Crucial MX100 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction Coming off the back of our look at the 512GB model of Crucial's new MX100 line of drives, our review today focusses on the mid-range 256GB drive which comes in at a level that many users tend to adopt due to the balance between performance and capacity. As we saw with the 512GB though, Crucial have re-written the pricing rule book with a drive that is priced lower per GB than any other drive on the market and overall costing around the same as a 256GB drive from many other brands. Keeping with the trend of bargain bucket pricing, the 256GB MX100 comes in with a banker approved price of $109.99 in the states and £78.99 over here in the UK, making it once again the ideal solution for the upgrade market; where users want to get a good boost in their systems performance, but without a hefty price that is associated with many performance products. Similar to the 512GB drive, the 256GB model utilises Micron's latest 16nm NAND design with a Marvell 88SS9189 controller at the heart of the drive and performance wise we see the same 550MB/s read speeds, whilst the write speed is a little lower at a more modest 330MB/s. The IOPs performance is also down a little from the top line 512GB drive at 85k read and 70k write, however we do still get the same 72TB lifespan and the same three-year warranty as before. We know the read speeds that the MX100 has to offer are very competitive throughout the market, so our focus in this review will be aimed more at the write performance. This drive may be cheap, but the last thing we want is a drive that is cheap and cheerful. A Closer Look Built in a to a 7mm frame, the MX100, aside from a different sticker, is identical to any other drive that we've from Crucial of late. Ok so we don't have a trendy design, but we have to remember this is a budget drive, and sticking to parts that are already in-hand is part of the process. Between the 256GB and 512GB models of the MX100 there is only a single identifier to tell the two drives apart - namely the product number. Lifting the lid on the MX100, we see where the controller is positioned, with a heatpad in place to keep the controller and memory cool during operation. Like to 512GB drive, the 256GB model sees eight NAND packages from Micron on the upper side of the board again running a 16nm architecture. The only variance comes with the capacity of each package, with each holding 16GB of data as opposed to 32GB on the 512GB model. Aside from the alterations to the NAND, the controller and DRAM stay the same as before with 512MB DDR3 accompanying a Marvell 88SS9189 controller running custom firmware for the MX100 series. The rear of the PCB displays eight more 16GB NAND packages, making up the 256GB RAW capacity. Test Procedure Test system: Supermicro C7Z87-OCE Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3 Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz Corsair H100i BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850W Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD We would like to thank Be Quiet, Supermicro, Intel, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible. Software used: AIDA64 Extreme Engineer Anvil's Storage Utilities V1 AS SSD - Compression Benchmark ATTO CrystalDiskMark Tech Preview IOMeter PCMark 8 (Storage Test) In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we are always looking for ways in which to tweak and tune our testing methodology and to give a clearer picture at how a drive performs throughout its life, I have formulated a new way of testing that gives eight times the amount of data to analyse within the review. Whilst this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer to test - nearly 36 hours in fact, the picture that we are able to build up of the overall performance of each drive is far clearer, providing a more accurate analysis at how a drive performs under different conditions. The basis around the new method of testing is to do with how the performance of the drive improves or degrades as the amount of free space is reduced. To simulate this I will first of all test the drive when it is perfectly clean and fresh out of the box. Following on from this I will test the drive at key points as the volume is filled up with data, namely 25%, 50% and 75% full. As the type of data that is on the drive is directly relational to how the drive performs, I will be using a sample set of data that includes a mixture of small files such as text documents through medium-sized files such as photos and large video files. Intel's NASPT suite that I use for NAS testing generates a 15GB block of data and as this contains a wide variety of file types and sizes, it is perfect for this application. To fill up the drive I will copy this block of data in to the root folder and copy it to fill the drive as required. On top of this I will also take wear on the NAND in to consideration and this process obviously takes a long time to perform - so long under real world conditions that it is simply not practical. In order to accelerate this conditioning process I will use the SSD endurance test that lies within Anvils Storage Utilities and read / write 5TB of data to the drive through a process of filling the drive with thousands of small files of various sizes and compressibility (with randomised duration between each of the writes), then reading each of them back with a randomised time between each file. After this has completed, the data is then erased and the process starts again. This process of conditioning the drive can take anywhere upwards of 8-9 hours on a typical 256GB SATA III SSD, however the performance and capacity of the drive will influence the time it takes to condition the drive. Following the conditioning process, the benchmarking process as described above is repeated again with the volume filled with sample data to each percentage between test runs. Furthermore between each benchmark test, the drive will be left alone to allow the TRIM command to take place if the drive feels it is necessary. From previous experience, TRIM can heavily impact the drives performance as it takes place, so allowing a period of time between tests will eliminate this factor and any subsequent false performance figures. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted the screenshots from the benchmark results when the drive is 75% full. In the drive comparison charts, the performance at 0% fill is used as these are the performance figures that I have recorded from drives in previous SSD reviews. AIDA64 Storage AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Unconditioned Conditioned Drive Comparison For a budget drive, the first set of results that we get a look at from AIDA64, show some promising news for the MX100. Performing better than the M550 and even OCZ's Vertex 460, the drive does drop in performance as the write levels increase, however random read figures do not reflect on the rest of the drives performance ability. AS SSD The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1GB file respectively. With most of the benchmark tests showing peak performance from an SSD, I've changed AS SSD a little to now give us a clearer picture as to how the drive will perform given variable levels of file compression. Unconditioned Conditioned Compression test results on a Marvell controller are not surprising, with the compressibility of data having no effect on the read and write speeds. ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Unconditioned Conditioned Where the performance of the 512GB drive did see a slight variance, the 256GB drives performance is nigh on level right throughout the testing period. Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison I use the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data fill. Whilst the read speeds match the of the 512GB drive, the write speeds are the lowest that we have seen to date on a 2.5" drive. This said though, the speeds recorded are easily over those quoted by Crucial, so we can't fault it as this point. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of "CrystalDiskMark": Sequential reads/writes Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes Text copy Change dialog design internationalization (i18n) Unconditioned Conditioned CrystalDiskMark real world performance once again shows speeds that are nigh on constant as the drive volume used raises. Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison I use the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data fill. Against the 512GB drive we do see a minute drop in performance when the drive is in a conditioned state, however this is within the tolerances that we would expect to see. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that we have started using here at eTeknix, it's completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests, it also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to give days, months and potentially even years of use in a shorter period of time to see how the drive copes in the longer term. Unconditioned Conditioned Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison I use the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data fill. IOMeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. IOMeter allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the 'Maximum Disk Size', 'Starting Disk Sector' and '# of Outstanding I/Os'. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the 'Access Specifications' configure the I/O types to the file. Configurable items within the Access Specifications are: Transfer Request Size Percent Random/Sequential distribution. Percent Read/Write Distribution Aligned I/O's. Reply Size TCP/IP status Burstiness. Unconditioned Read / Write Conditioned Read / Write Like every other test, the IOPs performance is barely affected by the volume of data that is stored on the drive - a great thing to see on a drive that is as cheap as this. Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison I use the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data fill. Like the sequential speeds, the IOPs performance figures are comfortably above those outlined by Crucial, nearing those set out on the 512GB drive. PCMark 8 Storage Use the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark to test the performance of SSDs, HDDs and hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games. You can test the system drive or any other recognised storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Unconditioned Conditioned Final Thoughts Pricing The biggest selling point that I had to point out with the 512GB MX100 is the amazingly low price per GB of storage and this is once again where Crucial have a good position in the market. With prices set at £79.99 in the UK and $109.99 in the US, the MX100 is one of the cheapest drives that is available on the market today. Overview Coming off the back of the 512GB MX100 review, the 256GB drive is unsurprisingly a cheaper solution for anyone that is on a tight budget when it comes to upgrading their system for a boost in performance. Although the write speeds are not quite up there with a number of other drives on the market, the read speeds are bang on level with the 512GB that has re-written the pricing and performance rule books for the upgrade market. Based on its price alone, the 256GB drive is a straight up bargain at only 31 pence or 49 cents per GB of RAW storage. With the price of NAND continuing to come down, Crucial at the moment will have an advantage of having the NAND produced in-house and this is part of the reason why it is so cheap. I did ask the question right back at the start of this review if the cheap price was going to result in a product that was cheap and cheerful and all things considered I have to say that this is far from the case. Granted the write performance is not as great as the MX100's competitors, but for under 80 quid you really can't go that far wrong if you are looking to upgrade a general day-to-day system where write heavy tasks are not likely to happen all that often. Pros: Super cheap price for 256GB of storage Well known vendor 3 year warranty Cons: Write performance is sub-par compared to some other budget drives that are out there "As a drive targeted for the upgrade market, the 256GB MX100 is a super cheap solution for anyone on a strict budget. With read speeds that match many high performance drives, this drive is sure to give you a big boost in performance over a mechanical pick." Thanks to Crucial UK for providing this review sample.