WD - Blue 500GB SATA 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive

After installation, my computer is night and day difference in speed! Very happy with the purchase. One thing for those not familiar with installing. When you first plug in to USB to clone the drive, your computer may not recognize that it’s a drive. I had to go to disk management and “initialize” it as an SSD. Attached below are pictures on how to do that. At first, I thought it was defective but that fixed my problem.

This is a nice and reliable ssd drive that I purchased for new pc gaming build. This drive loads programs quickly and makes gaming load time quicker. The drive can be mounted different way by it small sleek design.

I used this WD - Blue PC SSD 500GB Internal SATA Solid State Drive to upgrade the HDD in my Toshiba Satellite S55. The first improvement was the speed of startup compared to the HDD. The HDD took around 25 seconds to get to the sign in screen for Windows 10. While the WD Blue SSD cut that time down to around 12 seconds with no changes made. I tried transferring a couple of files from an external hdd via USB 3.0, first file was 3.4gb in size and took 36.7 seconds while the second file was 2.28gb and took 27.5 seconds. I then ran a Glary Utilities 1 click maintenance scan and while I didn't time it with the HDD I would say that the scan took about half the time with the WD Blue SSD! The second improvement was in the lack of noise compared to a standard spinning HDD! Although this is 512gb SSD replaced a 1TD HDD I feel the performance improvement makes up for the loss of storage space.

Replacing the mechanical drive with this solid state drive did wonders on improving my Windows 10 pc performance (especially boot up time). Highly Recommend.

Western Digital’s line of solid state disks came about after the company acquired SanDisk. The Blue line of SSDs aims to achieve a parallel to WD’s mechanical hard drives: great everyday performance with strong cost-per-gigabyte value. While the WD Blue PC SSD 500GB Internal SATA Solid State Drive for Laptops delivers on the performance proposition relative to any mechanical hard drive, this drive offers budget-class speeds at a premium price. Note that this drive is sold barebone; that is, the only thing in the box is the drive itself. There are no adapters, cables, or software included to transfer your data from your existing hard disk to the SSD, and thus this product is not intended for novice users. If you are not familiar with moving or reinstalling your operating system (e.g. Windows, MacOS), I highly recommend that you speak with a Geek Squad associate prior to purchasing for recommended services. - Build Quality There is little to say about this drive...most SATA solid state disks are the same and only vary externally. I was disappointed to find the mounting holes for hard drive screws were all plastic rather than metal, but realistically this will not make any significant difference in any machine. It feels lighter than most and at 7mm height will fit in virtually any desktop or laptop without issue. - Performance Compared to the hard drive this SSD replaced, the difference is dramatic. Boot time on a Windows 10 installation shrunk from over a minute to under 15 seconds, and the system is significantly more responsive all around. Apps open quicker, web browsers are much faster to respond, and updates are no longer a chore. This is typical for most SSDs, of course, but WD technically delivers on its promise by being light-years faster in all aspects. Unfortunately, against all of the solid state disks I’ve used throughout the years, this SSD ranks among the slowest (eMMC notwithstanding). Benchmarks showed a maximum sequential throughput of 365 MB/s read and 386 MB/s write on a SATA-III connection, with average speeds a bit short of those numbers. Random read/write revealed a similar story: speeds that are well below par for even early-generation solid state drives. Today's value-oriented drives can hit upwards of 500MB/s easily, and results were consistent across two computers I tested this drive in. I’m truthfully stunned that WD chose to brand this as a Blue drive rather than relegating it to the budget-oriented Green line or shuffling it into OEM channels, as these are not strong numbers by any stretch. The benchmark numbers don't even hit within 80% of their performance as rated on the packaging, which suggests speeds up to 545 MB/s Read and 525 MB/s write. - Bottom Line Although a casual user will notice a major difference upgrading to this disk from a traditional hard drive, this SSD does not compete with other offerings at or near its MSRP, which is already pushing higher-end territory. I am very disappointed that Western Digital is selling a drive that falls so short of performance expectations, as I have known them as a reliable, high quality hard drive manufacturer for over two decades, and this foray into the SSD space is a letdown. Not recommended.

==== Summary ==== The WD Blue 500GB SSD is a fantastic drive. It greatly sped up my Lenovo Legion Y530 laptop that originally came with a spinning mechanical 1TB HDD and a 16GB Intel Optane Memory Accelerator. Everything I do on my laptop has received an adrenaline boot - bootup, shutdown, Chrome with >25 tabs, multi-tasking, and local & network file transfers. The 3-Year warranty is great and so is the Western Digital SSD Dashboard app that handles Firmware Updates and SMART diagnostics. ***Pros: -Fast performance. -Easy to install and set up (used Acronis TrueImage cloning software). -WD SSD Dashboard software is helpful. -3-Year warranty. ***Cons: -None ==== My Experience ==== I've been using Western Digital hard drives from 2002 - the first year I began building custom PC's and tinkering with hardware and software. I've purchased many, many drives since then and not a single Western Digital drive has ever failed on me (knock on wood). Based on past experiences, I'm hopeful that my first SSD drive from WD will also be quality and last me a long time. This 500GB SSD drive was installed to my Lenovo Legion Y530 laptop that came with a 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA3 2.5" spinning drive and a 16GB Intel Optane Memory accelerator (M.2 2280 NVME). The transition of my Windows 10 installation from the Seagate drive to the WD SSD went very smoothly thanks to the Acronis TrueImage disk cloning software. Although the Intel Optane Memory accelerator does an outstanding and admirable job of speeding up the slow mechanical drive, it still cannot compare to a system with a SSD drive. Upon installing the SSD, I immediately noticed speed differences during restarts and power on, Windows 10 initialization after cold bootups, application launch times, and file transfer speeds. The system became even faster after I activated the Intel Optane Memory accelerator to speed up the WD SSD (I had to de-link the coupling between the Intel Optane Memory and Seagate hard drive first). I ran CrystalDiskMark 6.0.1 and my Sequential Read was 925.2 MB/s and Sequential Write was 159.4 MB/s. Due to Intel Optane Memory, the Sequential Read speed was what I was expecting but I don't know why Sequential Write came out so low. I ran CrystalDiskMark several times and used other hard drive benchmarks but the results came out very similar. Nonetheless, in real world usage, I've experienced no performance issues with the WD SSD. It made my laptop fast and snappy and I'm quite happy and satisfied with Western Digital. I give it a 10 out of 10~!!

I have bought 3 of these SSDs, they are great, fast, one was installed in a gamers pc for my windows to be much faster and the other 2 I use them to protect more than 200,000 pictures that I had on a 3 terabyte mechanical hard drive and I needed to back up in a reliable drive.

The WD Blue 500GB ssd offers great value & performance in one small package. Installation was a breeze and since it comes in the 2.5 inch drive form factor you can put it in a desktop or laptop PC. The speeds and access times are MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than your standard old mechanical drives and I was blown away by how fast my PC turned on. My PC start up time went from 20 seconds to 4 seconds! The drive also comes with a 3 year warranty which is a lot higher than the standard 1 year warranty that other companies offer. The drive offers a ton of performance and a decent size of storage (more than enough for your standard user) all at entry level prices I definitely recommend it. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the drive or how to set it up.