Crucial X9 Pro 2TB Performance
For this, we wanted to run through our standard benchmarks.
CrystalDiskMark Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark is used as a basic starting point for benchmarks as it is something commonly run by end-users as a sanity check. We use both 1GB and 8GB test sizes.
Here is the 8GB test size.
We tend to see the 10Gbps drives top out around 1GB/s of transfer rates which is sufficient for most use cases.
Compared to the Samsung T7 Shield, which is in a similar class to this drive, almost all of these figures are considerably higher, except for the sequential write and the higher queue depth 4K write results.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark has been a staple of drive sequential performance testing for years. ATTO was tested at both 256MB and 8GB file sizes.
Here are the 8GB results:
Here is the side-by-side:
Rated at up to 1050MB/s read and write, the read speeds are a bit higher than the writes but these are decent numbers.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a comprehensive benchmark that gives us a very in-depth look at the performance of the drives tested. This benchmark was run with both a 1GB and 8GB test size.
Here is the 8GB result:
Anvil’s shows us similar results. Something notable is that the drive tends to perform relatively similarly at the smaller and larger transfer sizes.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD Benchmark is another good benchmark for testing SSDs. We run all three tests for our series. Like other utilities, it was run with both the default 1GB as well as a larger 10GB test set.
Here is the 10GB result:
Here is the side-by-side:
Here the X9 Pro tends to do better on the 4K side than the T7 Shield, but on the sequential side they are relatively close with the Samsung doing a bit better.
BlackMagic Disk Speed Test
BlackMagic Disk Speed Test is focused on testing storage for use in video workflows.
Here we can see the 8K and 12K DCI 60fps ProRes 422 HQ get the red X meaning that this drive is not fast enough for those formats. One difference is that the Samsung T7 Shield failed the 8K DCI 60 ProRes 422 HQ Read speed got a red X while the Crucial X9 Pro gets a green check.
Final Words
Just given how much smaller the Crucial drives are than the Samsung drives like the T7 Shield, you might assume that this is much slower. Realistically, for an external USB drive, it is very competitive especially at the lower queue depth 4K results for running applications from the drive. At the same time, there is a big gap between this and the X10 Pro.
At STH, we have bought many Samsung T7 and T7 Shield drives for moving footage around. After testing these drives, we probably should have been buying more of these Crucial X9 Pro SSDs. That is exactly why we are doing this series.
Where to Buy
We purchased our unit on Amazon. If you want to get a Crucial X9 Pro 2TB, here is the Amazon Affiliate Link.
