While the Seagate Game Drive is optimized for a PS5, it’s no slouch as a regular SSD either. In our speed tests it did remarkably well, earning the spot as the second-fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD with random ops that we’ve ever tested. Seagate also provides a generous five-year warranty with the drive and it has an astounding 1,275TBW rating—more than double the industry norm. The drive is a bit pricey, but the special optimizations for PS5 means that console owners can rest easy knowing that their money is going to good use with the Seagate Game Drive. Typical I/O performance as measured using CrystalDiskMark® with default settings for NVMe SSDs and write cache enabled. Windows 11 Core isolation disabled for performance measurement. Fresh out-of-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results. SSDs cost more per gigabyte than mechanical hard drives, though, and thus aren’t often available in ultra-high capacities. If you want speed and storage space, you can buy an SSD with limited space and use it as your boot drive, then set up a traditional hard drive as secondary storage in your PC. Place your programs on your boot drive, stash your media and other files on the hard drive, and you’re ready to have your cake and eat it too. How we test SSDs Calculated by comparing P5 Plus’s sequential reads of 6600MB/s to the previous generation’s (P5) speed of 3400MB/s, or to the SATA’s (BX500) speed of 540MB/s. SATA: This refers to both the connection type and the transfer protocol, which is used to connect most 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drives and SSDs to your PC. SATA III speeds can hit roughly 600MBps, and most—but not all—modern drives max it out. (More on that in the next section.)

We test SSDs using a variety of synthetic benchmarks (such as CrystalDiskMark 6’s various tests) and real-world tests, including 48GB transfers that showcase how a drive performs in common tasks, and a grueling 450GB transfer test that pushes an SSD’s cache performance to the brink.Some of the storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. The Seagate Game Drive PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD was made specifically for next-gen consoles—the PS5 in particular. And it doesn’t disappoint. Instead of HMB, it features DRAM for primary caching duties, which is practically essential for Sony’s console system. This is important because the PS5 doesn’t support HMB, so a drive such as this with DRAM cache is a must. The drive comes in 1TB and 2TB models, which means you’ll have plenty of space to store all of your games should you need it. Comparative speed claims measured against maximum reported speeds from mainstream portable HDD manufacturers. Your performance may vary. 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. MB/s speed measured by Crucial as maximum sequential performance of device on a high-performance desktop computer with Crystal Disk Mark (version 8.0.4 for x64). Your performance may vary

Typical I/O performance numbers as measured using CrystalDiskMark® with a queue depth of128 and write cache enabled. Fresh out-of-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results. When installed in a Gen3 system, typical read/write speeds are 3300/2700MB/s. Typical I/O performance as measured using CrystalDiskMark® with a queue depth of 512 and write cache enabled. Windows 11 Core isolation disabled for performance measurement. Fresh out-of-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results. Under typical conditions for airflow and ambient temperature, our pre-installed premium heatsink allows the T700 Gen5 SSD to run at max workload without the need to thermal throttle. Please ensure your drive has proper airflow for maximum performance. Non-heatsink versions of the Crucial T700 must be installed with a motherboard or alternate heatsink to achieve optimal performance. JP” is attached at the end of the parts number of official Japanese distributed products shipped after April 2017.

Crucial NVMe Awards:

U.2 and mSATA: You may also stumble across mSATA and U.2 SSDs, but both motherboard support and product availability are rare for those formats. Some older Ultrabooks included mSATA before M.2 became popular, and drives are still available if you need them. Based on internal gaming performance results measured with 3DMark® Storage Benchmark SSD performance test for gamers. Actual results may vary. Calculated by comparing T500’s sequential reads of 7,400MB/s to the previous generation’s (P5 Plus) speeds of 6,600MB/s, or to the SATA’s (MX500) speed of 560MB/s. Actual performance may vary.

Speed matters, of course, but as we said most modern SSDs saturate the SATA III interface. Not all of them, though. SSDs vs. hard drivesThe PCIe 3 tests utilized Windows 10 64-bit running on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99 Deluxe system with four 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (Nvidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 card. It also contains a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card, and Softperfect Ramdisk 3.4.6 for the 48GB read and write tests.