How's the Crucial MX100?

[Techhog]

So, cheapest SSD I've seen. I'm just wondering if I'm paying the price difference in quality if I buy it. Are the quality and performance up-to-snuff, or is it better to save up a bit more? I'm looking at the 256GB version.

 

[Elixer]

Just released, so nobody really knows anything about the 'quality'.

 

[Techhog]

Just released, so nobody really knows anything about the 'quality'.

Good point. :/

 

[Freddy1765]

Read the AT review, as I recall is was very positive.
Also keep in mind that for regular users, heterogeneity between SSDs is, when it comes to real-world usage, minuscule at best . No one will be able to identify the SSD in their case based on boot-time or file transfer speed..
If I were buying an SSD today, it would probably be the MX100, given its price.

 

[rstove02]

Noticed a very minor performance bump coming from an Intel 160GB 320 model to the mx100 512GB. Just for giggles I reran the Windows Experience Index "benchmark" and went from 7.6 to 7.9. Think what performance difference I noticed came from the SATA III and the better transfer rates from the larger SSD size. My main reason for the purchase was for the larger storage size of a decent quality/performance SSD for a sub $0.50/GB price.

 

[Charlie98]

Noticed a very minor performance bump coming from an Intel 160GB 320 model to the mx100 512GB. Just for giggles I reran the Windows Experience Index "benchmark" and went from 7.6 to 7.9. Think what performance difference I noticed came from the SATA III and the better transfer rates from the larger SSD size. My main reason for the purchase was for the larger storage size of a decent quality/performance SSD for a sub $0.50/GB price.

Yaa. I bought a 120GB M500 last month and was pretty disappointed in the benchmarks vs my 256GB SSDs. There is a very real difference in performance benchmarks between the 120'ish vs 256'ish SSDs. In the real world it would probably result, as you say, in minor differences, but I'll be going with larger SSDs going forward.

 

[Revolution 11]

If I understand this correctly, as SSD manufacturers move to 256Gbit dies, the amount of parallelism halves again so 256GB SSDs will have a similar performance hit that 128GB SSDs are facing right now and that 64GB SSDs faced a few generations ago.

It is not that simple but basically, having 8 dies per SSD gives a noticeable (in benchmarks) performance hit where as 16 dies or more is better optimized for the controllers being widely used.

You will want to get bigger and bigger SSDs just to avoid performance penalties as the die size keeps increasing. I wonder if PCI-E SSDs with NVME support will change this trend.

 

[Techhog]

Hm... On one hand, saving that money means I can buy a bigger back-up drive. (My important documents are cloud-saved and USB-stick saved before you ask.) On the other hand, I'm pretty afraid of this drive failing after a year or two when I could have bought a more expensive drive with more proven quality. But having that extra back-up space would make a drive failure less of an issue and makes it a little easier to migrate to the drive. It's a tough choice. :/

 

[Revolution 11]

Crucial SSDs are top-notch* for consumer drives, they don't have problems with firmware or controller issues, and they control and produce their own NAND (through Micron).

The only companies that make better consumer drives from a total production chain point-of-view could be Intel and Samsung (companies who control both their own NAND and controller process).

If you are going to buy a SSD soon, Crucial MX100 is a great option for your wallet. And reliability is not compromised for this drive, performance is, according to Anandtech. The opposite is true of Samsung's 840 Evo.

*Every storage option can fail, whether its tape, hard drives, floppy disks, or SSDs. If you backup your important data regularly, any SSD will be alright. Crucial is one of the better companies.

 

[Techhog]

Crucial SSDs are top-notch* for consumer drives, they don't have problems with firmware or controller issues, and they control and produce their own NAND (through Micron).

The only companies that make better consumer drives from a total production chain point-of-view could be Intel and Samsung (companies who control both their own NAND and controller process).

If you are going to buy a SSD soon, Crucial MX100 is a great option for your wallet. And reliability is not compromised for this drive, performance is, according to Anandtech. The opposite is true of Samsung's 840 Evo.

*Every storage option can fail, whether its tape, hard drives, floppy disks, or SSDs. If you backup your important data regularly, any SSD will be alright. Crucial is one of the better companies.

I see. The 840 Evo was the other option I was looking at.

So, the Anand review says this is arted at 3 years... Are there any guides for maximizing SSD life here?

 

[BrightCandle]

So, the Anand review says this is arted at 3 years... Are there any guides for maximizing SSD life here?

Do you intend to use for your SSD for 20 years? Do you intend to write 100GB to your drive every day? Answered no to both then your doing more than enough. They aren't fragile, they don't just run out on normal usage. My M4 512GB has been in constant use for nearly 3 years and its used 2% of its life. It'll be obsolete by the end of the year.

 

[Techhog]

Do you intend to use for your SSD for 20 years? Do you intend to write 100GB to your drive every day? Answered no to both then your doing more than enough. They aren't fragile, they don't just run out on normal usage. My M4 512GB has been in constant use for nearly 3 years and its used 2% of its life. It'll be obsolete by the end of the year.

I suppose you're right. Regular backups should mitigate any risk too I guess. Are you using some kind of program to track that?

 

[Charlie98]

I suppose you're right. Regular backups should mitigate any risk too I guess. Are you using some kind of program to track that?

Backups are key, with any drive but especially SSDs. I speak from experience.

I think people tend to overthink SSDs... Early teething issues left a bad taste in some peoples mouths (*cough, cough* OCZ *cough, cough* ) but modern SSDs are pretty well evolved. Certainly doing prepurchase research is wise (the Kingston SSD issue, for example) but buying a mainline drive from a respected manufacturer and just using it as you would normally... that's what it's all about.

 

[BrightCandle]

OCZ had problems with their SSDs and the return rates on a lot of their models were insane. Most of todays popular models are more reliable than a hard drive, but they are still not as reliable as a CPU or memory. But more importantly they store important data and if you would like to keep that data you need at least one other copy of it somewhere, SSDs don't change that even if they end up being more reliable they still fail like every other component in a computer can.

I track usage using CryslDiskInfo - basically the wear life is in the smart info.

 

[Techhog]

Okay then... I really hope this is worth reinstalling and reactivating (I have a system builder copy) Windows for.

 

[Elixer]

Come to think of it, the MX100 comes with TI 2014 I think it is.. unsure if it is crippled in anyway though.

I am guessing it is, like the version from WD only works if a WD drive is installed, and the same for Seagate.

Toshiba offers NTI backup, never used it, no idea of the limitations.

 

[Techhog]

Come to think of it, the MX100 comes with TI 2014 I think it is.. unsure if it is crippled in anyway though.

I am guessing it is, like the version from WD only works if a WD drive is installed, and the same for Seagate.

Toshiba offers NTI backup, never used it, no idea of the limitations.

What's this?

 

[Headfoot]

I've owned a Samsung 840 256, Samsung 830 128, Vertex 32GB, Intel x-25m 80GB and Corsair Force 60GB. The Samsung 840 died within 9 months and the 830 had a critical failure which destroyed the end boundaries of my partition and was not fixable (I ran literally every tool on it in Ubuntu Rescue Remix you can think of, and I've got a software development background so I'm competent enough).
Moral of the story is that "reliability" rumors on the web are a load of garbage that aren't going to necessarily mean anything to you. The only thing I would trust is the number of years in its warranty.

Get the cheaper one and get the backup drive. Any SSD is going to carry risks, and the best way to mitigate them is to backup regularly.

 

[Headfoot]

What's this?

Acronis True Image 2014, it's a nice program. Got a license on sale for $10 off of slickdeals 6 months back

 

[Techhog]

Acronis True Image 2014, it's a nice program. Got a license on sale for $10 off of slickdeals 6 months back

Ah. But isn't cloning from an HDD to an SSD a bad idea, since Windows won't be optimized for the SSD?

 

[Charlie98]

Ah. But isn't cloning from an HDD to an SSD a bad idea, since Windows won't be optimized for the SSD?

I think W7 handles SSDs OK, I know W8/8.1 does. You may have to make a few tweaks in W7 (disable defrag, disable hibernation.) Some clone utilities handle partition alignment as well.

 

[Techhog]

I think W7 handles SSDs OK, I know W8/8.1 does. You may have to make a few tweaks in W7 (disable defrag, disable hibernation.) Some clone utilities handle partition alignment as well.

I'm on 8.1 w/ update, so I guess I'll be fine?

 

[SSBrain]

I think W7 handles SSDs OK, I know W8/8.1 does.

Windows 7 does too.

You may have to make a few tweaks in W7 (disable defrag,

Windows 7 already does it for you, and just for the installed SSDs instead of system-wide like some users do. Now, you might have read elsewhere that this could be necessary for Windows 8/8.1. On Windows 8/8.1 there actually is a bug which causes SSDs to get defragmented occasionally. This doesn't happen on Windows 7.

disable hibernation.)

Pointless unless you actually need to save space.

Some clone utilities handle partition alignment as well.

Most do. If Windows 7 was originally installed from scratch on the source drive there shouldn't be issues, as since Vista the Windows installer already aligns partitions correctly for SSDs.

I think people keep repeating obsolete information that might have made sense when SSD tended to suck and fail for apparently no reason (read: OCZ) and Windows XP was the most installed Microsoft OS.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Ah. But isn't cloning from an HDD to an SSD a bad idea, since Windows won't be optimized for the SSD?

It can be fine depending on how it's done. Any sort of image-restore or cloning that isn't conscious of alignment can get you into trouble. I'm pretty sure ATI handles SSD alignment correctly (or else Crucial is unlikely to have bundled it with the MX100)

You should be 100% sure that your SATA is in AHCI mode.

Other than that, I'd turn off indexing, disk defrag, and possibly prefetch/superfetch. You should also verify that TRIM is enabled. If capacity is an issue, you could shrink the pagefile, and enable NTFS compression as well.

 

[Charlie98]

Windows 7 does too.


Windows 7 already does it for you, and just for the installed SSDs instead of system-wide like some users do. Now, you might have read elsewhere that this could be necessary for Windows 8/8.1. On Windows 8/8.1 there actually is a bug which causes SSDs to get defragmented occasionally. This doesn't happen on Windows 7.


Pointless unless you actually need to save space.


Most do. If Windows 7 was originally installed from scratch on the source drive there shouldn't be issues, as since Vista the Windows installer already aligns partitions correctly for SSDs.

I think people keep repeating obsolete information that might have made sense when SSD tended to suck and fail for apparently no reason (read: OCZ) and Windows XP was the most installed Microsoft OS.

The SSD in my W7 HTPC install shows up as available for defrag. I agree with what you said about SSDs in the older OS's, however.

Personally, I don't do hibernate (or a number of other Windows features) so I disable it.

May of these functions are handled with Windows... but there is nothing wrong with checking to make sure and/or manually configuring them. The bizarre W8 defrag, for instance.