Crucial BX500 SATA SSD 480GB, 2.5" Internal SSD, Up to 540MB/s, Laptop and Desktop (PC) Compatible, 3D NAND, Dynamic Write Acceleration, Solid State Drive - CT480BX500SSD1

Great affordable SSD. I needed a new drive to get an older laptop up and running again but didn't want to spend a fortune. For the money here your getting a good SSD from a actually trusted brand. Laptop boots up quickly enough with this drive and it works as expected. Would buy again.

The Crucial BX500 1TB SATA SSD is a fantastic upgrade for both laptops and desktops, offering a noticeable boost in speed and performance. With read speeds of up to 540MB/s, it significantly reduces boot times and improves file transfer speeds compared to traditional hard drives.Installation was straightforward, and the 2.5-inch form factor fits perfectly in standard laptop and desktop drive bays. Once installed, I noticed a substantial improvement in system responsiveness—programs open almost instantly, and multitasking has become much smoother. It’s also incredibly quiet, thanks to its SSD design with no moving parts, and it runs cooler than my old HDD.With 1TB of storage, it provides ample space for operating systems, applications, and files, making it a great all-around drive for work, gaming, or general use. Plus, it’s compatible with most devices, and Crucial’s software tools make cloning your old drive a breeze.Pros:Blazing-fast read speeds of up to 540MB/s.Large 1TB capacity for ample storage.Easy installation with standard 2.5-inch compatibility.Reliable and quiet operation with no moving parts.Excellent value for its performance and capacity.The Crucial BX500 1TB SSD is an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their computer’s performance. Whether for gaming, productivity, or general use, it offers reliable, fast storage at a great price. Highly recommended!

I have owned various PCs in the last 20 years or so and they all had old school mechanical HDDs, and to be honest I never really had many issues with them. All my PCs were either from before SSDs existed or were from when they were still quite expensive and generally came in smaller capacities (my current rig is around 6 or so years old).As I cannot afford to upgrade right now or ideally build my own, I decided to make some tweaks to my existing rig as it is still fairly decent for its age. I upgraded ram a couple of years ago (2x16gb sticks) and last week upgraded from the stock cooler to a much beefier Be Quiet cooler as the CPU was really getting hot under heavy load.While I was at it I thought it was time to finally go over to an SSD seeing as they now have much better capacity for not a lot of money.I decided to go for Crucial as I have always had good experience with them. My PC ram is Crucial and so is the M.2 SSD in my PS5. I felt this had the specs that suited me and as I say, price wise, it was pretty damn cheap. Sadly due to my board being slightly older and being a micro ATX I don't have an M.2 slot, so SATA was the only way to go.I did make one error though as I assumed it would come with a SATA cable, but of course we know what you do if you "assume" anything. It was a simple enough solution, order a cable from Amazon and just fit the drive a day later than planned (I only mention this as I am sure there are others as naive as me who will get caught out too).It was very simple to fit as well. Plugged the SATA cable into the drive and the motherboard and found a spare power plug coming from the power supply that fitted as well and then it was time to test things out.Booted the PC up and while it did take a while to boot (remember this is still booting to my old drive) which is quite normal when installing new parts, but booted as normal. I then opened Acronis True Image (go to the website on the SSD instructions and download the file) and followed the onscreen prompts to clone my old HDD to my new SSD. I had deleted all my music from the HDD before starting this as it took up over 400gb and I felt that would just slow the cloning process down. Even with another 400+ storage still on the drive, it only took about 2 hours to do a full copy.After it was finished I rebooted the PC, went into bios and assigned the SSD as my new boot drive.The PC then booted to Windows so much faster than it normally does and programs loads almost instantly rather than the delayed response of yore.Even web browsers and internet tabs load faster.I also noticed that after the PC logs into Windows I can access programs straight away rather than waiting for Windows to do all its stuff before being allowed to access anything.Seriously loving this piece of kit. The way it works is perfect for me, and is going to make using my PC so much of a better experience than it has been. Factor in the easy installation and the free no issues cloning software, and I think I got an absolute bargain at less than £40.Oh, and I kept the old HDD in the rig but formatted it to use just as storage for my music which I have already reinstalled.Only one program had an issue, with my copy of Photoshop saying the licence was not on it, but that was easily rectifiable, and every other program seems to have carried the licences over.

Purchased to upgrade an old Acer Aspire 5-series laptop, which someone had foolishly installed Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit o.s. despite it only having an Intel Celeron 540 processor, and 2GB, 533MHz, DDR2 RAM! The machine was so slow as to be virtually unusable. You couldn't even run You Tube or open photos.Changing the processor to an Intel C2Duo, T7500, and upping the RAM to 3GB, made You Tube and opening photos doable but still slow. The boot up time of 1m 40secs, however, was ridiculous, compared to a more modern machine.My first thought was to put it back through the site with 4 letters, and get something else. I liked the tank-like build quality, however, and the screen appeared to be fairly new, so I reckoned it was worth experimenting further.There are many cheap SSDs available, but one has to be careful because, as with memory cards, you could end up with something dodgy which isn't what it claims to be. Best to stick to recognized brands; Crucial being one of them. At just over £26 for 240GB, this was also one of the cheapest.It arrived quickly, and I was surprised by the total lack of metal. 100% plastic, but well made nonetheless. Impressed by the fact that though thinner, the width and length were the same (see pictures) and it fitted the laptop's metal caddy, perfectly (see photos).I've noticed some reviewers mention the need to use third-party cloning software such as Macrium Reflex, as an alternative to the Arconis True Image software recommend by Crucial. Apparently, some owners state that their SSD wasn't recognized by it, and for those that were, many have reported manually adjusting the partition size, rather than leaving the software set to auto. People have also spoken of the need to allow over 2 hours for cloning.Well, without my new SDD connected to laptop by SATA to USB cable (see photos) the Acornis software wouldn't open, because it detected no Crucial device connected. When connected, however, it did, and the process took roughly an hour to clone a 320GB HDD, with about 120GB of data; and the auto setting worked fine. The 'time remaining' message was all over the place (often the case!) first stating in excess of 2 hours, then 1 hour 40 after only three minutes, etc.Acornis True Image software is massively large (600Mb) compared to Macrium Reflex (about 130Mb). One reviewer stated that Acornis isn't free; you need to pay to use it! Not so in my experience. Maybe some folk are sold fake Crucial SSDs, which the software is good enough to spot!So, was it worth it? The boot-up time on Windows 10 Pro, 64, is now 27 seconds (previously 1 minute 40 seconds) so yes, in terms of boot-up time. Overall, however, it's still slow opening apps; and only marginally quicker than before, so I'm not overly impressed. Can't be bothered to conduct scientific tests to confirm just how small the advantage is!One big surprise was no noticeable reduction in noise. Clearly, the old HDD was not to blame, even though it seemed likely, and for me was a motivating factor for changing to an SSD!Only time will tell whether this is as good a deal as it seems, but one thing which did bother me was the short length of warranty (only a year). Compared to a 5-year warranty, it might prove false economy! Would I buy it again in retrospect? Probably not! I'm quite interested in the even-cheaper, 500GB, hybrid drive by Seagate, on Amazon at only £25. It loads Windows as fast as an SSD; and with a spin speed of 7200rpm, probably wouldn't feel much slower in use. The memory capacity, however, is over double though!