Western Digital WD Blue SN550, 500GB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe M.2-2280 Internal Solid State Drive

My old Samsung 850 EVO 250gb SSD boot drive was consistently getting too full so it was time to upgrade. This is my first NVME drive and it does not disappoint. Plenty of storage and it's nice and fast. Sure there are faster NVME drives out there but for general use you don't really need anything faster than this (And you probably wouldn't notice a big difference anyway). It was super easy to install in the system and I like that there are no power or data cables to mess with.A couple counter-points based on other peoples reviews:1) It does not come with a screw to secure it to your motherboard. This is not Western Digital's fault, stop blaming them or any other drive manufacturer for that matter. The screw should be supplied by your motherboard manufacturer (if you built your own system) or your system builder (if you bought a pre-built PC)2) Cloning Software: Several buyers complained that this does not come with software to clone your old drive to the new one. Free software is available and Western Digital could have done a better job advertising this. They have a free version of Acronis True Image WD Edition Software available to on their website anyone can download. Personally I would recommend doing a clean install anytime you replace your boot drive to clean out old junk you don't use anymore and make your system perform better overall. If you choose to reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 10, get the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and use it to make a bootable USB drive. Just make sure to plug it into a USB 2.0 port when you install. Using a USB 3.0 port sounds like it would be faster but it's not, it will result in the install processing getting stuck, trust me...I also encourage you to do your research before purchasing, studying my motherboard manual a little closer would have saved me a little frustration. You may find yourself in a similar situation.My motherboard (Gigabyte Z170X - Gaming 5) has two M.2 slots. I could only get it to boot to Windows from one of the slots, the other would recognize the drive for storage it just wouldn't boot from it.The slot it requires me to use to boot also disabled 4 out of the 6 SATA ports on the motherboard (as the NVME drive now used those PCI-E channels to communicate). This meant I had to reconfigure how my other drives were plugged into the motherboard and I ultimately had to unplug three of my other SATA devices since they had nowhere to plug into. Again, not the NVME's fault; it's a configuration issue I should have seen coming.Overall, this is a great drive for the price and I'm looking at purchasing another one in the near future for the second M.2 slot on my board.

I'd buy this drive again for sure.More than 2 years later, this drive has performed flawlessly and with excellent read/write speed. I use it primarily for game files that need to be accessed quickly while running the games via Steam, Epic, Robot Cache, etc.As for installation, well....it was incredibly easy! Basically plug and play on my Windows computer with ASUS motherboard. Make sure you have the proper port on your motherboard before buying, though. Some don't have it. Some have two and you need to use a specific one first. Just check yours out first, but then don't hesitate to buy this drive once you know you have a spot for it.

This is a great SSD and has been very reliable and very fast in my PC. The install was a bit tedious since it's a small piece of hardware, and I was adding this to my PC as a secondary drive and didn't want to go through the process of removing my graphics card and CPU heatsink tower, so I just had to work in a very tight space, removing only the Wifi PCI-E card that is lined up with the top M.2 slot. For reference I'm using a MicroATX ASRock Steel Legend B450M motherboard. I managed to get the SSD in its slot, but then realized it doesn't come with the teeny tiny screw you need to hold the end in place. Luckily it was one of the screw and bits I had saved in the motherboard box after building the PC a couple years ago.I will say, trying to get that microscopic screw into an equally miniscule hole made me wish I had taken the whole darn thing apart, but after dropping it onto the motherboard and retrieving it with tweezers several times, I did get it into the standoff hole and got the M.2 card secured. After that I booted right up and it was instantly recognized and I just followed the instructions to get it formatted right, and now it's holding a bunch of Steam games.I definitely recommend this card, the price is definitely worth it to me. Just either install it when you're building your PC or make sure you have the tiny screws handy. Also the speed has only ever been very fast and I've never had an issue waiting for a game to load.

Two years have passed and this SSD has been working excellent, it really did make a complete change in speed because I was using HDD before, if you are on the fence about upgrading to an SSD and are asking yourself if you should do it then I must say: yes you should! Don't think about it more and just do it, you will not be able to go back to an HDD after this lol