Crucial X10 review

You see that front-panel USB-C port on the fancy Fractal Design Terra Mini-ITX case? That’s a USB 3.2 x2, and if you plug it into a standard USB 3 header on a motherboard the system chucks an error and won’t boot. That’s my experience, anyway.

So it was with some trepidation that I picked up the Crucial X10, wondering if I would be able to squeeze every last delicious drop of bandwidth out of its exotic USB connection. USB 3.2 x2 (20 Gbps) seems like a slightly odd choice in a world where phones have 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Type-C connectors and PCs have 40 Gbps USB4 ports on them, as well as the multi-lane data highways that are the modern flavours of Thunderbolt. It’s faster, sure, but many PCs aren’t going to be able to make the best use of it, and real speed freaks are going to be looking at USB4 or Thunderbolt drives to force multiple gigabytes through the wires in mere seconds.

Happily, USB 3.2 x2 is part of the USB4 spec. Unhappily, it’s only an optional one. So if your USB4 vendor has decided not to flick the switch or connect the wire or perform the ritual or whatever it takes to turn it on, you’re out of luck. I found that USB4 on an Asus ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi was capable of running the X10 at something approaching its maximum speed, and Thunderbolt 4 from a gaming laptop was a little bit faster still.

It’s not exactly an expensive drive compared to the dedicated USB4 and Thunderbolt options, such as the chunky SanDisk Extreme Pro USB4 or the beast-like LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt 5 drive, but if your USB-C ports top out at 10 Gbps then you’re not going to get any additional benefit from the X10 over something like the Crucial X9 or Seagate Ultra Compact.

So IF you can make the best of it and IF you want to spend a little bit more than a 10 Gbps SSD, the X10 can make a lot of sense. It runs twice as fast as the standard USB 3.2 drives, and if you’re transferring a lot of data—such as, picking an example at random out of thin air, backing up hundreds of gigs of game downloads from a device with a paltry internal SSD—you’ll see the lovely Windows file copy window disappear much faster.

It’s not going to give you any benefits if you’re downloading straight to it, as even 10 Gbps outstrips average internet connections by a long way. Moving large folders to and from other fast drives is its forte, and with up to 8 TB of storage available, you’ll be able to fit a lot of games on it. Don’t expect miracles, however. Its maximum speed is still slower than a PCIe 3.0 internal SSD. Its only benefits come in comparison to other portable drives.

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Crucial has seen no reason to change the design it settled on for the X9 SSD, only changing the colour for the X10. The X10 is blue, and only blue, though there's an X10 Pro model that comes in black and comes with a metal casing rather than a plastic one. This makes it a bit heavier, though not by a large amount. And a bit more expensive too, though not by a large amount. You might want the metal drive if you’re taking it up mountains or across deserts as part of a wildlife documentary crew, but for most indoor uses the plastic one will be fine. It’s IP55 ingress resistant and will take a 2-metre drop, though it’s important to note that this is onto carpet, and harder floors may do some actual damage.

There's a single USB-C port on the edge of the drive, and no activity LED to tip you off when it’s transferring so you don’t unplug it at the wrong moment. This would have been nice to have. A short USB-C to C cable is included in the box, and it’s good enough for top speeds. You’ll only need to replace it if you need something longer or Thunderboltier. There's also a lanyard loop in the top corner, so you can wear it as jewellery.

Unable to find an actual working USB 3.2 x2 port to plug the drive into, despite having two desktop PCs and five laptops in my garden shed, I tried connecting it to different USB-C ports to see what sort of speeds I could get out of it, and was pleasantly surprised. Pop it on a 10 Gbps port and you’ll get 10 Gbps out of it—1069.3 MB/s read and 1037.7 MB/s write in my tests. USB4 provided 1900.81 MB/s read and 2002.70 MB/s write, while Thunderbolt 4 came out on top with 2003.8 MB/s read and 1933.3 MB/s write. It goes to show what a shambles USB-C implementation has become when identical ports with no identifying marks apart from a lightning bolt symbol (if you’re lucky) can provide such disparate results, but I guess it just means you need to know your hardware and spend hours poring over specs and reviews before you buy.

What all these numbers mean is that a 30 GB file copied over USB4 takes about 25 seconds to transfer, and Windows barely even bothers bringing up the file copy box for a 2 GB MP4 movie. Large folders of mixed documents copy more slowly than single-file behemoths, so you’ll likely get lower speeds from game folders than if you’re moving backup ISOs or 4K footage from a camera.

So it’s a nippy little drive that’s also nicely priced, undercutting the Samsung T9 though beaten by the Teamgroup PD20 Mini. It sits in the middle between the cheaper USB 3.2 drives on one hand and USB4 SSDs on the other without demanding the kind of money that makes you decide you can live with a 10 Gbps connection rather than hand over the excess. It’s small, light and available with up to 8 TB of storage—though you’ll pay a lot for that capacity. As a fast game backup solution, it makes a lot of sense, but you’ll need to be sure you have the hardware to use it at its best.