Official Crucial M500 Series Thread

deal, my cats are too lonely

or wait do they eat too much?

 

They might eat your cats, and also I'm sure they whine a lot more.

 

but they poo at specified places, that trumps it all.

 

I'll plug them for storage, they'll eat some mAmps

 

So what is actually in that box? Is it just the bare SSD or are there also cables and software to replicate an existing hard drive?

 

Just the drive and a spacer...

 

Thanks. I thought so, but for some reason a few user reviews mention being able to easily clone an existing drive so I was hoping the tools were included.

 

oh yes!, now make a video of you slowly peeling that nasty plastic away, then slowly and with deliberate flair, unscrew it and bit by bit reveals the guts

 

SSD pron?

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk 2

 

I'll use this music during the video...

<iframe width='420' height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8MRfvI8Mwv4" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

I was thinking more on this terms

but that will do

 

So you've had the M500 960GB SSD 4 days now!

Early days but what've you done with it, and more importantly what do you think of it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

I wined and dined it. I gave it flowers and chocolates, and slept with it. Now it's giving me the silent treatment... SSD's, I tell ya!

Actually it's sitting pretty in its box. I only bought it because didn't know how soon I'd be able to buy again, and got it so I can use it in my new laptop which won't be available for a few more weeks.

 

its given you the silent treatment because you didnt pay attention to yapping about iops and purses

waiting for the w230st I take?

 

Yes I am .

 

My 960GB shipped today from B&H. Maybe we are getting some availability.

 

And it arrived and I cloned it from my Crucial C4 and added photos from my C300 and voila all seems to be working wonderfully well. No benchmarks yet, but I will get to that.

 

Anyone know about availability of the M500 mSATA drives? Specifically the 480GB version? Can't find anything online about when they're going to be released. Looks like 120GB is available but 240GB &amp; 480GB are not

 

When I phoned Crucial UK a few weeks ago I was told end July for the 480GB. Amazon UK have also changed the availability from 1 to 2 months to "Not in stock; order now and we'll deliver when available". I couldn't wait so I bought a 512GB Samsung mSATA (but it was very expensive because it came in a new Samsung notebook).

John

 

You bought a new Samsung laptop just for the 512GB mSATA? I'm thinking of ordering the Blade 14 but don't want to order 512GB PM841 version cuz I'd like to buy 256GB PM841 then buy 480GB M500 later on. If it can be available by the end of the year, then it's no problem

 

End of July is not realistic for the 480GB M500 mSATA SSD.

You only need to check Newegg (they only carry the Muskin mSATA in 480GB size).

An Amazon search (msata 480gb) only brings up a small bit more. i.e. brands other than Mushkin.

The key that I see is that only one owner has done a review on Newegg, and only one review on Amazon also!!

So that's the bad news; meaning that I'm settling in for something like Xmas.

The small bit of good news is that Newegg finally has the 480GB Mushkin "in stock" at $470.

By the way John, how long have you had your new "512GB Samsung mSATA" and how do you like it?

There's been such a dearth of info on mSATA drives in the 480/512GB size that I find myself groveling.

 

That's what I'm expecting as well, though I don't mind waiting till Christmas to pick one up

 

Its gonna be pretty cool when you can get near 1.5 TB with a 960 GB in the Laptop and an mSata in the slot and you will still be able to use your optical drive.

 

Check out the gigabyte p35k, it has 2 mSATA slots, SATA bay and an optical bay. You can carry a total of four drives, meaning 2×480GB mSATA M500 + 2x960GB M500 for 3TB total storage, or 2TB storage with an bluray drive still attached

 

3TB, is that all on a Gigabyte?
4TB on a Clevo 15xSM, 17xSM, 37xSM utilizing the ODD bay,(SATA II connector), 2 x mSATA, 2 x 2.5" drive bays (SATA III connector), 3TB using the ODD bay for bluray. AW probably similar.

 

My pre-purchasing deliberations are set out here. I'm not taking out the SSD and throwing the rest in the bin. I get a brand new computer with faster CPU to replace one that's a year old. Plus, for better or worse, Windows 8.

Not quite a week and it took some days to get it set up. However, an interesting observation is that the computer was assembled last January so it, plus SSD, has been waiting in a box for 6 months until I came along. That shows how long the components to make these SSDs have been available. Performance in benchmarks is very similar to those in a review on an SSD review site. How that compares to the 480GB M500 remains to be seen. I will never lose sleep over a few MB/s as long as there aren't performance bottlenecks as on the Sandisk U100. The Samsung is a frugal power consumer on idle / light usage (I saw the system power on battery get down to 5W and that's before I tried full power saving although the newer Ivy Bridge CPU may also leak less power than the old one).

John

PS: I've just noticed that the Amazon UK availability of the 480GB mSATA has reverted to 1-2 months.

 

True, but they don't come in a near Ultrabook form factor: 2.2kg &amp; 0.82" thick

 

Which notebook did you buy? notebook.de apparently sells the 512GB PM841

 

I came across the NP900X4C-A02IN in a shop and couldn't resist it as an upgrade (in both storage and CPU) to my year old NP900X4C-A01UK. I hadn't searched hard for the Samsung 512 GB mSATA because it's not meant to be in the retail chain. I sometimes look at the notebooks at notebook.de but didn't know until now they sell SSDs.

John

 

The 960 GB drive is in stock at MacMall as of 1:00 p.m. Central time.

 

Amazon has 11 drives in stock, in case somone is intersted, link.

 

Good post and link, thanks!

Looking at the 12 sellers (Amazon and 11 others), the days of 3rd party sellers gouging buyers for the 960GB unit, are nearing an end.

 

What temperatures are users getting on these drives? My 960GB is running at 52-55C! It says its fine up to 70C but that still seems high to me.

 

It should still work at even higher temps than 70 C - but at reduced performance, but yeah that is very high (can't recall the exact temp of the 480GB M500 I played with - but that was also higher than I would have liked too).

With SSD's; we seem to make progress 2 steps forward and one step back every few months/years...

This is why they 'had' to put in a temp sensing circuit that will throttle the performance if the temps skyrocket...


Hope this is fixable in a firmware fix - idle temps for the storage subsystem that are 15-20 C higher than the idle cpu temps are just wrong.

Which system/chassis is this installed in? Is the chassis known to run the components hot?

 

Crucial M500 240GB on sale for $170 at tiger direct for both SATA3 and mSATA versions

http://m.tigerdirect.com/applicatio...ffiliateID=lw9MynSeamY-SN1_eDAnOoNXccBnVidxHw

 

Not worth the shipping charges.

I hope enough people ignore these undeserving capacities so that we can finally have an SSD at a price that is consistent with todays O/S, Program and Data requirements (in addition to the OP'ing all current SSD require to not give us more performance than they claim - but to simply give us as close to those claims as possible (no matter the client workload we put on them).


People Please Ignore!!!

 

$4 shipping...ok I won't buy.

Find me a cheaper price for a 240GB M500 that's ALSO in stock.

 

Just to be clear: I mean it isn't worth the shipping charges alone... forget the $170 'sale' price.

 

I don't get your argument, the mSATA drive is not worth the $4 shipping alone?

 

Yes, he means he wouldn't spend $4 on it. The performance on m500s smaller than 480GB is poo.

 

Why do you say that? I thought it was the revised and improved successor to the M4, which was an amazing drive..? I used to have a 64GB M4 2 years back but I haven't used them since. Am I missing something?

Or is this because the write speed is 250MB/s which is "bad"?

Edit: I reread the thread and it seems you say this because there are better 240GB drives out there for competition (but not in the &gt;=480GB space). But it's not as if this M500 is bad, let alone not worth $4..please fill me in on something I'm missing here

 

It is the successor to the M4. BUT it comes at a price - performance in the smaller drives (240GB 120GB). There was a switch (shrink) to smaller NAND to reduce costs and lower the price for you and me. m500 - 20nm from the m4 -25nm. There was an architectural change as well.

Page 2 of the 480GB review
HARDOCP - Specifications - Crucial M500 480GB SSD Review

Smaller NAND = bigger drives for performance. It's all about parallelism and interleaving. And bigger drives at a lower cost to produce and buy.

So, if you want 240-256GB size look to another brand. Price may be a little higher but performance will be much higher. Value- Bang for buck.

 

Thanks for the educated response. So if I'm understanding this correct, the 25nm to 20nm improved on the performance, cost &amp; efficiency side compared to the M4, but at $170 it isn't a value SSD anymore? Is this where the 840 Pro hype comes in as being the better bargain both performance and durability wise?

What would you say are better options. I'm more so interested on the mSATA side, but it seems as if only the Plextor M5M, Crucial M4 (which I assume is worse, referring back to my comment above), Mushkin Atlas, and MyDigitalSSD are available and are very hard to spot at prices below $170.

Thank you so much for your insight!

 

Actually, the performance went down on 240GB and smaller with the shrink. The cost of production (100nm wafer yields 4 - 25nm vs 5 - 20nm) goes down. if they get more NAND from the process.

From:
HARDOCP - Introduction - Corsair Neutron Series 256GB SSD Refresh Review

The M4 is a very reliable SSD and that's what people were and are buying, not the best performance. The m500 is not going after the the top performers but is geared more towards the value line.

From:
Crucial M500 480GB SSD Review - Final Thoughts | TweakTown

In the 240-256GB mSATA for price and performance, Plextor M5M, Intel 525 performance but expensive right now. The M4 reliable and if it's on sale still worth considering The Atlas is also older like the M4 but decent, if you can find the Atlas Deluxe with Toshiba Toggle NAND. Apparently, Mushkin changed the Deluxe to regular MLC NAND new supplier. So, the Atlas Deluxe may be the same as the Atlas (not the Atlas Value, asynchronous NAND avoid!) Avoid the OEM Samsung PM841, TLC write numbers, hard to find, overpriced.

Coming: Crucial m500 480GB could be THE mSATA to get; capacity, Crucial reliability. performance and price.Intel 530 smaller NAND possibly less expensive only up to 240GB capacity. Hopefully, more manufacturers will start selling mSATA retail, so we have more choices. As you noted that $170 price range is hard to find. More competition will change that.

 

Thanks again for the response. I have a PM841 Samsung 256GB mSATA drive right now, but I am planning to buy a 480GB chip and am not keen on the Mushkin so my other real choice is just this Crucial M500 480GB. I had originally planned to buy the M500 240GB to replace the PM841 chip it comes with but after your advice I have decided otherwise.

I've read contradicting articles online about over-provisioning/garbage collection, and TRIM. I believe all modern day SSD have TRIM support, but from a regular consumer standpoint, no one needs to edit provisioning besides what it comes with at factory. I was also under the impression that the 480GB drives are OP'd already because they aren't marketed as the regular base-2 sized 512GB drives.

I imagine I will only fill up ~210GB of the 256GB PM841 (usable should be 238GB), so I won't see huge drops in performance if I always leave about 30GB free right?

 

Well, unless you do a significant amount of writes on a regular (daily) basis, OP isn't really needed since the drive will have time for garbage collection. It may help keep performance as high as possible over time, however, as writes are made to the SSD and cell performance degrade. But personally I don't OP at all, and to date haven't had any performance issues. I've owned/used everything from Intel X25-M, Kingston V100, Samsung 830, Samsung 840 & Pro, Crucial M4, Crucial M500, Plextor M5M, OCZ...

Plus you need non-partitioned space for any extra space to be utilized efficiently for OP. You should be able to simply shrink the drive. Create a new partition in the free space, then delete that partition and it should be used as extra OP.

If you tend to do a lot of video editing or compiling code, etc where you frequently write massive amounts of data to your SSD, then OP makes more sense. But for regular daily use, no necessary.

 

You will see contradicting opinions on over-provisioning here too. I don't think you'll read that it will hurt performance. Even the 512GB is OPed with the difference between binary Gibibyte and decimal Gigabyte. Most operating systems show binary for memory and storage.
LSI's take:
Understanding SSD over-provisioning | EDN

Here's a review of the Plextor M5M. Read the comments section too.

Linked to Performance Consistency:
AnandTech | Plextor M5M (256GB) mSATA Review

The OEM PM841 is TLC NAND So, reviews on the Samsung 250 TLC should give you an idea about performance.
HARDOCP - Samsung 840 Series TLC 250GB SSD - Samsung 840 Series TLC 250GB SSD Review
Samsung 840 250GB SSD Review | TweakTown

 

If you're using a TLC drive as the OS drive, I'd imagine its being mostly being read versus written to. Besides the obvious Windows updates and caching of data (internet cache, cookies, downloads [which can be moved if I get a 480GB M500], steam save files, word auto back up files etc.), that would be the extent of writing to SSD, given that one has completely setup their system and installed all programs they want, correct?

Edit: Also would be interested to know how VMWare affects write usage on a SSD. Is it writing a lot of information each time it is being used or is it minimal/negligible?

Sorry for all the questions, I really appreciate your advice!

 

It's not a question of TLC endurance, no real issue there.
See:
Hardware.Info tests lifespan of Samsung SSD 840 250GB TLC SSD [Updated with final conclusion] - Final update (20-6-2013) | Hardware.Info United States

The performance would be the issue, sequential writes 250 MB/s

 

That's very assuring, good to know. I somehow doubt I will be writing more than 100TiB to my boot drive in the next 4ish years.

And the PM841 has 330MBps write speed, so while it isn't breaking the 400MBps of the M5M, it should be a good upgrade from my 7200RPM MSI GE70, and my previous Crucial M4 64GB I used 2 years back (I think that had 175MBps write...lol).

Thanks for the help!

Edit: 95MB/s write on the 64GB M4! Wow, and I was blown away by it when I had owned it a while back. I'm guessing more because it had 500MBps read speeds that lended to fast boot ups and program launching (one of the more tangible aspects of owning a SSD that I seem to have forgotten over getting caught up by TLC vs MLC, toggle vs sync. vs async, durability/over-provisioning, IOPS/write speeds etc. )