Sandisk X400 Solid State Drive - Internal

I have never upgraded a laptop. I purchased an ASUS Strix 1TB hdd laptop that didn't come with an SSD, and purchased this to swap out for the main drive with the HDD as the data drive. I opened the machine up and plugged this right in. I was amazed at the ease of installation. Once I got Windows 10 onto this drive and booted the machine, it booted lightning fast. I've not had any issues with it. Note that it does not come with any mounting hardware, no set screws or anything. It would be good to have one on hand especially if this is in use in a laptop given the mobile nature of such a machine. I'd recommend this to anyone over purchasing a laptop with a 256 or 512gb ssd in it, as this is likely way cheaper to buy and install yourself over paying extra $$$ for a pre-installed drive 1/4 or 1/2 the storage space.

One of the two I ordered was dead on arrival, but the one that works has been performing well. It's not NVMe speed, but I'm not running a high transaction database on my workstation either. As a boot drive on a new Z170 based motherboard, Windows 10 boots in about 15 seconds with it.

I'm sure its a great product, but be aware of what you are actually purchasing. I bought the product thinking it would come with a 2.5" enclosure only to find out that it was just the bare-bones M.2 SSD. It seems like they fixed it now, but the product images on this page had both the regular 2.5" SSD form factor and the M.2 SSD. The product description and what's included in the box is very vague at the time of my purchase and reading through the early reviews did not seem to clarify anything further. All that comes when you purchase this product is the actual M.2 SSD itself. I am returning this product because I do not have a M.2 slot on my laptop.I opted to purchase the 2.5" SanDisk x400 SSD instead, which is at an even lower price than this one. Just make sure your laptop or motherboard has a M.2 slot before making this purchase. You can alternatively purchase a M.2 to 2.5" SATA adapter, but that is an added extra cost and you will be limited to that SATA connection's speed.

The Sandisk X400 M.2 1TB is hands down the best upgrade for the money if you want a fast laptop boot drive and need 1TB of fast storage!I used this only for Windows 10 and my Steam games library while everything else went on the original SATA HDD. Windows is super smooth and boot times are so fast that I don't even notice. Steam games are getting exponentially larger and complex so having them all on a single SSD makes downloading, updating, and playing games so fast, you have more time to enjoy playing the games! This is especially true if you have a large update or have to verify your game content which can take forever on a traditional HDD.PERFORMANCE: The read speeds are close to maximum for SATA (~500MB/s) which makes it ideal as an OS and gaming drive. The write speeds are a bit slower, like 300MB/s, so if you need max SATA write speeds then the more costly Samsung 850 EVO M.2 1TB would be the answer, especially if it's your only drive. The write speeds are still way faster than HDDs and will probably suffice for most people though.DUAL SSDs: If you have a laptop with both the M.2 slot and a 2.5" SATA slot, you could do two SSDs. I recommend the X400 M.2 1TB as the OS drive and one of the following 1TB 2.5" SSDs as the data drive (they have faster writes and greater endurance): Crucial MX200 (harder to find now), Mushkin Reactor, or the Samsung 850 EVO (most expensive but fastest). The Crucial MX300 2.5" 2TB is also a great option for an even larger SSD data drive.SSD RAID: If your laptop supports raid, I would highly recommend getting 2 of the X400s. I got the X400 M.2 1TB and the X400 2.5" 1TB to use in RAID 0 on my MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro. This solution offers the fastest 2TBs of storage for a reasonable price. Not all laptops that have both slots have raid though (my previous ASUS K501UX didn't).