Question 1

Will this drive work correctly plugged into a PCIe Gen3 x8 slot (instead of a x4 slot / does it matter if the slot is wider than required)?

Accepted Answer

I have this plugged into a 4x slot when I really wanted to plug it into a 16x slot, but that's where my graphics card is so I can't. I'm on a 2010 Mac but if you're on a PC as I understand it, the slot can be bigger and this card will work but you only get the speed of whatever your PCIe Gen3 slot can handle. Works great for me, I'm getting 1442MB write speed. -I love WD Black and also love HGST (Same company) At $200 bucks go for it , and NewEgg has also been a favorite company I trust.

Question 2

Can this M.2 drive be used as an external drive? (My intended purpose: for audio virtual instrument sample library). If so, does it pair nicely with any standard USB 3.1 or TB3 external drive enclosure?

Accepted Answer

First you must realize there is a big difference between "M.2 NVMe PCI Express" and "M.2 SATA" interface technologies. Although they both appear to be similar in size... the notches aren't the same and they aren't always necessarily interchangeable. Most of the newer motherboard M.2 sockets will accept ether one and will auto select which interface to use as given by the position of the notch.... i.e. SATA or NVMe PCIE interface. SATA III is capable of ~550/520MB/s sequential read and sequential write speed rates respectively. On the slow side as compared to NVMe PCIE's ~3400MB/s (very fast!)
Most of the external dongle devices I have seen will only support M.2 SATA memory sticks (NOT M.2 NVMe PCIE. )  SATA ONLY!!!! Whatever external dongle device you use... IT MUST SPECIFICALLY SUPPORT the M.2 NVMe PCIE memory stick interface technology!!!

Question 3

Work with X470 boards yet?

Accepted Answer

It should work with any mb that has a m.2 interface. By the way, this WD Black is as fast as my Intel Optane 480 GB AIC on x299 I7 7820.
CrystalMark 3550/2860. Absolutely rocks!!

Question 4

Still using TLC?

Accepted Answer

My guess is yes. The trend seems to be making drives that have a small SLC cache, and the main storage is TLC. This increases the lifespan of the drive to almost as long as MLC.  They're speedy fast, until you try to transfer anything larger than the cache.

Question 5

I upgraded to a larger capacity PCI-E SSD.  Does anyone know of an external USB C case so I can use the old 256gb SSD as portable storage?

Accepted Answer

Hey there, there are so many external enclosure for nvme ssd... Just type in the search bar of newegg site:USB3.1 C Type to M.2 SSD Enclosure, and you will see.... You can choose in the result that apppear.

Question 6

Does this come with cloning software? (outside OS)

Accepted Answer

Theoretically it does, but I was unable to find it on the WD website.  Instead, I downloaded the free version of Macrium Reflect to do the cloning.  It worked perfectly.  There is a good video on YouTube that explains how to do the cloning.  Search for "(:HowTo:) Hard Drive to Solid State Drive (HDD-2-SSD) Step-By-Step Cloning w/Macrium Reflect" published by GadgetClass.    Also, I downloaded the Western Digital SSD Dashboard, which shows runtime statistics for the SSD.  Finally, I downloaded CrystalDiskMark, which is a free disk benchmark tool.

Questions & Answers