SSD by stefan @ 2023-10-29
For an USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps drive, the Crucial X9 Pro 2TB performs great, also thanks to the included Micron B47R 176L TLC NAND, which is able to keep high write rates even when working with very large files. The aluminum chassis helps with cooling, avoiding throttling, but also gives out a professional look.
At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their X9 Pro 2TB Portable SSD for testing and reviewing.
“Looking for computer memory or a new storage drive? You've come to the right place!
Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. We make computer memory upgrades (DRAM) and solid state drives (SSDs), and offer more than 250,000 upgrades for over 50,000 systems. For 17 years, we've sought to provide the Crucial Difference — award-winning products, outstanding support, and a team of memory and storage experts who explain complex lingo in everyday terms. We're here to help improve the performance of your system.
Crucial memory and SSDs have been qualified and approved by major original equipment manufacturers, and every single module that leaves our doors has been rigorously tested at the component and module level. That's a big deal in the memory industry, but it's not all. When it comes to our SSDs, each drive undergoes over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of qualification tests to ensure optimal reliability and performance.
To find upgrades in just a few clicks, our award-winning Crucial System Scanner or Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool will identify compatible upgrades for your system, and if you order on Crucial.com, we guarantee compatibility — or your money back. With fast and free shipping, outstanding tech support, and an exhaustive library of articles, videos, and install guides, we make it easy to find and install the right upgrade for your system.
Let us be your memory and storage experts.”
Powerful performance
With read and write speeds up to 1,050MB/s, the Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD is powerful enough for editing directly from the drive. Get more done with high sustained performance of up to 1,050MB/s reads and 975MB/s writes throughout the drive’s capacity.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Get one month of Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan on us when you purchase and register the Crucial X9 Pro.
Broad compatibility
The X9 Pro offers plug-and-play compatibility with Windows, Mac, Android, iPad, PC, Linux, PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles via an included USB-C cable.
Security that travels with you
Protect sensitive data in the studio, in the field, or while traveling with password protection and 256 bit AES hardware encryption.
Dust and splash proof durability
With IP55 water and dust resistance6 and drop-proof durability up to 7.5 feet/2 meters, your X9 Pro Portable SSD is durable enough to travel anywhere you shoot, work or roam.
Professional quality
Engineered by Micron, the Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD comes in anodized aluminum with a rubberized soft-touch base in a mini 65 x 50 mm design that includes a drive activity light in the integrated lanyard hole.
General tech specs
Interface: USB 3.2 Gen-2 (10Gb/s)
Form factor: External Portable
SSD series: X9 Pro
Capacity: 2TB
Speed & timing
Sequential Read: 1050
Sequential Write: 1050
Warranty & returns
Warranty: Limited 5-year
Crucial has recently launched two portable SSDs which use the USB interface to transfer data, one of it being the X9 Pro. The product can be purchased with capacities of 1TB, 2TB or 4TB, is IP55 (water, dust and sand) resistant and operates on the USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gb/s) interface; the rated speed for is 1050MB/s in terms of reads and also 1050MB/s regarding writes, which should be plenty for most mainstream users and a huge step-up in performance versus USB HDDs.
The product is shipped inside a tiny cardboard enclosure, showing a photo of it on the frontal side, but we will also note some of the main product highlights as colored icons. Crucial has also included here information on the rated transfer speeds, capacity, along with the warranty:
On the side, we will note the product serial number, but also the compatible operating systems:
The product features are present on the back side as well, in multiple languages, along with the product internal code name, the serial number but we will also observe a QR code in order to access more online resources:
After unsealing the box, we will note the drive, along with the data transfer cable, but also some documentation:
The provided leaflet informs us from where to get the rest of the online resources:
The supplied cable is quite short, to be used mostly with portable devices:
The casing of the X9 Pro is made from anodized aluminum, in order to help with heat dissipation; inside, we will find a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller, while NAND Flash is Micron B47R 176L TLC, for extended durability; it weights only 38 grams, which is impressive!
On the side, we will find rounded corners, one of which having a hole for fitting a lanyard or a keychain:
The sides of the device are machined as well:
The USB-C port is easily accessible:
On the bottom area, we will note a black, rubberized plastic cover, which is printed with more information:
Let’s connect the drive to our test system and see how it performs!
The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU, a Sabrent Rocket 2x16GB DDR5 4800MHz C40 memory kit, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR X670E VALKYRIE AM5 motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 11 OS build as well.
The drive has arrived pre-formatted exFAT:
We did format it back to NTFS just before starting testing:
With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive; not a lot of info is available due to presence of a pass-through (bridge) chip:
On the drive, we also found the manual in electronic format, together with some links pointing to the online resources:
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Blank SSD
Before moving to the second part of our testing, we needed to fill up the drive over 50% of its total capacity. The drive started writing at optimal speeds:
The speed dropped a bit just about 640MB/s after writing around 227GB:
Till the end of our continuous transfer test (over 1.1TB of data transferred), the speed hovered between 600 and 650MB/s, with short drops to about 450MB/s:
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
Filled SSD
For an USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps drive, the Crucial X9 Pro 2TB performs great, also thanks to the included Micron B47R 176L TLC NAND, which is able to keep high write rates even when working with very large files. The aluminum chassis helps with cooling, avoiding throttling, but also gives out a professional look.
The HDD Tune Pro write workload does show how stable the write speed can be when working with very large files:
The X9 Pro 2TB is available online for about 118 Euros and can be considered a successful replacement for regular disk drives, which are prone to failure when encountering shocks but also exhibit lower performances compared to the drive from Crucial.
We would like to thank again to Crucial for making this review possible!
