Crucial MX500 2TB 3D NAND SATA SSD – CT2000MX500SSD1(Z)

I purchased one of these (2TB) back in 2018 as a game drive and it’s still going strong to this day. I had been waiting months for it to go on sale again and Since it was on sale during prime day, I just picked up another one as a secondary game drive. I haven’t had a single issue with the drive in the 2 years I’ve had it and it’s speeds are just as fast as day one.

It’s sad to see that some people had the drive die within a couple months. Maybe they got bad luck, or someone bought a new one and returned an old one – who knows. From my experience, these drives are fantastic for regular storage and games.

This is a review of the 2TB version.

The reason most people will buy this drive is to upgrade an older 250 or 500GB SSD, and because the recent (as of this writing) Amazon deal on 2TB Crucial/Samsung SSDs.

Although upgrade was smooth once I worked out the pitfalls, it was not smooth at all until I had worked them out, so hopefully this will help someone;

Firstly, the free upgrade software is useless. Acronis True Image for Crucial will add all the extra space to your recovery partition if you let it.

The recovery partition is hidden from the user (it contains windows install files to fix your computer if the OS becomes corrupted, and is typically 450MB, and higher for OEM drives as it includes manufacturer specific bloat).

So anyway, when cloning my 250GB Samsung pro, Acronis turned my new Crucial 2TB drive into a… 250GB drive with a 1.6TB hidden recovery partition! Not the upgrade I expected!

I then tried to change the partition sizes through Windows disk management. No go – you can’t easily change the first partition on a drive without deleting other existing partitions, and I didn’t want to lose the recovery partition. The other option is to reduce the size of the recovery partition and create a new partition. Didn’t want that either as its messy; you see a C: drive that is the same size as your original, plus a new drive containing the extra space. I’d rather just have a larger C: drive!

Finally, I used Macrium Reflect. Its free, so no worries. When cloning, do not accept the defaults by telling it to ‘copy the drives and increase sizes proportionately’, as that gives you the same as Acronis. What you have to do is manually drag your main C: partition over, *then resize it*, then drag the recovery partition (and any UEFI partition) over.

Also, worth noting that some older motherboards (such as mine) have trouble with 2TB drives. I cloned the Crucial via an external USB connection, and that kept dropping out, so had to free up an internal SATA slot.
Finally, once you have cloned the drive *do not reboot with the original and the clone still attached to the computer*. The two drives will have identical IDs, so your OS may copy system files to both drives. This means the computer will not boot up without both SSDs connected! Remove the old drive and install the new drive in its place before rebooting.

Post upgrade, the PC feels nippier vs the older Samsung Pro.

As at least one other reviewer has mentioned, the Crucial and Samsung drives in this class are now more or less comparable, except that Crucial does better for lots of smaller files. Your OS loads many smallish files at boot up, and for me that equates to a faster boot time. The Samsung Pro of course has better wear characteristics, but its now over 5 years old and lower capacity… plus a 2TB Samsung Pro costs twice as much as the Crucial.
Finally, go for the Cricial MX drives rather than the BX. The MX has a 5 year warranty, whereas the BX has 3. Better wear on the MX.

The Samsung Pro is of course better in tests than any Crucial for longevity (they are seriously over engineered in fact, so last much longer in tests)… but, price. The MX is a more healthy cost:lifetime proposition.

Also worth noting that I have another computer with far faster NVMe drives (about x5 faster) and can confirm you don’t see the difference in most high usage applications (ok, I mean ‘games’).

The Crucial MX series are fast enough, and the law of diminishing returns kicks in very quickly if you buy faster. If you are in the market for something fast to store your Steam Library in, the 2TB Crucial MX500 is perfect.
The only people who will need an NVMe are programmers (like myself) who want faster build times (the only time I feel the difference is when I’m compiling ReactJS web applications), and perhaps 3D/video content creators.

So overall, Overall, the Crucial MX500 2TB comes recommended as an upgrade… as long as you steer clear of the free Acronis upgrade software – it’s worth exactly what you pay for it!

**Pros**
Capacity (2 TB of solid state storage!!)
Price (Paid about $0.10/GB [$208.99] total during an Amazon flash sale on Cyber Monday)
Speed (Plenty fast for a SATA based SSD)
Longevity (Not one of the new quad-level cell [QLC NAND] SSDs so it should handle more write cycles)
Management software (Firmware updates/extra features/etc…)

**Cons**
None

**Other Thoughts**
I’ve been looking at options for getting mass storage in my ITX build and I was hopeful that a good deal on a multi terabyte capacity SSD would show up around the Black Friday/Cyber Monday season. Sure enough, Amazon put this one on sale. It was very hard to resist at that price. I looked at several 1TB options around the $120-$140 range but I wanted something with a bit more capacity without having to pay over double the cost of some 1TB options available. Even though the speed would be excellent, I also didn’t want to run a RAID array of 1TB SSDs. Not only for less complexity but also for lesser cables to manage in my compact ITX build. This SSD fit the bill perfectly!

I owned a 1TB Crucial SATA SSD in the past but parted with it due to switching platforms so I had no problem going with Crucial again. I’m using this for mass storage of Google Drive files, video game files and Hyper-V Virtual Machines. This works perfectly for all of those purposes. My personal rig is all solid state storage with a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD and now this 2TB SATA SSD. Everything is speedy and it’s kind of sad to say that now this SATA SSD is the bottleneck in my system when I’m transferring files (as if 500+ Megabytes per second isn’t fast enough).

There’s not much else to comment on about this SSD. I got it for what I believe to be a reasonable price and without having to make any compromises!

Après avoir longuement hésité entre différents modèles de SSD, mon choix s’est finalement porté sur le Crucial MX500 de 2 To. Et je ne regrette absolument pas mon achat ! Dès la réception du colis, j’ai été agréablement surpris par la qualité du packaging qui protégeait parfaitement le disque.

L’installation a été un véritable jeu d’enfant. En quelques minutes à peine, le SSD était branché et reconnu par mon ordinateur. J’ai ensuite procédé au transfert de mes données depuis mon ancien disque dur, et là encore, tout s’est déroulé sans le moindre accroc.

Mais la véritable révélation, c’est lorsque j’ai commencé à utiliser mon ordinateur au quotidien. Quelle différence de réactivité et de fluidité ! Les temps de chargement se sont considérablement réduits, que ce soit pour le démarrage de l’ordinateur, l’ouverture des applications ou le transfert de fichiers volumineux. C’est tout simplement bluffant !

Au-delà des performances, je suis également ravi de la fiabilité du Crucial MX500. Grâce à sa technologie 3D NAND, il offre une endurance exceptionnelle et une résistance accrue aux chocs. Je peux donc l’utiliser en toute sérénité, sans craindre les éventuelles pannes ou pertes de données.

En bref, le Crucial MX500 est un excellent choix pour qui recherche un SSD performant, fiable et abordable. Il a largement dépassé mes attentes et je le recommande chaudement à tous ceux qui souhaitent booster leur ordinateur sans se ruiner. Une valeur sûre !