Crucial M4 128GB vs 256GB Performance on P150EM SE

I already asked the question in the hardware forums but I did not get the response I wanted; they all talked about how much the PC can read/write. So this is a P150EM SE specific question

Both Crucial M4 128GB and 256GB have the same read speed but the 256 has a higher write speed. How much better would the performance be with a 256GB drive vs a 128GB?

 

Doubt u'd notice the difference at all, however the reason to go for the 256 is simply cos it's larger and if it's within your budget it means u can have more of your applications and games on a faster drive.

 

The 256GB drive writes twice as fast, so if for some reason you were using hibernation on a SSD it would cut hibernation times in half. If you were transferring files over from another SSD over usb3, it would also halve your transfer time. Is that what you're looking for?

 

That would be the noticeable differences between 128GB and 256GB M4 drives. However, if you have an SSD, you probably would not even need hibernation mode as simply turning your laptop off and then on again would take approximately the same amount of time as resuming from hibernation. I have disabled hibernation (it saves approximately 4GB in your SSD) and have not seen the need to enable it since boot times with the SSD is 15s max.

You probably will not write files from another SSD over USB, as SSDs do not have a very good price per storage space ratio, and most people get HDDs as back up drives. However, if you do need to copy files from another SSD, be it from another computer or a standalone external drive, having a 256GB M4 will save you a few minutes.

If it is within your budget, go ahead and get the 256GB M4; extra space is always useful. However, the everyday benefits of a 256GB drive over a 128GB drive (other than double the storage space) are not significant enough to justify purchasing the 256GB drive just for the additional write speeds.

Benchmakers will say otherwise though...

 

The main difference between the 128 and 256 is clearly the size, but whats important about the size is that when an SSD is nearly full it starts degrading in performance so thats something to think about.

 

mortalcombat and city,

Any links to articles regarding M4 write speeds or performance degredation when drive fills up?

 

I'm jaug1337-

-but here you go

Droplr•510 vs m4

SOURCE: Cost Of More Space, m4's Over-Provisioning : Crucial m4 And Intel SSD 320: The Other SSD Competitors

 

What exactly is "nearly full?" I have the 128GB M4 and can never boot faster than 25 seconds. The drive only has about 55 gigs written on it, is this difference entirely because I'm using SATA II and not III?

 

I doubt that 55GB is considered full. But I'm pretty sure the 25 secs is due to SATA II since you're not using the full bandwidth

 

Thank god. I was slightly worried actually. People post shots of even regular HDDs booting in around the same time I can, so I was wondering what was wrong.

 

mortalcombat is correct, SATA II cuts you off..

 

jaug1337,

+1 rep. Works for me, and was what I was looking for. Although, I'd like to know why read speeds suffer.

Anyone have a link on 128GB vs. 256GB performance of the M4.

 

Nearly full is considered to be within about 10% of the maximum drive capacity being used.

As others have stated, your performance is actually affected by your SATA II port speeds.
Essentially, SATA is backwards compatible, so let's say you have a SATA III port but you install a SATA I (do those exist still?) drive, then your speeds are limited to the 1.5Gbps speeds of SATA I.
If you have a SATA II port and install a SATA III drive, you are still choked down to the slower speeds of SATA II.

 

I've just upgraded p170em from the 128gb m4 that it came with to the 256gb m4 purely cos i wanted more space on my c drive, the write speed increase is a bonus of course but I tell ya something I can't tell the difference at all other than I have more space.

 

Glad to help yeah I don't know either.. It's not stated anywhere and I've searched quite a bit on this before

 

Not much difference between 128 and 256, biggest difference is between 64 and 128:

Tom’s Hardware Storage Bench v1.0: Real-World Analysis : Crucial's m4 SSD Tested At 64, 128, 256, And 512 GB

 

More good SSD info:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-review,3194-6.html

Laptop harddisks (HDD, SSD) comparison - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

The biggest downside to 128gb isn't speed, it's the size really. You'll fit Win 7, some apps like Office, couple others, and 2 to 5 games off steam. That's with a small page file and other tweaks to reduce windows' footprint. Save yourself the headache of having to move data around and get the 256 if you plan on installing games, assuming you can afford it. I see amazon has it now for $199.

 

how do u install over 100 gb of apps?

 

Easy the reason I upgraded from my 128 was cos i only had 8 gigs left of space, and I only had about 3 games installed, now i'm less than half full and the rest of it can be used for whatever and more games

 

The point of hibernation isn't for quicker boot times, it's for people like me who like to keep 100's of windows (well, maybe 10's of windows, not counting FF tabs) open at the same time and don't want to find them all again after doing a normal shutdown.

SATAII=slow.

They're called games, bro. I also have a rather beefy Irrlicht library.

 

My 256gb is pretty full. It's very easy to use that much space especially with a big steam library.