General

Brand	Micron
Model	M550
Capacity	512GB
Usage Class	Client

Interface

Host Interface	SATA 6Gb/s
Total Interface Bandwidth	6 Gb/s

Physical Dimension

Form Factor	2.5" 7mm

Flash & Endurance

NAND Flash	20nm MLC
Drive Writes Per Day
Total Bytes Written	72 TBW

Performance

Sequential Read	550 MB/s
Sequential Write	500 MB/s
Random Read IOPS	95000
Random Write IOPS	80000
Average Latency	μs

Reliability

Mean Time Between Failures	1.5 Million Hours
Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate	1.0×10⁻¹⁷
Power Loss Protection	Yes

Engineer's Note

The Micron M550 512GB (MTFDDAK512MAY) delivers a rare combination in its SATA class: 20nm MLC endurance with 550/500 MB/s sequential performance and up to 95K/80K IOPS, giving it a clear advantage over typical TLC-based peer drives in sustained mixed-read/write consistency and write durability. It is best suited for read-intensive virtualization boot pools, database log acceleration, and high-duty workstation scratch storage where 72 TBW and enterprise-like latency stability matter more than peak capacity per dollar.

Endurance & Reliability

With an endurance rating of 72 TBW, the MTFDDAK512MAY can sustain about 20 GB of host writes per day for 10 years, which is comfortably aligned with typical OS, boot, and general office workloads. In practical procurement terms, this means the drive is well suited as a system disk or light-duty application drive where daily write volume is moderate and long service life is expected. Its power-loss protection helps preserve in-flight data and metadata during sudden power interruptions, reducing the risk of corruption and improving recovery confidence in real-world enterprise environments. An UBER of 1.0E-15, together with a 1.5 million hour MTBF, indicates a low likelihood of uncorrectable bit errors and strong overall reliability for business-critical deployments.

Technical Specs & Insights

1. The SATA 6Gb/s interface ensures broad drop-in compatibility with mainstream enterprise servers and storage arrays, enabling cost-efficient upgrades without changing the platform architecture.
2. The 550 MB/s sequential read speed accelerates OS boot, VM image loading, and large-file access, helping reduce wait time in read-heavy business workloads.
3. The 95,000 K IOPS random read capability sustains responsive performance for OLTP databases, VDI environments, and metadata-intensive applications under high concurrency.
4. With [dwpd] DWPD backed by 20nm MLC NAND, the drive is built for predictable endurance in write-intensive enterprise deployments where service life and data integrity matter.
5. The typical latency of [latency] µs helps deliver faster transaction response and more consistent QoS, which is critical for latency-sensitive production systems.

Capacity Sweet

Within the same Micron enterprise SSD family, the nearest lower capacity reference is 256GB, while the next higher capacity is 1TB. The 512GB model sits at the sweet spot of the lineup: compared with 256GB, it offers much better headroom for OS growth, logs, patches, and application data, reducing capacity pressure in steady-state enterprise use. Compared with 1TB, it delivers a more attractive cost-per-deployment while maintaining essentially the same enterprise-class sequential and random performance profile. It is especially well suited for mid-scale virtualization clusters, such as hosting boot and utility volumes for about 40 to 60 virtual machines.

FAQ