Crucial M4 msata SSD: Super underwhelmed.

I got myself a 128gb crucial M4 msata SSD, thinking it would be a great addition to my thinkpad X220 tablet. I fresh installed windows 7 to the ssd and performed the SSD tweaks as suggested. I am entirely underwhelemed. Sure the msata port is limited to sata II, but still, I feel almost no difference from the 7200rpm standard drive it was running. Am I missing something here?

 

I would say something is wrong as I have two of them installed in my computers and they perform a lot better than the HDD's they replaced.

 

IMO you've got something wrong with your X220 setup.

My own X220 has a 256gb Crucial M4 mSATA SSD as boot drive, and it's a night and day improvement over the stock 7200rpm HDD.

My larger 256gb M4 mSATA unit is likely to be a small bit faster than your 128gb unit. But both should be MUCH faster for booting Win7 than any 7200rpm HDD.

BTW ask an NBR moderator to move this thread to the SSD forum!

 

Could you perform a benchmark of transfer speeds? That will tell you if something is up.

 

Okay;

How full is the drive? What 'tweaks' did you do? You did install Win7 SP1, right?

What SATA drivers are you running?

How much RAM do you have installed?


Even if all the above are answered 'correctly':


The 128GB capacity is too small for a 'performance-oriented' upgrade.

The mSATA version is worse than the 2.5" version of the same capacity SSD.

SATAII is MILES worse than SATAIII for certain SSD's and/or controllers.


Waiting for your answers...

 

1. Out of the 119GB formatted capacity, 90GB free. Installed Windows 7 SP1 and updated all chipset drivers. Disabled pagefile, search indexing, hibernation.

2. SATA drivers I am assuming are lastest from the latest intel chipset update

3. 8GB 1333mhz ram (fastest this unit can handle)

This is a ultramobile platform. No gaming. Specifically for word processing and internet browsing, nothing heavy duty at all. I don't see why the 128gb drive would be more than enough for that. The standard M4 and the msata M4 have the same controller, performance should be equal. Granted it is a SATA II port, the difference should absolutely be more highly noticeable than the 7200RPM drive.

 

Same controller; but the nand is not as optimized/interleaved as in the 2.5" versions...

I do agree that you should be seeing better results.

I have seen SSD's and HDD's that work 'better' after two clean installs (yeah; I'll get called on this, I'm sure; but I say it how I've seen it).


You still don't mention driver versions...

Are the updates from Lenovo?


As for the tweaks; I would not disable search indexing...


If a re-install doesn't do it (with Intel RST 12.5): you may have a dud SSD (the firmware of which is updated, right?).


Good luck.

 

Well that is weird. I can feel the ssd performance overwhelmingly and to think there is no difference to 7200rpm I beg to differ. Something must be wrong on your side even 300MB/s SATA II is fast and I easily reach those speed on read/write with my adata sx900. Can you post your atto scores or some other benchmarks for the ssd ?

 

are your partitions properly aligned? if you did a fresh install then Windows 7 automatically does this properly though it can get it wrong.

 

If the drive is new/bare I have never seen Win7, Win7SP1 or Win8 'get it wrong' wrt properly partitioning the drive for proper alignment.

If the drive was used with previous formatting/partitioning in place - it could be an issue (Windows won't fix that). However, considering that the drive was new? It does seem unlikely...

You may be on the right track though - but the OP seems to have disappeared for now...

Hope he/she is having some luck with this issue.

 

Still here haha, just overwhelmed past two days (final exams and all)

I installed windows 8. i swear it got faster, way way faster than windows 7 ever was on the ssd. weirdest issue ever, but whatever. Can somebody share the SSD optimization tips/tricks for windows 8? Also, how long can I expect this drive to last? Will excessive deletion of files wear out the drive faster (like running Ccleaner?) Thanks guys.

 

Hey! Win8 rocks for SSD's - always have the newest Windows O/S - they may not show the prettiest face; but they almost always have great under-the-hood performance improvements for the latest hardware.


Excessive anything will wear out the nand faster - but running ccleaner daily isn't going to be an issue: it is what you're writing to the drive that will determine that...


Glad you got the performance you were expecting.

 

Yeah, thats what I thought too but you never know. I have never seen Windows 8 botch it up but Windows 7 is a temperamental beast.


@OP: you generally don't have to worry about tweaks with Windows 8, it's intelligent enough to optimize to your SSD. The main tweaks I can recommend is to:

1. Disable the pagefile, if you have about 8gb RAM then this is very safe, frees up more space
2. Enable fast boot (though this is usually on by default), you'll notice even faster startups
3. I would normally suggest you manually overprovision 30% of your SSD but this is a tough pill to swallow on a 128gb model so I would leave it be.
4. You can install Intel RST for slight better system snappiness but I didn't because I found it reduced my boot speeds (which is more important to me as I frequently turn the laptop on and off at work)
5. Move as much of your STEAM folder to the Momentus XT as possible, only keep games which absolutely require fast loadup times on the SSD (e.g. Shogun 2)

Don't worry about longevity, I have an Intel 320 120gb (which is of similar NAND quality to the m4) and I can honestly say it'll probably outlast all my current SSDs.