Tuesday, December 17th 2024
Crucial Discontinues the MX500 SATA SSD Line
Crucial has reportedly discontinued the MX500 line of SATA SSDs after nearly 7 years of market presence. The MX500 is arguably the most popular line of SATA 6 Gbps SSDs, and comes in both the 2.5-inch and M.2-SATA form-factors. The drive continued its run into 2020s given its extremely low price-per-GB, and reasonable levels of performance to serve as a warm storage solution in client PCs. The market is changing, with the advent of cheap QLC NAND NVMe SSDs, an increase in the number of NVMe slots on today's motherboards, and a reduction in SATA ports, which mean that it is time for Crucial to retire the MX500. The MX500 is still in stock with retailers, and comes in capacities of up to a respectable 4 TB, although at prices similar to NVMe Gen 3 or Gen 4 drives based on QLC NAND, such as Crucial's own P3 Plus. The 4 TB variant of the P3 Plus Gen 4 NVMe SSD in fact costs less than the 4 TB MX500, but with significantly higher performance.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
47 Comments on Crucial Discontinues the MX500 SATA SSD Line
7 years ago, imagine that. And now companies are offering us SSD lines that end at 2 TB, and are still regarding 8 TB as something that market doesn't deserve...
So 8TB+ does exist and prices are coming down but the real question is if its worth it for manufacturers to bring it to market. A lot more people will pick up a 2TB or 4TB because they are just cheaper and more affordable for the masses.
Maybe I should snag a 4TB one, just in case.
I mean I know I'm being pedantic here, but Crucial was the only US NAND maker out there, and the crucial MX 500 was the only 2.5" drive that still used them. Who do you know owns a 4+TB ssd? I mean sabarent has made 8TB consumer models for years, I've yet to see one.
Mos tof us that want high capacity jumped to commercial U.2 drives. They're just way better for mass storage. I've already covered the first two. Patriot uses NAND from YMTC. the rest are dependent on other asian companies for NAND. AFAIK, crucial was the only US based manufacturer of NAND, and the only other US source is a single Samsung factory in austin.
And sure, sometimes the prices of 8 TB drives dip. But it usually coincides with other low prices, so it's always about twice the cost of lower capacities per TB.
Also, it was worse and if I remember correctly had the typical "you never know what you are going to get" shenanigans going on.
maybe, maybe not.
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I never had problem with CRUCIAL SSDs or DRAM. I bought several those for electronics repair. Never a complaint. Always the fastest while assembling the device. Never heard a complaint later. Always happy people. I used for myself several 120GB Crucial SATA drives.
WD is not an option = Those SANDISK drives gave me always a headache. Full of issues and quality and data transfer issues for any WD = Sanddisk based drive in my point of view. (Same story as with SAMSUNG, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't) edit: my criteria = brand without issues. (I'm well aware of that curcial also had firmware issues with their sata drives much later)
I just had to replace a laptop storage which died after 4 years of hardly any use. A hp laptop which maybe was used a little bit for emails on the weekend. A bulk - oem german cheap brand i never heard of M2 drive with SATA protocol. (PN 00- 10234555 www.innovationit.de) HP laptop have a first day born timestamp in bios. I know the user for a long time myself.
They're gone, good grief. And yes, the internet is full with proofs of QLC variants.
The 4TB BX500 is €239 and has the same lifetime stats.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rumour-that-mx500-now-has-qlc-variants.302350/
And if you think you're immune to the "fake" variants from the Ali or similar, think twice.