Don’t stop me now! This storage solution will keep your creativity flowing

As photographers, we need great computer storage solutions to help us stay on top of the mountains of data we collect in the form of images and video every day. We need something that delivers big capacity for a small price, and with performance to boot.

Finding a storage device that gets this balance right isn’t always easy. But we reckon we just did!

The WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD from Western Digital is an internal solid-state drive that gives your computer up to 2TB* of superfast, cost effective storage. It’s perfect for digital creators of all kinds, including us photographers.

What makes the SN550 so great for digital creators? And what’s so special about NVMe SSD devices in the first place? To answer that, we need to look a few years back in time.

Storage performance crash course
Many SSDs use the SATA interface to transfer data around your computer. The SATA interface was originally made for mechanical hard drives, whose read and write speeds would often hover around 200 megabytes per second.

SATA SSDs can theoretically read and write data much faster, but even the best of these drives tops out at around 600MB/s because of the SATA interface.

Enter Non-Volatile Memory Express, better known as NVMe! NVMe solid-state drives hook into your computer through a faster connection: the PCI Express (PCIe). A single PCIe lane can move nearly 1GB of data per second, and NVMe drives can use multiple PCIe lanes at once.

Create, faster
This brings us back to the WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD and why it’s so great for digital creators: It’s really fast!

With sequential read speeds of up to 2600MB/s*, the SN550 will help streamline your workflow and improve your productivity no matter what you’re doing or creating.

And, if your operating system runs from this drive, you should see a significant improvement in computer start-up time and spend less time waiting for programs to load.

Create, longer
When you’re on a laptop, you want to maximize the amount of work you can get through on one battery charge.

The WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD is designed with a Western Digital-designed controller and firmware paired with their latest 3D NAND for optimized, consistent performance.

Drawing just a few milliwatts in sleep mode and with maximum operating power at 3.5W to 3.9W depending on storage capacity, you can continue creating, for longer.**

Create, more
Storage capacity is another important consideration. We recommend at least 500GB of storage to run your operating system and install all the software you need.

If you’re planning to store and work with lots of images or video, you will want a lot more space. Think terabytes!

The SN550 has you covered with four capacity options: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and a recently launched 2TB drive.

The best thing is that all of this storage and performance will not put a huge dent in your wallet. With a suggested retail price of US$50 for the 250GB option, up to $225 for the supersized 2TB version, Western Digital has something for every budget.

It’s all about balance
We think you really can’t go wrong with the WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD. It strikes a great balance between performance, capacity and cost, making it a great solution for creators who need a quick and cost-effective way to boost their computer performance.

Whether creating digital art, using CAD software or in post-production, this SSD delivers over four times the speed of Western Digital’s fastest SATA drives, allowing you to do and create more, faster.

 

* 1TB=one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less, depending on operating environment. For transfer speeds, 1MB/s=one million bytes per second; based on write speed. Performance will vary.

** Measured using the MobileMark 2014 on ASUS B9440UA WITH I5-7200U, 8GB RAM. Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 19H1 using Microsoft StorNVMe driver, Primary drive.

This sponsored article was brought to you by Western Digital.

X