Crucial P1 500GB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe M.2-2280 Internal Solid State Drive

I wasn't expecting much from this drive, I already had a Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSD in my laptop, however the 500GB capacity was getting a bit tight. I opted for the 1TB model on Prime Day for a steal at $80. It arrived next day, and the installation was cake (if you can insert a stick of RAM, you can install an M.2 drive.After getting everything installed, cloned, and the boot order modified, the drive was performing about the same as my old SATA SSD on first boot. After installing the requisite Corsair Storage Executive software and making a few tweaks there, the SSD started to really wake up. I can boot to the login screen on my laptop in about 2 seconds after POST. After login, everything is ready to go. Chrome launches instantly, Steam updates in a matter of seconds, and everything is near instant.The drive is rated at about 2000MB/s read and 1700MB/s write. Imagine my surprise when Crystal Disk Mark put up an ABSOLUTELY BLAZING 4150+MB/s READ AND WRITE. I was questioning whether or not I was sent the drive I ordered. I reran the test a few more times, and similar numbers came up every time. My 970 Evo NVMe drive in my desktop puts up closer to 3200MB/s, which is still very extremely fast compared to anything on the SATA bus (SATA SSDs normally have about a 550MB/s cap).Games launch as you would expect for a drive of this speed. Tomb Raider I (1996) and Tomb Raider II (1997), even with DOSbox emulation, are fast and fluid. The 1050 in my laptop doesn't break a sweat on those. The Talos Principle, with everything cranked to the max, only blinks the load screen for a moment before you're in. I don't even remember what the load screens looks like in Portal 2. The recent Tomb Raider games (2013+) load so fast, you can't read the load screen tips, normally only reading the first few words before you're back in the action.I will say the Samsung software is a little bit better in terms of overall UI and function (Corsair does not offer a self-contained firmware update, you must download the firmware separately and point the software to the downloaded file), however you're not spending any time in there anyway once the Over Provisioning cache is set up and a few other performance related check boxes.So your options right now are the following:• Spend twice as much for a Samsung SSD and get slower speeds• Spend less than $100, get 1TB of space, and blow away other, more expensive drives by at least 25%This drive will not disappoint!

A little context: I'm commercial photographer and videographer and have been using G-Technology G-Drives for the better part of 10 years. I shoot tethered to, work directly off of, and backup to these drives. So needless to say, external hard drives are an integral part of my workflow.I've been researching SSD drives for some time now but have been waiting for the price/GB to come down. I've had my eye on this Crucial 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD for probably the past 6 months. I saw the price dip to $95 and decided to pull the trigger. And oh my god am I glad I did. Using Blackmagic's Speed Test I measured both my 2TB 7,200RPM G-Drive and this 1TB NVMe SSD. My G-Drive came in at an average of 108 MB/s with USB-A 3.0, which I've been used to for some time. I was completely astounded when I saw that my new Crucial 1TB NVMe SSD was getting 9x's better (!!!!!) read/write speeds at an average of 932 MB/s with USB-C. With USB-A to USB-C it was averaging around 460 MB/s. Which is still insane compared to my now dinosaur of a G-Drive.I paired this with the Sabrent USB 3.1 NVMe M.2 SSD Aluminum enclosure (https://amzn.to/35yLsi0) and could not be happier with the results. I wish this drive came in a 2TB+ option as I would likely pick up several of them. But this is an incredible step for me in the transition towards an all-SSD workflow.I'm including a screenshot of the Speedtest and photo of the the drive in the Sabrent enclosure for size context.SOME NOTES• It's very small, only a little bigger than a stick of gum.• Installation in an external NVMe M.2 enclosure is extremely simple.• Being a Mac user you will have to reformat this drive for it to work with your system (which I would recommend you do with any external hard drive anyway).• The speed is outrageous.• Only time will tell the longevity and performance of the drive as I've only been testing it for several days.For the price and performance, I would highly recommend buying this drive.

I love this product. It was a fantastic price and having a terabyte is so liberating. I cloned my entire Windows partion (237 gb) in only 14 minutes. It was insane! The program available for cloning your drive has a great User Interface and is very pleasant to use. For gaming, I’d say it really doesn’t make much of a difference unless referring to install time. It’s a great addition to my pc and if you’re looking for more space at a great price, this is the ssd for you. Just make sure your motherboard supports it. Mine doesn’t specifically mention supporting this size, but it does support this brand of NVME up to 256 gb and the terabyte has been working excellently so far!