Crucial MX100 256GB SSD: Cut-throat competition in flash land

Keenly priced sweet-spot storage

Form and function

Even at this price point Crucial has made sure that all the tasty features of the M550 are carried through to the MX100; power loss and thermal protection, AES-256bit, TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-11667 hardware encryption technologies and RAIN (Redundant Array of Independent NAND) to protect against block failures.

Crucial's M550 comes in a variety of form factors, but the MX100 is 2.5in, 7mm-only

It also supports DevSleep, which is handy for notebook use, but Crucial is only releasing the MX100 series as 2.5in 7mm format. Currently there are no plans to build mSATA or M.2 versions, so there will be no MX100’s to fit the more svelte notebooks or ultraportables.

Crucial quotes Sequential Read speeds of up to 550MB/s across the three drives but the Sequential Write performance differs considerably between them. The 512GB is quoted as up to 500MB/s, the 256GB 300MB/s and the 128GB a lowly 150MB/s. When I tested the 256GB drive with the ATTO benchmark it gave figures of 554MB/s and 344MB/s respectively for the Read/Writes – pretty much in the ball park of what the company claims.

ATTO (left) and AS SSD (right) – click for a larger image

The Marvell controller isn’t concerned about what type of data it’s handling, which can be seen from the 4K test in Crystal Disk Mark. The default uncompressed data test produced scores of 29.72MB/s and 87.75MB/s for reads/writes, while switching to the compressed data test brought figures of 27.25MB/s for reads and 85.89MB/s for writes.

CrystalDiskMark – default test (left), compressible data text (right)

I then did some real life testing and by using the TeraCopy app I was able not only to get a time for file copy but also a MB/s figure. Copying a 50GB folder of mixed file types (28,523 files in total) took 10m 7s (@72MB/s), a 17GB Blu-Ray image took just 2m 26s (@112MB/s) and a 4GB image took a mere 34s (@113MB/s) to copy.

I then timed how long it took to open the 4GB image (300dpi) in Photoshop (2m 58s), re-render the image to 600dpi (18m 13s) and finally, how long it took to save the resulting 16GB image - in this case 11m 52s. The drive took four and a half minutes to install Office 2010.

No mega 1TB bargains to be had but the 256GB model is a bit of a steal

The Reg Verdict

It may not be the fastest drive in the 250/256GB sweet spot but that price tag makes a compelling argument in favour of the Crucial drive regardless. For comparison, a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO costs around £116 while the 256GB Samsung 840 Pro is even dearer at £159.

If all you want is fast storage for everyday use without the price premium for the fastest on the block, then, quite frankly, the MX100 256GB SSD should meet your needs and save you a few quid into the bargain. ®