Crucial takes its excellent M4 SSD
technology and offers it for ultrabooks
Details
Price: $260
Manufacturer: Crucial
Website: www.crucial.com/uk
Required spec: system that takes mSATA
drives or mSATA converter to SATA connections.
Part number: CT256M4SSD3
Crucial
M4 mSATA 6Gbps SSD 256GB
Specification:
Capacity (Unformatted): 256GB
Memory Type: Micron MLC NAND flash memory
Form Factor: mSATA
Interface: SATA 6Gbps (SATA Ill)
Controller: Marvell with Micron custom
firmware
Sequential Read: 500MB/s
Sequential Write: 260MB/s
4KB Random Read: 45,000 lOPS
4KB Random Write: 50,000 lOPS
MTBF: 1.2 million hours
Endurance: 72TB total bytes written (TBW),
equal to 40GB per day for five years
Compliance: RoHS, CE, FCC, UL, BSMI,
C-TICK, KCC RRL, W.E.E.E., TUV, VCCI, IC
If you hadn’t noticed, we’re I
transitioning from the hard disk era to the solid-state one, and products like
this new mSATA version of Crucial’s M4 series SSD just underlines that in
brightly coloured marker pen.
At a touch north of US$255, that might seem
expensive for just 256GB of storage, but irrespective of what you spend on a
physical hard drive, it won’t perform like this, I can assure you.
Crucial quotes a whopping 500MB/s read
speed and 260MB/s writing, which is stunningly rapid for an object, which in
this case is about the size of a large postage stamp. This well demonstrates
that the typical 2.5” SSD box is mostly filled with air, because the memory and
board is remarkably compact.
This product also addresses the big concern
that many people have about the life expectancy of flash memory when used for
these devices. Crucial claims that it is capable of having at least 72TB of
data written through it before failure which it’s calculated represents about
15% of the entire capacity being written every day for five years. If accurate,
most people would have moved on to a new computer and a bigger SSD before this
one packs in, and more frugal use could see it survive for decades.
This has always been a limitation of flash
memory but statistically I’m not convinced that conventional hard drives live
any longer, and some expire in much less time than five years.
Under testing, I found that under HD Tune
Pro, read speed of 490MB/s and writing speed of about 188MB/s was typical, when
on Crystal Disk Mark 509MB/s reading and 191 MB/s writing were possible. That’s
slightly less speed than Crucial claims, but I was using a mSATA to SATA
converter on a desktop PC, so conditions weren’t ideal.
The only drawback to this device I can find
is that it uses mSATA, not to be confused with micro-SATA. mSATA is actually
mini-SATA, so you’ll need a special adapter to convert it to normal SATA 6Gbps
connections to use on a PC. That’s extra cost, and you need to find a
compatible design, because due to differences in implementation, there are two
different mSATA standards going around, one by Intel and another by Asus.
Asus incidentally has some motherboards
that you can plug this drive directly into, avoiding the cables and conversion
deal altogether. Those with an ultrabook with mSATA should be able to plug it
in and go, once they’ve installed the OS.
If you can afford an ultrabook, you should
get one of these too.
