Crucial X8 4TB Portable SSD – Up to 1050MB/s – PC and Mac
Crucial X8 4TB Portable SSD – Up to 1050MB/s – PC and Mac – USB 3.2 External Solid State Drive – CT4000X8SSD9
- Some of the storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes.
- Compatibility may vary and may be contingent on device formatting and host capabilities.
- Compatible Android devices must be able to work with USB Mass Storage over OTG. Operating system updates and reformatting may be required.
- iPadOS 13 required for the Crucial X8 to work with iPad devices with USB-C port.
| Weight: | 95.2 g |
| Dimensions: | 11 x 1.15 x 5.3 cm; 95.25 Grams |
| Brand: | Crucial |
| Model: | CT4000X8SSD9 |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Dimensions: | 11 x 1.15 x 5.3 cm; 95.25 Grams |
Happy with it, great speeds. Recommended A+
Great product, very small size and great capacity for the money on a Prime day. Ideal as a memory backup for my laptop as goes easily into my fireproof safe. Recommend i
Crucial are a good well know make and this SSD represents very good value for money.
Needed an external drive so I can transfer and work on my projects on both my computers. This fits the job, it is lightweight and has all the storage I need. Easy to set up, just plug in and format to Mac OS as it is default to exfat. Transfer speed seems ok
Needed to backup loads of old photos from a small usb, was concerned the usb would fail so purchased this hard drive. Was the best value for money at the time of purchase and wow its so fast! Putting files onto it was a breeze compared to the old usb flash drive storage i was using before.
I’ve been using the drive for a couple of months. It definitely does have the characteristics stated in the I’m depth reviews…it can run out of steam when doing large data writes. I had read the reviews so got what I expected, make sure this is the drive for you though….4TB for 150 was about right when I bought this
This has really been useful. I got this at the reduced price on Prime Day. But even at the full price its worth it. Super fast transfer speeds, ultra compact and comes with a good quality usb c cable. No compatibility issues with M2 Macbook Pro. Able to upload large files almost instantly.
Took me a while to get it to run at full speed, but once i had the right cable setup it absolutely performs.
The minor issues with the cable that came with it were maybe my pc’s usb/usb c slots, but with adapters and trying things it worked fine and as fast as its supposed to.
It “does what is says on the packet” and I hope it will continue to do so for a good while as it is a well-respected brand supplier. Feels sturdy with its metal case.
I am OK with tech but this was so simple to use, I think anyone who charges/uses a phone could work out what to do with it easily.
I used it to free up space both on my Windows laptop and on my Samsung S10 phone and it is a game-changer! Both were screaming notifications at me to say I was low on storage, but this tiny little hand sized gadget has meant I’ve got much more room on both devices AND with 1TB space, there is still PLENTY of storage available on the external hard drive. Very happy!
I bought a couple of these to go with my laptops, which only have 500gb hard drives and I am very impressed with the Critical X8. The feel well made and put together. They work well with my computer and are easily stored away and carried around.
C.o.d modern warfare 2019(campaign 4k/60 locked), Last of us part 2,
God of war1, Horizon1, Far cry 5,
Days gone, Shadow of the tomb raider,
Ratchet & clank 2016 4k/60, Infamous second son & first light run locked 60fps go into settings, Ni no kuni 2 dynamic 4k locked 60fps go into settings
Very well made external SSD made by a big name in memory products. Remarkable 2TB storage in a small and light casing with easy connection to laptop or PC with a short USB C to USB C cable provided. Excellent price at the time of purchase.
Brilliant little drive that is excellent value for money. Much much lighter than a conventional 4tb (or 5tb) 2.5″ drive, and sooooo much faster, obviously. I’m not into speed tests, just a normal user enjoying movies transferring to the drive in seconds rather than minutes. At around 200 great value for a fast external SSD.
They’re great, speeds as advertise, able to edit 4k 10bit footage on them (gh6, m1 macbook) on Premier with no issues…..
BUUUUUUUT.
It gets hot, hotter than any other ssd…..not sure if that will be a issue in the longer term…
(but I’ve had the 2tb version for about a year…. And it works great…. Other than getting hot)
This came up on Prime Day for around 77. It has USB C/Thunderbolt connection, ideal for my Mac which is much faster than the normal USB 3 connection. I don’t really need a fast connection for a backup disk but at this price it’s a bonus. For the same sort of money I could have bought a no-name Chinese NVMe drive with an equally anonymous enclosure with an USB 3 connector, instead I opted for an external drive made by a well-known manufacturer with a 3 year warranty. Bit of a bargain, if you ask me 🙂
Not sure what you have to do to get thge claimed speeds, I didn’t get anywhere nesr that, but it was plenty fast enough. You also get access to the crucial clone software which I found very effective. I was returning a machine for a screen repair, so cloned the PC internal drive to the crucial drive, then after plugging it into my other PC’s USB 3 port, was able to run from the crucual drive as the main drive for a week while my PC was repaired. The whole process was seamless and was a lot quicker (to clone) than I was expecting.
Recommended!
At the start I was only storing there games that do not require the fast internal Xbox SSD. I still use it for that and it is fast.
But as you xan see it can also he used to transfer massive games at about 2Gbps so now I also store X|S games there, it only takes a few minutes to copy 100GB of data so I typically have a lot of games downloaded and ready to go in a tiny fraction of the time it would take to download them.
It is rugged, doesn’t need disconnecting when not in use, plug and forget. Very happy with the purchase.
So far, it’s been reliable, dependable and if portability is your primary concern [which it was for me], look no further. I’ve been using this for almost a month now and I’ve not had any issues with it. Also, the supplied USB-C to USB-C cable is pretty good too! I wish my other external HD’s were also USB-C!
I liked the idea of 1 cable with old style usb adapter (1 less cable in a house full of them). When using the adapter on old MacBook, the connection drops if I move and drive ejects. I mostly use laptop on lap, so this is annoying. And inevitable that something I have open will go screwy. So I guess I’ll test some more cables ……
This drive is made from metal and feels very sturdy. The drive is also very fast giving file transfer rates of 1Gbyte/second when plugged into USB-C or USB3 ports. In fact, it is probably faster than the internal hard drive on my PCs and laptops. Ideal for running VMs from if you need to develop using multiple operating system like I do. And excellent value for money too.
The drive itself is amazing. I don’t know why I have to replug it sometimes. Sometimes it does not read as connected. But overall it’s great and best compared to price.
Very easy to use and I’m not a techno person so was worried about setting it up. No problems at all
Well impressed with both the quality & the price. Brought this to use with my Xbox Series X & was literally plug & play and ultra fast when transfering games.
Very prompt delivery, does what it says on the tin. First buy from Crucial, impressed!
On a 2019 MacBook Pro used as a Time Machine backup it took 40 minutes to backup 334GB, however the Crucial XB portable SSD began to struggle after 280GB which it took only 20 mins to copy over, yet a further 20 minutes elapsed to transfer the remaining 54 GB of data.
As I don’t transfer this amount of data that regularly I’m not overly concerned and my usual backups are around 15-20GB which I expect it will backup quite speedily. It didn’t get hot, or even warm and overall I’m pleased with its performance, especially at the price point.
The external ssd , is probably the fastest I have used. It has a slim compact housing which is good for use.
It responds in an instant.
Not had it long but it seems excelle
Small, quick and great value. It’s the second Crucial SSD I’ve purchased.
Not really given i a full run out yet but feels sturdy and reacts quickly to my laptop. I needed a big capacity SDD as the internal SSD was filling very quickly. Delivered before estimated date.
The read & write speeds are a little below advertised speeds? when backing up a large 260GB audio library files mostly CAF, FLAC and AIFF all uncompressed large audio files, this was all in one go with the supplied short USB 3.2 lead.
I went to make a cup of tea while it was downloading the large backup, came back 5mins later and the file backup of 260gb was finished! and the Crucial X8 2TB was cool to the touch.
Now after some of the reviews here i was a bit apprehensive that it would take a long time.
However only 5 mins to write 260GB of large audio files, this for me well I’m very impressed, surprisingly fast.
Crucial X8 2TB USB 3.2 drive – the 1050MB/s, is ‘read’ speed only /the write speed, with the larger internal SSD cache (the 2TB) is not far behind
I’m using this as a storage device for my raw and jpeg photos.
It is connected to my iMac via a usb c port.
Not as fast as advertised but they never are, I can get 900 MB/s up and down which is still more than good enough for me.
So far very happy with the purchase
My setup is a M1 MacBook Air with the drive connected to a USB C/Thunderbolt port.
I measured the performance as roughly twice that of my SATA SSD. Real world performance was harder to judge, but I did find that it slowed down considerably when transfering files off my old drive to it – probably a write cache limitation, and a common problem in sustained writes with all types of SSD.
It is a small, smart and durable looking design. It also never got hot under sustained load. My only grumble would be the very short USB cable. You do get a converter that allows you to plug into USB A socket. Just be careful on the data specification of any USB socket you plug into – performance could be impacted and result in well below advertised.
If you can bag this 2TB version for less than 120, I would certainly recommend.
Either way this is an excellent purchase and then product looks great, feels great and I have 2tb of reliable, fast storage. The lead is also thick and strong and comes with a USB C to A adapter. Although it is short, which for the most is a good thing.
Let me just say I have 4 internal SSDs and an NVMe but due to USB limitation I knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near that speed…. But I’m connected through USB C and I’m getting 35mb/s on small files, 45mb/s on larger files.
That’s kinda shockingly bad to the point I assumed something wasn’t functioning correctly so I checked for firmware updates but it’s up to date and I tried using the adapter and using a 3.1 USB port instead but I got even worse speeds at 24mb/s. Not sure what the problem is but it seems something isn’t right.
The reason for the high rating is I’m pretty sure it’s likely something on my end and the drive is well made with a decent weight to it.
I’m going to check with Crucial tomorrow for any solution and make sure this is actually a legit product because hard drives seem to be a hotbed for fakery on amazon but going by build quality alone it feels legit.
I’d like to start by explaining some details of how SSDs work, the best ones (Most expensive ones!) have SLC (Single level Cells) then the next best have DLC (Dual Level Cells), then TLC (Three Level cells) and then there’s QLC (Quad level Cells). SLC drives tend to have a very limited capacity (in the Gigabytes not Terrabytes).
SLC are fastest and most stable. But as you can store less data on them, they cost significantly more. QLC are not very fast at all. Top level SLC based SSDs will have some normal RAM to act as a cache for the data before it gets written to the SLC.
The X8 is QLC based, and has no RAM to act as a cache. It therefore does a little trick where the controller software, will designate some of the QLC storage area as Pseudo SLC, (Caching data in the same was a RAM would) this will give greater speeds until this Cache gets filled up with data waiting for it to be written to the slow QLC. This is why some reviewers mention the drive slowing down so much when copying large amounts of data. (So go for the 2TB drive if you can as it has more cells to use as cache and is less likely to fill up with data, (if it gets full, then it cant do its trick with pseudo cache!).
As for many reports of heat, All flash memory get hot, its a consequence of the memory cells being “Flipped” from off to on or vice versa. Obviously the X8 doesn’t have a fan, instead it uses the case as a heat sink. To aid with this, make sure the X8 is well ventilated if you plan on using it heavily.
So with all that explained, lets move on to my review.
I bought this to use with my M1 Mac mini, now if you have an M1 and aren’t getting the quoted transfer speeds, try connecting the X8 to a Hub or Dock (Thunderbolt 3 or USB 4 would be best) and you should see an increase in speeds. I’m not sure why this happens, but it does.
I use the X8 to store my photo library on and it does a good job, its not as fast as the internal SSD, (But compare the price of a 2TB X8 with a 2TB SSD on a Mac). It is able to use the pseudo cache and gives good speeds.
Basically its a lot of bang for the buck. Its not the fastest drive if you are planning on copying a lot of data. but it works well within the limitations above. Its been totally reliable and its a very portable, very handsome little device.
I recommend it.