Bought two of these 525GB MX300's to replace a 256GB M500 and 256GB M550 in my desktop and laptop. My goal was to clone both drives so I could swap them out without having to reinstall anything or lose any files.
First, be sure you download the two pieces of software that help you get the most out of your new SSD: Crucial Storage Executive (displays info about supported drives, including SMART data and allows you to enable Momentum Cache - more on this later), and Acronis True Image for Crucial.
There are a fair number of reviewers stating their drives failed after 10-12 months. I'm optimistic if the drive are going to have issues, the SMART software would identify these issues. Both existing drives that I replaced had 95-96% of their remaining lifespan and there were 0 bad sectors. I was able to see this data in the Storage Executive software.
I first connected the SSD to a USB port using a SATA to USB cable connector (get one of these if you want to clone your drive for laptops or desktops without open SATA and power connectors - this is the one I used StarTech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable w/ UASP - SATA to USB 3.0 Converter for SSD/HDD). Using the Storage Executive software, I confirmed the drive was recognized, healthy and not initialized (partitioned). The firmware was already up to date, another nice feature of the SE software.
Next I installed Acronis True Image to perform the cloning. There is no fee to use the software, but it will only install as long as one of the active drives on your system is made by Crucial. The process from there is pretty simple - roughly 4 steps. 1) Choose clone; 2) choose source drive (most likely your C: drive) - I choose the automatic clone method, btw; 3) choose destination drive (your new SSD); and 4) proceed with clone/reboot.
It took about 30 minutes for my laptop and 75 minutes for my desktop (different aged systems and speeds). Both clones worked perfectly on the first try and I had no issues booting up after swapping the drives.
Getting back to the Momentum Cache setting - the MX300's allow you to utilize some of your DRAM for random write jobs in such a way that it can increase write speed by up to 10x. This is because all the random data will be temporarily stored to DRAM (up to 25% of available system memory or 4GB, whichever is less, and then it will write the data sequentially. According to Crucial, the benefit is faster write speeds (you won't see increased read speeds, so you won't see a performance increase when starting up the computer or using it under normal conditions), and it also helps extend the life of the drive as random writes will wear out the drive faster than sequential writes.
Knowing I have so much remaining life on the drives I'm replacing (due to running out of space), I am going to repurpose them in my family's computers, as they still have HDD's and won't come close to using all 256GB. I'm very happy with the older crucial drives and looking forward to years of use with these new ones.
If there are any issues in the future, I will update this review accordingly.
| Hard Drive | 1000 GB SATA |
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