I have seen alot of people on here recommend the Crucial M4 over other SSD's in a similar price region, but I can't understand why. When I look at the M4 specs the 95MB write speed doesn't blow my socks of compared to say a Corsair's 490MB write speed. So what makes the M4 so special?
I was hoping for more of an answer like 'the m4 is awesome because....' I don't want to have to read a full review/comparison
But that's how you find a complete answer - just read the performance conclusions if you can't be arsed doing a bit of reading, but why should we summarise an already excellent article for you?
1 word: reliability. I have never used one, but I've never heard or read a bad thing said about them.
awww, but I rely on you lot as my proof readers. I read the article ages ago and nothing jumped out at me as super special, especially when other drives have much higher write speeds. Maybe I just don't understand Storage
Good performance, good price, good support (I guess as they did update the firmware)... What else do you want from storage?
Since the latest firmware a damned fine bang/buck. Plus warranty, reliability (I still have an M225 with 92% health status after a couple of years) and that it's not sandforce. What else. Oh price, particularly good if you hang about for random price reductions on the crucial site to use with discount codes and cashback sites (mine was under £130 with all those taken into account).
Is it all about "paper speeds". there is much more to think about than whats on paper, hence why intel SSD's carry a premium, they aint the quickest drives, but are some of the best.
Isn't it like... The only SSD these days that hasn't had some major issue? I keep hearing it's the most reliable
Back in my day sandforces were the most highly sung storage controllers you could get! Best performance, lower price. Then the latest generation came out and suddenly everyone hates them. I lost track of why, all the reviews i read when they started bringing out the latest SSD's suggested they were bloody good.
I just ordered a 120GB Corsair Force Series GT. Uses the SandForce SF2200, apparently has speeds of "Read 555MB/s, Write 515MB/s" and only comes in at £160 odd. I fail to see why I would take the M4 instead?
Sandforce drives are only quick on highly compressible data, otherwise they tend to post worse results than the M4s. Theoretical maximums mean naff all. Also, the new firmware update for the M4s mean that you're looking at 500MB/s reads anyway. Plus, the controller has idle garbage collection, so can be used without TRIM better. They're well priced too. Also, Crucial actually have a UK base, so any issues and it's back to the UK for an excellent RMA process, not back to the Netherlands with Corsair.
What do we think of the new Corsair Performance Pro 128? Worth the extra over the M4? Just released (but in stock at scan for £166), same Marvell chipset as the M4 with faster write and much better garbage collection (they say it's raid compatible). Manufacturer page. ATTO Write of 420 (corsairs numbers, scan say 340) vs the M4 at about 270. No reviews of the 128 version as yet.
it depends on which size you're after, which SF you go for & what you're proposing to do with it... A few comments off the top off my head - - Well, since *most* people buy a 120/128GB (or, i guess, 60/64GB) then it's kind of pointless to pretend that the 128GB M4 is comparable to a higher end (sync nand) SF on write speed as this simply isn't the case... (failure 1 of bittech's review) [NB by "failure" i am meaning that there is either no allowance being made for it or explanation of what the data actually means within their explanations.] - it's also very uncommon for most people to be predominantly using SSDs for hugely incompressible data (mp3s, jpgs, etc) which makes the AS-SSD ~99.9% random data scores highly inaccurate for the normal user - a full Windows/Office install was more than 50% compressible on the 1st gen SFs so... (failure 2 of bittech's review - well, just because many files are to some extent compressed, it does not follow that they are 99.9% incompressible which is what the conclusion seems to suggest) - You then need to remember than, whilst a significant %age of normal usage will be sequential (so those results do have meaning) very little will be QD1 4K as that's not how OSes work - in general, you're looking at both a mix of different sized r/ws & a QD of 3-7 with smaller r/ws... (failure 3 of bittech's review for relying on 2 basic b/ms that don't look at most r.l. usages) - You then compare the maintenance of speed in non-trim & the SF's have a *much* higher robustness than the non-SFs with a reasonably high r-e-w cycle usage. (not mentioned at all in bittech's comparison - failure by omission) - You then add in longevity - the M4 & the higher (but not top end) SFs both use equivalent 2Xnm sync nand, but as the SFs compress the data stored then less of it's used... ...& they are the only SSDs with a general write amplification of less than 1... [NB this would not apply if you were only using the SSD for 99.9% incompressible data, but how many consumers do that?] (not mentioned in bittech's comparison - failure by omission) - With, for example, the Vertex max iops & the Patriot Wildfire, you get even better speeds & (superior) 3Xnm nand... (not the SSDs looked at in bittech's review) - The M4s had their share of freezing & cold boot issues on some machines - as the SFs had BSOD issues on some machines. in both cases it was a tiny minority... (no mention of the M4's issues in bittech's comparison, which isn't exactly reasonable 'journalism' imho) - Some of the speeds for the SFs were slowed down whilst SF looked to solve the BSOD issue completely - this, according to OCZ, was a temporary troubleshooting alteration that would be corrected once the issue was corrected... (though bittech were testing the SSDs on a specific day so that's not their fault) - &, finally, there's also no indication as to whether bittech rebooted at all with the SFs - the 6Gb/s SFs regain speed after a reboot (it's when a key trim command is passed to them by Win7), & as both their 'adding data with trim disabled' & AS-SSD writing stupid amounts by default for the sake of it negates this... (if bittech didn't do this, as their comparison suggests, this is a major testing failure as it's been common knowledge & standard testing procedure with the 6Gb/s SFs almost from the moment they were released). Yeah, for a proper review of them, i would really suggest looking at Anandtech's reviews - esp the heavy & light workload b/ms as these are hugely closer to what you would experience from an OS/apps drive, which is what most normal consumers use SSDs for. Despite all of that, the 128GB M4 certainly is a great drive for the money - assuming you're in a trim environment if you have a reasonable no of r-e-w cycles... ...but, if i was in the market for more SSDs for an OS/apps/etc drive, i would pay the extra ~£30 each (less cashback & discount codes - a quick search around & they can be gotten for ~£165 each atm if you're clever about it) & go for a pair of 120GB max iopses.
The one major concern i have about these is that the faster you write to nand of a given spec, the lower the longevity... ...which is a major reason why, d.t. the SFs compressing data/having a vastly lower write amplification, it's reasonable for them to do so. Well, the normal way to increase speeds, & is what happens with all modern SSDs to some extent, is that, by increasing the capacity (& hence the no of nand channels &/or the nand devices per channel), with large writes you write to different nand simultaneously. &, as a secondary one, the use of higher rated &/or nm nand will also have a +ve effect. [& obviously, the use of, for example, SLC nand would be even better, but this isn't at all reasonable to assume with a consumer SSD at the listed price.] Now, unless Corsair have done something clever to work around this & not told anyone (though 'if' they were using better nand or more channels or whatever then it would, naturally, be a selling point so...), this would be 'slightly' worrying to me as, for a given r-e-w cycle usage, it would lose a significant amount of its longevity compared to the M4. As to GC working in raid, this has been the case with SSDs with GC since mid(ish) 2009 - GC is internal to the SSD &, as such, is completely agnostic when it comes to how it's (sensibly) connected or the OS or whatever... ...though different SSD controllers do GC differently so some are better than others... ...instead, it's trim that ideally we all want in raid.
Well the point about the Corsair is the manufacturer claims the GC is so good it provides performance on par with trim, meaning a raid setup with no trim suffers no performance penalty. In my view Trim is essentially a stop-gap to good GC, eventually it will be redundant. I mean in raid it's so fast anyway even with degradation it would be fast, but it's nice to have your hardware performing at its best. The M4 is said to have some of the worst GC of any SSD. I read a report of someone having to leave it in the bios over night for a few days before it finally kicked in and they saw a massive performance improvement, this was on a non-trim setup. Yes lifetime may be a concern, as you say the write speed may be at the expense of lifetime, that hadn't occured to me before. To an extent it's Corsairs problem not mine as it has a 3yr warranty, still I'd want it to last longer than that. It's a bit strange going from mechanical to solid state storage and having to worry more about wearing it out A more interesting point is failure mode. Apparently the failure mode for SSDs is worn flash cells get poorer at retaining data, so on a worn out SSD everything would be normal until you stopped using your PC for a few days, and you would come back to a corrupt disk!
Could be seeing trim + raid 0 in the near future. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5136/intel-to-add-trim-support-for-raid-0
