At a low cost per GB, the Crucial MX100 Solid State Drive offers good value for money without compromising on speed or features. Time to retire your old mechanical drive?
Product on Review Crucial MX100
Manufacturer & Sponsor: Crucial
Street Price: £157.99 GBP / $270 USD
Since their inception, Solid State drives have been the preserve of high end, enthusiast users whose craving for speed knew no limits. More recently, with the advent of ultra books and such, SSDs have become much more common place. So much so that even some entry level PC’s now come equipped with a solid state drive thanks in part to the cost of this technology which has tumbled over recent years. Speed isn’t everything though and the purchase of an SSD, despite the prices coming down did have its drawbacks, mainly storage capacity. It wasn’t so long ago that a 480GB SSD would cost more than £1 per GB and as such was priced out of many people’s budget. Today however, we have a drive that costs a little under 32p per GB!
While still a little more expensive than that of a mechanical drive of the same capacity, it still claims to offer scorchingly fast SSD speeds and the features we have become accustomed to. Add to this the drive we are sampling today is a 500GB model counters the argument that an SSD’s only purpose is a boot drive with a few applications. A 500GB will hold your data and applications, along with your operating system, so unless you have terabytes of storage need you could conceivably throw out your old, noisy, power sapping mechanical hard disk drives and have a quiet, economical but much faster SSD. Is it worth the extra you will pay though? Read on to find out.
Crucial on their MX100 SSD
As a brand of Micron, one of the largest flash storage manufacturers in the world, the Crucial MX100 is backed by the same quality and innovation that has produced some of the world’s most advanced memory and storage technologies. With over a thousand hours of pre-release validation testing and hundreds of SSD qualification tests, the Crucial MX100 has been thoroughly tried, tested, and proven. Make the switch to the Crucial MX100 SSD and start outlasting and outperforming your hard drive.
Specification & Features
Sequential Read 550 MB/s
Sequential Write 500 MB/s
4KB Random Read 90,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write 85,000 IOPS
Type 2.5 Inch
Height 7mm (with 9.5mm adapater)
Memory Type Micron 16nm MLC NAND
Controller Marvell® 88SS9189 with Micron® Custom Firmware
Interface SATA 6Gbps (SATA III)
MTTF 1.5 million hours
Warranty 3 Years
Endurance 72TB Total Bytes Written (TBW), equal to 40GB per day for 5 years
Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C
Hardware Encryption AES-256 encryption engine, TCG Opal 2.0 compliant, IEEE-1667 complaint, Microsoft® eDrive® compatible
Advanced Features Native Write Acceleration, Redundant Array of Independent NAND, Multistep Data Integrity Algorithm, Adaptive Thermal Protection, Power Loss Protection, Data Path Protection, Active Garbage Collection, TRIM Support, Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART), Error Correction Code (ECC)
Compliance CE, FCC, BSMI, C-Tick, VCCI, Kcc, RoHS, China RoHS, WEEE, TUV, UL, SATA-IO
Sequential Write 500 MB/s
4KB Random Read 90,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write 85,000 IOPS
Type 2.5 Inch
Height 7mm (with 9.5mm adapater)
Memory Type Micron 16nm MLC NAND
Controller Marvell® 88SS9189 with Micron® Custom Firmware
Interface SATA 6Gbps (SATA III)
MTTF 1.5 million hours
Warranty 3 Years
Endurance 72TB Total Bytes Written (TBW), equal to 40GB per day for 5 years
Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C
Hardware Encryption AES-256 encryption engine, TCG Opal 2.0 compliant, IEEE-1667 complaint, Microsoft® eDrive® compatible
Advanced Features Native Write Acceleration, Redundant Array of Independent NAND, Multistep Data Integrity Algorithm, Adaptive Thermal Protection, Power Loss Protection, Data Path Protection, Active Garbage Collection, TRIM Support, Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART), Error Correction Code (ECC)
Compliance CE, FCC, BSMI, C-Tick, VCCI, Kcc, RoHS, China RoHS, WEEE, TUV, UL, SATA-IO
Run your system longer than ever before – using less power.
With Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the Crucial MX100 is up to 89% more energy efficient than a typical hard drive.
Protect all of your data – even if the power goes out.
With Power Loss Protection, if you happen to be saving a file and you suddenly lose access to power, your data will still be preserved.
Keep your memories, photos, and files safe.
When a photo or file gets corrupted, it often becomes unusable. Prevent this from happening in the first place with the Crucial MX100 SSD, which arms every storage component with four layers of Exclusive Data Defense to guard against corrupt files.
Adaptive Thermal Protection
Push your drive to the limit and avoid overheating.
Adaptive Thermal Protection technology enables the Crucial MX100 to dynamically adjust storage component activity based on how you’re using the drive, allowing your system to stay cool and react to changes in use.
Do more – faster.
Get true 550 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data – and leave your old 177 MB/s hard drive in the dust.
Quick file transfer
Save and transfer files in seconds rather than minutes.
Our exclusive Native Write Acceleration technology spreads the drive’s workload across several elements, enabling you to write data in seconds rather than minutes.
Hardware encryption
Get best-in-class hardware encryption.
Keep personal files and sensitive information secure from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit encryption – the same grade used by banks and hospitals. The Crucial MX100 is one of the only drives available that meets Microsoft® eDrive®, IEEE-1667, and TCG Opal 2.0 standards of encryption.
RAIN technology
Attain consistently fast speeds without compromising the reliability of your data.
Our engineers created RAIN technology to protect your data at the component level, similar to how RAID is used with multiple hard drives. This enterprise-class technology increases the security and protection of your data to a level that’s rarely available in consumer-class SSDs.
With Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the Crucial MX100 is up to 89% more energy efficient than a typical hard drive.
Protect all of your data – even if the power goes out.
With Power Loss Protection, if you happen to be saving a file and you suddenly lose access to power, your data will still be preserved.
Keep your memories, photos, and files safe.
When a photo or file gets corrupted, it often becomes unusable. Prevent this from happening in the first place with the Crucial MX100 SSD, which arms every storage component with four layers of Exclusive Data Defense to guard against corrupt files.
Adaptive Thermal Protection
Push your drive to the limit and avoid overheating.
Adaptive Thermal Protection technology enables the Crucial MX100 to dynamically adjust storage component activity based on how you’re using the drive, allowing your system to stay cool and react to changes in use.
Do more – faster.
Get true 550 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data – and leave your old 177 MB/s hard drive in the dust.
Quick file transfer
Save and transfer files in seconds rather than minutes.
Our exclusive Native Write Acceleration technology spreads the drive’s workload across several elements, enabling you to write data in seconds rather than minutes.
Hardware encryption
Get best-in-class hardware encryption.
Keep personal files and sensitive information secure from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit encryption – the same grade used by banks and hospitals. The Crucial MX100 is one of the only drives available that meets Microsoft® eDrive®, IEEE-1667, and TCG Opal 2.0 standards of encryption.
RAIN technology
Attain consistently fast speeds without compromising the reliability of your data.
Our engineers created RAIN technology to protect your data at the component level, similar to how RAID is used with multiple hard drives. This enterprise-class technology increases the security and protection of your data to a level that’s rarely available in consumer-class SSDs.
Packaging & First Look
The packaging is near identical to other Crucial drives in the range save for the product title. To save money on individual capacity packaging, Crucial simply add a sticker to the front of the box informing us of what capacity of drive is contained within. The box is made of cardboard and is sturdy enough to ensure adequate protection is provided.
The rear of the packaging tells us what is included in the box along with a link to the install guide as no hard copy is included. We also find a small stamp telling us that this SSD is covered by a three year limited warranty.
The drive itself is held firm in a plastic brace and further protected by a sealed anti static bag. As the drive is just 7mm high (thus aligning itself with Ultrabook HD standards), Crucial also provide the buyer with a spacer to increase the drives thickness to 9.5mm.
Mirroring the packaging the sticker on the SSD is placed centrally and looks attractive enough upon a contrasting aluminium casing. It is worth noting that the drives tabs are the opposite way around to what you would usually find them meaning the gold fingers are exposed when orientated in this position which may prove problematic when cable tidying with other SATA drives.
The rear of the drive features a further sticker, itself giving us details of the drive along with serial numbers required for warranty claims. Tamper protection comes in the form of a sticker covering one of the screw holes preventing you from opening up the SSD case without voiding the warranty.
Closer Look
Being a 512GB model we find that the green PCB is double sided with sixteen NAND modules in total (8 on each side of the PCB).
To the business end of the SSD we find a further eight Micron NAND flash modules along with the controller and accompanying DRAM.
Each NAND flash modules is based upon the new 16nm technology (previously 20nm) by Micron and provides 32GB per module to the overall capacity.
The Marvel controller with the product code of 88SS9189-BLD2 has been flashed with Crucial firmware. Following on from the Micron NAND modules, we find that Micron have also provided the Micron LPDDR2 DRAM which provide 512Mb of cache.
Overall, we find that the MX100 is strikingly similar is most respects to the M550 which is no bad thing. The drive is compliant with TGC Opal 2.0/IEEE 1667 encryption standards along with 256bit AES encryption. RAIN (Redundant Array of Independent NAND) is also featured which in essence works to restore data parity tables should the drive be powered down unexpectedly preventing data loss.
Test Setup & Methodology
Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
HDTune Pro 5.5
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
HDTune Pro 5.5
Test system
CPU Intel Core-i7 4770K
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– Crucial MX100 512GB(Sata 6Gbps)
– SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB(Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 850 Pro 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 730 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA Premier Pro SP920SS 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 460 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 150 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 500GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– Crucial MX100 512GB(Sata 6Gbps)
– SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB(Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 850 Pro 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 730 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA Premier Pro SP920SS 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 460 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 150 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 500GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Benchmarks: 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.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.
Benchmarks: Iometer
Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).
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.
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.
For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination with 100% Random Distribution – reporting back on IOPS and MBs per Second.
Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Benchmarks: HDTune Pro
A new utility we have added to our line-up of benchmarks is the ever popular HDTune Pro. HD Tune Pro is a hard disk / SSD utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.
Conclusion
The Crucial MX100 offers good performance at a very good price. Clearly, the MX100 does not offer ground breaking performance as it was consistently around mid-table throughout our suite of benchmarks. This however should not put you off from considering such a drive as the MX100 is an SSD that is built to offer good value for money and here is where it scores highly. From our searches we could not find a cheaper 512GB SSD, more over the nearest competition was from the 480GB range. Costing a smidgen over £150, the M100 offers superb value for money and while it may not be able to compete on raw speed with the fastest drives on the market, it still offers average SSD performance, which as we all know will put any mechanical drive to shame.
Our only worry with this drive is that any drive with this capacity is too big for a boot drive, yet far smaller than the largest mechanical drives for DATA storage purposes. This puts the drive in a difficult position because users who would buy this drive are unlikely to have any other. Ideal for notebook users certainly but desktop users we fear would prefer to use a faster, smaller boot drive and have the larger mechanical drives for data storage. This then could potentially lesson the appeal of such a large SSD unless you are looking for an all-in-one unit.
That isn’t to say you couldn’t use this component as a boot drive, clearly you could and also have the benefit of adding your most commonly used applications and games which would certainly speed up any system. Whichever your preference of HD configuration, this drive a very worthwhile purchase as £150 is unlikely to give you tangible performance benefits if spent elsewhere in a computer system because the SSD has to be the best performance upgrade currently available, especially for those still clinging to mechanical drives.
In summary:
The £ per GB void between mechanical and solid state drives has just been shortened. If you crave speed but want extra storage capacity then this solid state drive is worthy of consideration.
Pros
+ Excellent value for money
+ 3 year warranty
+ 7mm Height
Cons
– Lots of faster drives available (but at a much higher cost)
+ Excellent value for money
+ 3 year warranty
+ 7mm Height
Cons
– Lots of faster drives available (but at a much higher cost)
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
