Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD

Top positive review

good SATA3 performance with write cache

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2017

An M.2 SSD with fast read performance, and notably slower writes. The important specs are it's SATA (not NVMe), and it's 22x80mm (there's various lengths of M.2). You'll need a matching M.2 interface.

I put two of these drives in aStarTech.com PEX2M2 Adapter, on a PCIe 2.0 board (x16 slot but running at x4 or x1), which worked like a champ.

Raw read speed (sequential) per drive was about 460MB/s in this configuration (well below SATA3's theoretical max, but much faster than SATA2 could deliver). Both drives reading at once capped each drive at ~370MB/s. I'm not sure if I was maxing out the card or the PCIe configuration, but the numbers should be better under PCIe 3.x-- Crucial claims a ceiling upwards of 500MB/s.
Write speeds were harder to calculate; the drive uses a caching mechanism which greatly speeds up short writes, but the cache fills up in 15-20 seconds, so extended writes then fall back to speeds comparable to older SATA2 drives until the cache flushes out. This design will work very well for bursty writes (think web browser on-disk history) but will feel slow for moving large data. I got ~250MB/s on sequential write while the SSD's cache was working, and 150MB/s when the cache filled up.
Note these were raw reads / writes. A filesystem, RAID, or other intermediate layers will add some overhead (in my tests FreeBSD GEOM mirror costs about 4-5% in performance). OS caching will also throw off results, writing through the GEOM mirror was far more variable than my raw writes.

On FreeBSD 10.3, this SSD shows up thusly in dmesg:
ada0: <Crucial CT275MX300SSD4 M0CR031> ACS-3 ATA SATA 3.x device
ada0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)

M.2 aka NGFF are superior to traditional drives for several reasons:
* simpler design: no separate power or SATA data cables (and no needing to be sure your data cables are in spec for SATA3)
* lower heat dissipation / power draw than 2.5" SSD.
* the small size fits in diminutive or non-traditional cases. No casing, brackets, or cables makes for better airflow in large cases.
* attaches to PCIe bus, bypassing potential SATA controller bottlenecks. Models like this one still speak SATA so the protocol is still a limit.

Possible negatives:
* Poor heat dissipation (no heatsink, no metal case to draw off heat)
* Still bound by SATA3 performance bottlenecks and overhead
* A couple of these can max out PCIe 2.0 lanes, needs PCIe 3.x for max performance

With most SSD, as you move to larger capacity (more chips), the price is a little better per GB, and performance should also improve. But the next real performance enhancement moving up from this M.2 would be an NVMe interface.

The MX300 offers good performance at a price barely higher than traditional 2.5" SSD, from a trusted US-based brand (Crucial has long been my go-to for DRAM). Recommended for space-saving performance.

17 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

John Mark Kucera

Bad Built in Defect, but top notch tech support

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2017

I will start by saying I love the product. Here is a full review of 2 of the same model drives I have purchased in the past month or so.
First of all the drive seems to work well, installed without any issued. Seems fairly fast, although very slow when you had multiple partitions moving large amounts of data from one to the other. This first drive I installed, I had cloned my original Micron 512GB SSD Drive and then cloned to the new Crucial 1TD MX300 drive. Worked without issues. The extra 500GB I created a data partition. While transferring all of the data I wanted from one partition to the other the computer would start crashing, blue screen errors, etc, causing reboots. Using the Dell tools to check the laptop it found that the drive was bad. The Crucial app showed that the drive was OK, so racked my brains thinking it may be some virus or malware, which also took me time to troubleshoot. After a few days the drive died and was unable to use it. Amazon replaced without an issue.
The replacement drive was done in virtually the same way but this time used the Crucial program that came with it to clone the old drive, called Acronis True Image. Again worked without issue for about a week or so and again when transferring data to the extra data partition I had created, again several times crashed during transfer of data, blue screen, and eventually failed. This time I contacted Crucial directly through their chat. I will say that Crucial Tech support deserves all 5 stars as they are very responsive, know what they are doing, and are available. They provided steps on how to power cycle the SSD (which apparently is a built in defect when the drive detects multiple reboots can lock itself up, and must be power cycled, which is a tedious process (but was never able to get this done). I tried this for 3 days. Honestly I should give only 1 star because of the constant and possible issues these drives have, but tech support is so good that I gave an additional star. In the end it comes down to now having these issues to begin with. Not having a drive that is useless when this Data is CRUCIAL. I lost a lot of data this last time, and several days, not to mention the pain and suffering which I will not get back. Support is great but so far my experience with the Crucial MX300 1TB M.2 (2280) Internal Solid State Drive (CT1050MX300SSD4) drive I went through two in about a month, with only heartache, missing files and lost work and a lot of countless hours of lost time. I would pay more, even double, if it is a product that does not fail which would leave me much better ahead.

One person found this helpful

Filtered by

Verified purchases, Capacity: 275GBClear filter

849 total ratings, 638 with reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

Omar Siddique

good SATA3 performance with write cache

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2017

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

An M.2 SSD with fast read performance, and notably slower writes. The important specs are it's SATA (not NVMe), and it's 22x80mm (there's various lengths of M.2). You'll need a matching M.2 interface.

I put two of these drives in a StarTech.com PEX2M2 Adapter , on a PCIe 2.0 board (x16 slot but running at x4 or x1), which worked like a champ.

Raw read speed (sequential) per drive was about 460MB/s in this configuration (well below SATA3's theoretical max, but much faster than SATA2 could deliver). Both drives reading at once capped each drive at ~370MB/s. I'm not sure if I was maxing out the card or the PCIe configuration, but the numbers should be better under PCIe 3.x-- Crucial claims a ceiling upwards of 500MB/s.
Write speeds were harder to calculate; the drive uses a caching mechanism which greatly speeds up short writes, but the cache fills up in 15-20 seconds, so extended writes then fall back to speeds comparable to older SATA2 drives until the cache flushes out. This design will work very well for bursty writes (think web browser on-disk history) but will feel slow for moving large data. I got ~250MB/s on sequential write while the SSD's cache was working, and 150MB/s when the cache filled up.
Note these were raw reads / writes. A filesystem, RAID, or other intermediate layers will add some overhead (in my tests FreeBSD GEOM mirror costs about 4-5% in performance). OS caching will also throw off results, writing through the GEOM mirror was far more variable than my raw writes.

On FreeBSD 10.3, this SSD shows up thusly in dmesg:
ada0: <Crucial CT275MX300SSD4 M0CR031> ACS-3 ATA SATA 3.x device
ada0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)

M.2 aka NGFF are superior to traditional drives for several reasons:
* simpler design: no separate power or SATA data cables (and no needing to be sure your data cables are in spec for SATA3)
* lower heat dissipation / power draw than 2.5" SSD.
* the small size fits in diminutive or non-traditional cases. No casing, brackets, or cables makes for better airflow in large cases.
* attaches to PCIe bus, bypassing potential SATA controller bottlenecks. Models like this one still speak SATA so the protocol is still a limit.

Possible negatives:
* Poor heat dissipation (no heatsink, no metal case to draw off heat)
* Still bound by SATA3 performance bottlenecks and overhead
* A couple of these can max out PCIe 2.0 lanes, needs PCIe 3.x for max performance

With most SSD, as you move to larger capacity (more chips), the price is a little better per GB, and performance should also improve. But the next real performance enhancement moving up from this M.2 would be an NVMe interface.

The MX300 offers good performance at a price barely higher than traditional 2.5" SSD, from a trusted US-based brand (Crucial has long been my go-to for DRAM). Recommended for space-saving performance.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ron

Works well on my Acer E5-575-33BM

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2016

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

Installed this on the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM. The card itself is great and, combined with a 4 GB RAM upgrade, my budget computer is now blazing fast.

Crucial's website and their answered questions here on this product page said it isn't compatible with my computer and with a number of computers. However, my computer's bios recognized it immediately and I only had to format it. Like many have commented, the Acronis software that comes as a free download for cloning the HDD didn't work, thus the 4 stars instead of 5. I download EaseUS for free and it worked perfectly. I have to wonder if the reason Acer said this card isn't compatible with so many devices is because the Acronis software doesn't work on those devices?

A few tips for novices like me who've never done this before: 1) After you install the card, you may need to format the drive in the Windows Disk Management tool. Just type "disk man" in the start menu and it'll take you there. Then format the SSD. 2) As mentioned above, skip Acronis and download EaseUS or another utility like it. (I actually tried installing windows from a recovery disk onto this SSD and it didn't work. Use cloning software like EaseUS and it'll save you a bunch of time.)

***UPDATE: Photos posted of the SSD mounted in the Acer computer's expansion slot.***

222 people found this helpful

Helpful

B. Smith

Great M.2 SSD that are worth owning!

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2017

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

Bought two of these to go into new gaming laptops for my kids. The size vs cost of these is excellent! The laptops in question are Acer Laptop Aspire E E5-575G-55KK. The hardware is really great but the slow 5400 RPM platter drives hold them back (if yours isn't the one that comes with the SSD). Now these do come with several screws if you need them and a free download of Acronis True Image (limited) but I could not get their software to do the hard drive clone of the original C drive. The error given was not on their site and I didn't want to waste time waiting for their support to get back to me. So I switched over to EASEUS Partition Master software and it worked without issue and if I made a mistake it told me what to do to resolve it. I won't mark off any stars for the free software as some companies don't even offer you free software anyway. I would buy again if needed.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Fast and easy to install in an ASUS ROG GL702VM-DB71; but missing Acronis Product Key needed for cloning.

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

I have this installed as the OS drive on a GL702VM-DB71 and a Kingston SSD as the secondary drive. Since I have 16Gb of RAM, I have disabled the pagefile and then changed the environment variables so that the temp files/folders are on the D drive by default. Windows 10 boots from a cold start in just under 11 seconds. Unfortunately, perhaps by some glitch, my drive did not come with the Acronis product key. Due to being at work and it was a weekend, I was unable to perform a clone of the original platter drive. Hopefully Monday Crucial will be able to resolve the issue. I searched for other free cloning software and though I found several, none were actually free when it came to performing the clone. Regardless of all that, I kept my platter drive to the side and did a clean install of Windows 10. I have no complaints about the drive. Iti \s fast and quite easy to install (which really makes me shake my head in shame for mankind when I see an additional charge of $86.09 for "professional installation and data transfer". It is so simple and easy, I personally would feel as though I were taking advantage of people if I were to do perform that task and charge such an exorbitant amount)
To give you an idea of the speed, I have included pics of a speed test.
My system is the GL702VM-DB71:
- i7 6th Gen 6700HQ (2.60 GHz)
-GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Video Memory
-16GB DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM Memory

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Paul T.

Very pleased

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2016

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

Very pleased with this M.2 Drive. Currently its the best within its capacity range and the entire MX300 M.2 line has the best Price/GB. The speed is great and had no problems with the drive. Keep in mind this is a B and M connector and with fit in any M.2 slot that is B or M compatible. The included downloadable Acronis software is complete trash. It never worked for me. I was trying to move the primary drive which was 1TB to this 275GB M.2 and when ever I restarted the pc to commence cloning it would just boot straight to the OS and not clone. I highly suggest not using the Acronis software and using different third party software. I spent hours trying to troubleshoot the issues with Acronis and just gave up and used Macrium Reflect. I did not have time, nor did i want to contact support for Acronis to figure out what the problem was. It seems mostly everyone has trouble with Acronis, which is pretty pathetic. I've used Samsung's cloning tool, Macrium, and AOMEI and never had really any issues. I would take a least a star off for this, but I didn't buy the MX300 because of the included software, I just figured I would try it. A lot of bands wouldn't of even included cloning software.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Patrick

its faster, lighter, more durable, quieter, more energy efficient, and smaller than a conventional hard disk drive

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2017

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

i have spent over $1,400 on my Dell XPS 15 9550.it came with a 1tb hhd (wd blue) and a 32gb m.2 ssd in raid 0. Although the configuration sounds good on paper, the real world speeds were terrible. As a college student, I need my pc to be at the ready for those much hated online pop quizzes during class. I can honestly say that my old computer would take at least two minutes for the disk to get back to idle, that’s precious time that I should be taking those quizzes, writing those papers, and researching. The crazy amount of moving parts in an hdd means they are very susceptible to damage and file corruption, in my case, it was file corruption. Imagine this, you have a semester long project you have to hand in. you find out that nearly a quarter of the files were corrupted. It nearly made my heart stop. Also my battery life was crud. I’m talking about 3 hours of normal usage. Now I get 4.5+ hours of use.

In conclusion, this m..2 ssd saved my first semester of freshman year. The new drive makes my computer to boot faster. It’s more durable than a conventional drive. It may increase your battery life. It it’s smaller and lighter than a HDD. Overall, this was literally the best 80 bucks I have ever spent on amazon.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Steezus

BSOD every time i tried to use it.tested for user error but no. BSOD within 5 min of startup. issue did seems prevelant online

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2017

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

Worked after setting it up and copying my os to make it my boot drive. I noticed my computer was sometimes crashing with the BSOD after I installed it. I make it my boot drive, and it was honestly quite slow, compared to the 850 Evo 2.5-inch format SSD I also have which boots up in less 4.5 seconds last boot time in bios. With the MX300 M.2 drive, it was around a 15-second bios boot time as showed in task manager in the startup tab.
0After experiencing too many blue screens and errors crashing my laptop; I unscrewed the access door on the bottom that lets you reach two RAM slots with four GB RAMinstalled in one and the other left empty, drive(was stock Toshiba 5400rpm 1tb HDD and put 500gb Samsung 850 Evo I had to take its place. And the empty m.2 sata spot. The Crucial M.2 size format was the culprit, for I took it out and never had any issues, and then when I tried to test it again, even wiping the drive fresh without any os or priority on the boot list, and goddammit it still crashes my computer. I can get it to work, I can get it to save data, but it is a guaranteed blue screen error crash within 20-30 mins of starting. The MX300 causing BSOD and errors are a very broad issue I was reading many people having the same concern.
Micron, the parent company who owns and makes crucial, even acknowledged that there was a problem with the m.2 sata and affected roughly 5,000 people but was solved. All the comments on the page were about how it was not solved, and it is still not solved. Do not buy this drive if you want your laptop to crash every ten mins. It probably will do the same to a desktop, but I do not have an m.2 slot on my desktops mobo, and I don't want to assume it also affects laptops.
I have updated all my drivers, actually finding some unrelated outdated drivers related to Intel's Skylake and things not being updated to 7th gen drivers, but I didn't notice a difference and that only appeals to the inner computer nerd in me. Overall, got speeds of 450mb ish when it worked couldn't test IO, though. I have16gb ddr4 ram 8x2 dual channel with 7th gen Skylake i3 2.4ghz processor. Hope no one else has issues with this drive causing errors and crashes. At least it was from Amazon because the return process will be swift and easy.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

The science guy

Gave me the speed I needed

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2018

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

I ran the crucial scanner from their website to find compatible memory for my laptop. This fit right into the slot inside my machine. After downloading the free acronis image software from the crucial website, I was able to clone this in just a few hours. I plugged it in and the laptop took off. My laptop was a 1 TB and I realize now I have 275 gb of memory on the hard drive. I did not want to invest too much in case I could not get it to work. For now , this is enough, but eventually, I will get a 500 gb sata as the need comes about. I hope the prices for the 1Tb will drop in the future. This is a good investment if you want a faster laptop. I am using an intel I3 processor and it is plenty fast for me. I was up against buying a gaming laptop for $600 just to get some speed. This did the same thing with my existing laptop for a lot less.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

David H

Huge difference from the HHD

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2018

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

I want to say thanks to 'Josh' for his, and Honest's, reviews. Josh's YT vid was a great help in the installation, which was very straight forward. I haven't used a Crucial product, but there seemed to be a lot of interest in their products so I thought I would take a chance. Seems to have been a good choice. Went right in, EaseUS TODO did the software part, and now, instead of a couple of minutes, it starts up in seconds. I was also having a lot of what seems to be Win 10 issues with dropping open windows or freezing up. Haven't had any more issues with the SSD. So...I'm happy, cautiously optimistic, hoping that it has longevity and holds up in spite of my limited experience installing anything more difficult that a memory stick. Speaking of which, I installed a Crucial 4Gig ram alongside the original 4Gig, so right now, it's running the best it has since new a couple months ago. At this point, I'm a fan.

Helpful

Steve

Works well and the price is right!!

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2016

Capacity: 275GBVerified Purchase

For Dell Inspiron 7559 gaming laptop w/ Windows 10 Home, i7, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB of hybrid drive, M.2 slot - Note: This laptop has the M.2 screw already in the screw hole.
(1) after cloning with Acronis software and restarted, the sign on screen kept flashing (dark then wallpaper, repeat) and unable to sign on.
(2) removed original hybrid drive, the Crucial SSD doesn't boot all the way, stuck at dark screen, no way to sign on. Gave up and wanted to return this.
(3) Finally, use it like a new drive, switch to legacy boot, and load Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. Install Crucial Storage Executive and activate Momentum Cache.
Works great now!!

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Questions? Get fast answers from reviewers

Need customer service?

‹ See all details for Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD -...

Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD -...

›

Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD - CT275MX300SSD4

Top positive review

Top critical review

Filtered by

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Questions? Get fast answers from reviewers

Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD -... › Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD - CT275MX300SSD4

Top positive review

Top critical review

Filtered by

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Questions? Get fast answers from reviewers

Crucial MX300 275GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD -...

›

Customer reviews