out of the box (faulty memory modules caused catastrophic system failure and the seller refused to refund). I am hoping that this "upgrade" will give the system new life (memory modules already replaced) so that my middle-schooler can get at least a few good years out of it. I never give 5-eggs unless a product completely blows me away. So far this SSD is doing what I expected it to do - work.

Solid

To clear things up for those convinced they absolutely "need" this: you don't. I will say the same goes for PCIE 4.0. You will only see a difference in load times. This will NOT make you a better gamer and your reaction time will NOT improve. You will NOT become a faster graphics renderer or video editor. What this will allow you to do is load large files and applications up quicker. Extensive video editing programs like Adobe Premier and CyberLink PowerDirector will not be bottle-necked when manipulating large HD files and will improve your productivity in that way. So if you're a mediocre video editor, you'll remain a mediocre one, just a slightly faster one. As for gaming, again, load times is where you will see the difference. The increase in gameplay framerate ... MoreTo clear things up for those convinced they absolutely "need" this: you don't. I will say the same goes for PCIE 4.0. You will only see a difference in load times. This will NOT make you a better gamer and your reaction time will NOT improve. You will NOT become a faster graphics renderer or video editor. What this will allow you to do is load large files and applications up quicker. Extensive video editing programs like Adobe Premier and CyberLink PowerDirector will not be bottle-necked when manipulating large HD files and will improve your productivity in that way. So if you're a mediocre video editor, you'll remain a mediocre one, just a slightly faster one. As for gaming, again, load times is where you will see the difference. The increase in gameplay framerate is negligible - meaning an "improvement" of 1-2 frames on 157fps on ultra settings from a conventional SSD is meaningless. An if you're playing on ultra settings, you're not a competitive gamer. You're a just another player.

What a deal for an ssd

I'm vert impressed with this ssd and not just because of the low price. In the last few weeks I've bought and returned a Crucial nvme ssd because my laptop couldn't detect it, and I even bought an 250gb ssd just so I could test it and the result was my laptop found it in seconds which meant the Crucial ssd was faulty. I'm so happy with the product that I have bought a second one because you can never have enough storage and even when fitted in enclosure this ssd takes up less room than the 212 blank dvd's needed to store the same amount of data. I then started looking again as desperately needed larger os drive and found this one with it's crazy low price so I bought one, and I'm happy to say it worked out fine. I installed it into an external caddy so I could clone ... MoreI'm vert impressed with this ssd and not just because of the low price. In the last few weeks I've bought and returned a Crucial nvme ssd because my laptop couldn't detect it, and I even bought an 250gb ssd just so I could test it and the result was my laptop found it in seconds which meant the Crucial ssd was faulty. I'm so happy with the product that I have bought a second one because you can never have enough storage and even when fitted in enclosure this ssd takes up less room than the 212 blank dvd's needed to store the same amount of data. I then started looking again as desperately needed larger os drive and found this one with it's crazy low price so I bought one, and I'm happy to say it worked out fine. I installed it into an external caddy so I could clone my c drive using Macurium and it was so easy and fast I had everything done and dusted in just over two hours. I'm so happy with this ssd I'm going to buy a second one and would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for one, as at the price it is through this seller you'd be mad not to grab such a bargain. So buy one now before they are all gone.

Your results may vary

i mean for $35 you cant really complain everything works and functions perfectly (for now). yet upon further inspection on the W.D. Dashboard it shows that the drive only has 5% shelf life left (shelf life represents the amount of read and writes a drive can perform during its lifetime before failure) also understanding that these are system pulls your shelf life may vary heavily, in my case i was probably given a vary heavily used one but your results may vary. again 35$ not a bad deal at all especially for someone like me who just needed something temporary to get you by, for that its amazing but i would not recommend using these for more than a year because failure may be imminent.

great value for the price!

I will start by admitting I'm that n00b. This is my first nvme drive but I was cloning from my sata ssd boot drive. I just wanted to have the latest and fastest speed for my OS while also expanding the space a bit more. my boot drive has gone from hdd > sata ssd > nvme now so i assumed it would be the exact same process as before. I didnt know that you had to manually extend the boot drive partition so you could utilize the whole drive space. So for those trying to expand your boot drive total space and speed by going with nvme once its plugged in make sure you first allocate your drive size by initializing it through creating a new simple volume on the drive then cloning it through something like Macrium like I did so you dont end up creating your smaller drive ... MoreI will start by admitting I'm that n00b. This is my first nvme drive but I was cloning from my sata ssd boot drive. I just wanted to have the latest and fastest speed for my OS while also expanding the space a bit more. my boot drive has gone from hdd > sata ssd > nvme now so i assumed it would be the exact same process as before. I didnt know that you had to manually extend the boot drive partition so you could utilize the whole drive space. So for those trying to expand your boot drive total space and speed by going with nvme once its plugged in make sure you first allocate your drive size by initializing it through creating a new simple volume on the drive then cloning it through something like Macrium like I did so you dont end up creating your smaller drive size onto the new nvme and thinking you messed up and lost out on drive space. You can also fix it if this has already happened to you with Macrium. There's a great youtube tutorial if you look it up. Hopefully this can help someone out with the same issue I had. Other than that ( which is obviously a user error) this drive works GREAT and does exactly what I expected. Very happy with the end result.