Customer Ratings & Reviews

This SSD hard drive is a beast with respects to speed and size. After installing Windows 11 on this hard drive, you can time the noticeable amount of time the OS loads in comparisons to the SSD that came stock on the laptop. Software loads super quick and so does games. Being a 1TB drive sure helps alleviate the fear of not having enough disk space. Video processing using this drive is a piece of cake and no lag is experienced. Recording music using multiple sources is no problem for this drive either. The only issue you would have is if you were going to use this drive as a secondary drive and you don't have the proper screw to secure this drive to the mainboard, you will have to find one somewhere because no screws are provided. If you are looking to replace the small hard drive that comes in most sub-$1000 laptops that only give you 256gb, I would not hesitate to get this immediately before you start setting up your laptop. If you are using this as a secondary hard drive, you will not be disappointed.

So, recently a buddy of mine and I got into producing game videos for a few of our favorite games. Not so much streaming but more profiles of classes/ships, and reviews of new content. He mostly does the game work while I do the 'filming' and production. Despite having a relatively new (late-2021) gaming rig, the system sometimes gets a little bogged down at times and this would mess with some of our recordings. This is with having a 3080 card and a respectable amount of RAM. The only thing that we could really upgrade on the rig would be the primary hard drive and so we did. (We could have dropped the fidelity of the graphics or recording but that would not be ideal.) I flashed the main drive over on to the WD_BLACK SN850X, swapped them out, tweaked everything, and then used the original drive in the add-on slot after everything checked out on the new drive. I didn't even need to run any benchmark testing to tell that things were already running more smoothly. Our primary game likes to have a ton of visual spam during combat (which is annoying at times), and is also when we were most likely to get a hiccup. We haven't had a single hiccup in frame rate, recording, or processing since I bumped the rig up to this new drive. BTW, I'm using Power Director for video processing and the game's built in recorder for much of the capture. I used to be an Adobe fan, but I will not pay subscriptions for productivity software (but that's a whole different issue). Another thing I like about the upgrade to the SN850X is that I think this will open up the ability to better use some of the 3D rendering software to add in bits and pieces from original (first party assets) and fan made models. I'm excited to see what else we can churn out now with this upgrade. It brought back a little of the excitement that we had when we first started doing this. Not bad at all for an easy $200 upgrade!

A long time ago I remember someone saying that the staples to life were water and bread, but that in the future it would be RAM and HDD. That was probably close to 30 years ago, fast forward to 2022 and RAM is important, but we have evolved to SSD cards instead of the old school HDD. I have been thinking of upgrading my storage in my laptop for some time now. I have 512GB already in my laptop but with different projects and games that seemed to fill up very quickly. Some of this can be handled with external storage, but often I just want to turn on my laptop and get to work without worrying about carrying the extra external storage. This NVMe drive from Western Digital is exactly what I needed. Read/Write speeds are extremely quick, so it doesn’t matter if I am pulling up a bunch of layers or assets or trying to load up a game to relax, the drive handles everything with ease. Installation was very straightforward once you get the bottom of the laptop off, I had an extra bay available to use, as soon as I powered the laptop back on it showed in the BIOS but didn’t immediately show in the Windows 11 File Manager. All I needed to do was open Disk Management utility in Windows to partition the WD SSD so that it would be recognized by Windows. The entire process took less than 20 minutes. I would say that if you have never taken a part a laptop you might want to see about getting Geek Squad to do it for you. You can inadvertently mess up your drive or main board on your laptop if you are not careful

This is SSD is great for content creators, gamers or anybody who needs a lot of storage for content. It's a 1TB drive which also uses the newer PCI gen 4 so it allows for higher transfer rates which is important for content creators so they can access their content and store large pieces of content faster as well. PCI Gen 4 drives will also work with older laptops as well since you need Intel's gen 11 or newer or AMD Ryzen 6000 or newer to utilize gen 4. This will also work for gamers as well since games have increased in size with games like world of warcraft taking about 90 gigabytes of space on your storage now these days. Also if you want to download movies and music it will take up space as well and 256 or 512 gigabytes of storage isn't much these days for stuff like videos, pictures and games. The data transfer speeds will also work great for anybody but as I said it will work great for content creators, gamers a lot more as well since these are large amount of data and the file size more time it will take.

I'm constantly looking for additional storage. I work with a lot of still images and video files, and I eat through storage space at an alarming rate. I installed this drive on my laptop as a secondary storage drive, and I've been very impressed by both its capacity and its speed. I was able to transfer roughly 30GB of video files from my primary drive to this drive in less than fifteen minutes. My applications have no problem seeing this drive, and they read and write to it without issue. Out of the box, the drive is completely unformatted. In Windows, you have to open the "Disk Management" tool to create a simple volume on the drive prior to using it. Prior to doing this, Windows won't even be able to see the drive. My only complaint about this drive is that I wish it were bigger. Video files take up a fair amount of space, and I'll outgrow this drive fairly quickly. The drive is large enough that I should be able to work on quite a few projects on the go, but I'll probably still have to rely on external storage for some of my larger projects. If you're looking to add some additional storage space to a laptop or desktop, and you want a drive with fast transfer speeds, then this would be an excellent choice for you.

The Western Digital SN850X is the fastest SSD I have ever used. Windows boots in seconds. In fact, it takes longer to get through the bios screen than loading into Windows 11. I was able to easily clone my original SSD drive to this beast using Western Digital provided Acronis True Image. It only took about 10 minutes to clone the drive and swap to the new drive. Once installed, I downloaded WD's "Dashboard" software to enable "Gaming Mode 2.0" on the drive. You can set it to auto and select your gaming folders, or just set it to on. I set mine to be on all the time. SSD's are fast in general, but this one is ridiculous. Games are instantly booting and fully loading into gameplay in no time. There is also no noticeable lag or delay while recording/streaming gameplay. I don't much streaming, but I do record a lot of my gameplay at times, and have had zero issues with the drive do far, nor do I expect too. If your in the market a top tier gaming SSD drive, you should definitely check this one out. Likes: 1.) Crazy fast 2.) Support software can be downloaded from WD 3.) Did I say crazy fast? Dislikes: 1.) Absolutely none!

The first thing I saw was that the drive came delivered blank and there was no software or manual included even though it says it does. This is a very fast drive and so far very stable. I will tell you if you plan to use it in your system, then you will have to do a clean installation or if your system has two drive slots for two M2 PCIe SSD drives and you have the software to do the transfer from an older drive then that is the easiest way to get a quick installation. I was happy to find that I could at least download the software from the WD website but it does tell you that the software must be installed within 90 days of purchasing the drive. The software license once installed will roughly line up with the warranty for the drive at 5 years from purchase. You will see an improvement for your performance and it is nice that the drive is backwards compatible in case your system does not have the latest PCIe specification. I really like this drive and how well it performs. You can even use this with newer gaming systems as external storage which is great for the speed and performance.

If you need a m.2 SSD you're going to want to check WD out. The sn850x is super fast can handle speeds up to 7300mps. I got 6800mps so that's fast. It doesn't have a built in heatsink to keep cool i did install it on my PC i have 6 fans in there, so maybe that's why it ran well but i did install a heatsink later on i didn't want to risk damaging it being my first m.2 SSD. Now i am a gamer and for the gamers out there this thing will cut the load times by many seconds . Even running windows is even smoother . It felt weird in way because I have used the "older" SSD that looks like a traditional had drive , while the sn850x looks like a stick of gum. I don't know how this thing being much smaller can run so much faster but it does. I have transfered games to the other SSD and back, obviously it's much faster as well. I trust WD they have been around a long time. I'm loving this new era of SSD's definitely looking forward to getting the 4TB for my laptop since the holder is the heatsink and will save myself some of the weight . Every gram counts when carrying it on your backpack !

The new SN850X is another fast PCI-E 4.0 SSD in the Western Digital line-up. After a quick install into my Threadripper 3970X with 64GB RAM on a Zenith II Extreme Alpha I did some performance measurements of the SN850X (1TB) vs a pair of Corsair MP600 (2TB) SSDs in the same system. Under Windows 11 using AS-SSD I recorded the following: SN850X (1TB, Gen 4) Sequential Read: 5316 MB/s Sequential Write: 5396 MB/s 4K Read: 73 MB/s 4K Write: 186 MB/s MP600 (2TB, Gen 4) Sequential Read: 4269 MB/s Sequential Write: 3830 MB/s 4K Read: 73 MB/s 4K Write: 189 MB/s The tale of the tape shows the SN850X outpaces the MP600 in straight-line performance, but in random 4K situations is pretty much a dead match. The simple fact is the SN850X is extremely fast and a great price-to-performance ratio. I have an SN850 (non-X) in another system that is used as a daily driver OS drive and it has shown great reliability. If you are in the market for a Gen 4 NVMe drive I would feel comfortable placing Western Digital's newest SSD on my shortlist.

Review ------------- Extremely easy to install, 1TB is a good amount of space for storing games on the go and competitively priced. If your board already has a heatsink like most desktops do, you do not need a separate heat sink. Game mode 2.0 is the WD device management software which provides good information about the device health, drive etc. I did not get a chance to compare against any other models or makes but I can say that this is blazing fast! In the age of digital download, you want access to the information fast and storing games in this SSD is the way to go. Great for gaming overall. I highly recommend it, the price could have been a tad lower.. Pros ------- 1. For Both PC or Laptop or PS5 2. Easy Install. 3. Low latency resulting in no stutter 4. 1TB is a good capacity to store games 5. Faster read write than SN850 6. Cheaper than seagate firecuda Cons ------ 1. This model does not come with heatsink. 2. Price could be a tad lower. (Sometimes you can find it on sale)

Great middle of the road budget option if you're buildingyour PC or just want to upgrade performance, compatible with most platforms and will last a long time even with ugrades to components.

Great ssd running super fast on my linux built. It would be better to add a heat sink on it cauze the temperature can easily hit 60 degree C.

It arrived on time. It serves the purpose of a gen 4 SSD. I bought on sale for $80 off. Took 5 minutes to slot it right in my laptop.

Great! I required this immediately, fearing I might have to spend more elsewhere instead of opting for Amazon. To my surprise, Best Buy offered the same price, and I could acquire it today. The drive is excellent and has been functioning well as an external home drive on my Mac.

great price and runs great. No issues at all love having more space

Does exactly what you need it to. Easy to install and powerful.

Easy to install and add the OS. So far very fast and stable.

Loving my new hard drive, but most of all I loved the service that I received from the geek squad team. They were helpful and answered all my questions, even the ones I didn't know I needed to ask.

Put this in my computer at work without their knowledge. Recovery worked right away. 10x faster than the original m.2 drive. I beat all my co workers to the leads now and they ain’t even know it.

Great SSD for your PC. WIll probably buy again. Wish it was cheaper