Crucial M4 SSD, is it a good match for the 2011 MBP 2.3 GHz i7?

[Benito]

Has anyone installed the new Crucial M4 SSD in their 2011 MBP that are SATA III capable? I'm considering this drive but wondering if anyone has had any experience with this drive in a 2011 MBP. Any hibernation problems or anything else that has been problematic.

I had an Intel X-25 SSD in my 2007 MBP and I loved it so I'd like to have a new SSD in my new MBP too.

Thanks in advance for any advice that you might have for me.

 

[GeekPill]

Since they just released it, its hard to have any amount of detailed user experienced. However if you go ahead and buy one from Crucial themselves if anything was wrong with it, or not working in the way you would like, then they will allow you to return it.

 

[ViviUO]

Nothing beats the OWC 6G or OCZ Vertex 3.

They are the fastest drives you can currently get. Period.

 

[rev.b]

I just ordered a m4 128 Gb for my 15" MBP '10.

Hardmac http://www.hardmac.com/articles/400/page1 tested it, even with the TRIM hack on, and they say "The disk doesn't seem to have any problem with Mac OS X, but we will check that more extensively in our future tests."

Will report when installed.

 

[rev.b]

Nothing beats the OWC 6G or OCZ Vertex 3.

They are the fastest drives you can currently get. Period.

From the reviews, in the real world, Crucial m4 is definitely on the same league. And it's cheaper.

Yes, Vertex 3 benchmark higher on synthetic tests. Big deal.

 

[GeekPill]

From the reviews, in the real world, Crucial m4 is definitely on the same league. And it's cheaper.

Yes, Vertex 3 benchmark higher on synthetic tests. Big deal.

Agreed and I trust Crucial alot more then the other companies (s)he said..

 

[Weaselboy]

Nothing beats the OWC 6G or OCZ Vertex 3.

They are the fastest drives you can currently get. Period.

Not really. Read this test from Anandtech that shows the M4 on an equal footing with the Vertex 3.

Also, one should consider if the vendor offers a way to update firmware on a Mac. Crucial and Intel both offer a boot CDRom ISO for firmware updates on the Mac. OWC requires you to spend $99 for Windows to install under Bootcamp so you can upgrade firmware.

 

[teddat]

For me, with all the hype of the OWC and OCZ, I'll be sticking with crucial, or intel.

random access speed, 4k read write, and idle power consumption usually take a backseat to "max read, write speeds" which doesn't translate well to normal real world use.

you don't have to agree with me but idle power consumption is a concern of mine because I'm mostly working mobile. Anandtech lists the crucial m4 and intel 320 about .66w idle. the newest sandforce controller based ssds are about 1.6w . even a seagate momentus xt is 1.2w

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/11

 

[Benito]

I just ordered a m4 128 Gb for my 15" MBP '10.

Hardmac http://www.hardmac.com/articles/400/page1 tested it, even with the TRIM hack on, and they say "The disk doesn't seem to have any problem with Mac OS X, but we will check that more extensively in our future tests."

Will report when installed.

rev.b, I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the M4 once you've installed it.

 

[johnnyturbouk]

Not really. Read this test from Anandtech that shows the M4 on an equal footing with the Vertex 3.

Also, one should consider if the vendor offers a way to update firmware on a Mac. Crucial and Intel both offer a boot CDRom ISO for firmware updates on the Mac. OWC requires you to spend $99 for Windows to install under Bootcamp so you can upgrade firmware.

are you reading the same review, as I am:

"I'm not sure whether to call the m4 an evolutionary upgrade in performance or a shift in performance. Write speed is faster across the board, but read speed took a definite hit compared to the C300. Overall Crucial has a faster drive on its hands, one that's particularly well suited to most of our lighter workloads. It's only in our new 2011 heavy multitasking workload that the m4 really fell short. For your average desktop usage model, the m4 is either the best or second best you can get."

"I am a bit put off by the fact that the m4 doesn't seem to have the peak sequential performance of some of the other next-generation drives we've reviewed."

"Crucial's very late garbage collection allows the possibility for some very poor write speeds over time. If you're running in a configuration without TRIM support, I'd say this is enough to rule out the m4."
by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/31/2011 3:16:00 AM

Im very happy with my sandforce drives, and since i play windows games - thus own win7 legitimately, firmware update is not an issue for me.

Intel 510 also sounded tempted at first, but i heard it was a hit and miss trying to get the drive to negotiate @ sata 6

 

[kdoug]

For me, with all the hype of the OWC and OCZ, I'll be sticking with crucial, or intel.

random access speed, 4k read write, and idle power consumption usually take a backseat to "max read, write speeds" which doesn't translate well to normal real world use.

you don't have to agree with me but idle power consumption is a concern of mine because I'm mostly working mobile. Anandtech lists the crucial m4 and intel 320 about .66w idle. the newest sandforce controller based ssds are about 1.6w . even a seagate momentus xt is 1.2w

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/11

OWC and OCZ have figured out that speed sells. Unfortunately for OCZ this will/is going to catch up to them. They are sacrificing reliability for speed. Unlike Intel when they shrunk their die's, to save money and supposedly pass along the savings, the company decided to charge the same for less. Good luck ever getting a rebate from them. Look at some of the reviews on newegg.com. If this keeps up newegg will punt this company faster than you can say "beach ball".

 

[ngletu]

Hi Benito.
Macbook Pro and Vespa together. What a great couple!!!
M4 is great, however there are many choices for you to consider.
If you want reliable SSD i think Intel is the best.

 

[rev.b]

Hi,
i build the m4 256 in my macbook pro 13" i5 yesterday( ordered von crucial europe store). I made an clone with CCC an it works fine for a few minutes, then it began to freeze and beachballing -.-(like the c300). I made an Pram and smc reset,fresh install ,too. It didnt helped. So im going to send it back, maybe the hdd-cable is the reason, but the vertex 3 240gb worked fine and performed good in the Mbp( But to much power consumption in IDLE, two times more than crucial m4 or intel 320).

and sry for my bad english. Im from germany and i hope its not that horrible =)

That's bad news.

Try formatting the SSD and do a clean install. CCC, if I'm not mistaken, copies block by block and may give bad results.

I've got a Scorpio black 750 gb (which will be moved to an optibay-like), and when I tried to clone the old disk the new one became corrupt beyond repair, presumably because it uses advanced drive format (4k clusters). Only when I formatted the new disk and installed from the OS X install disk it worked.

So I wouldn´t rule out the m4 before doing a clean install.

 

[Weaselboy]

are you reading the same review, as I am:

Go look at the various speed tests in the review. The M4 beats the Vertex 3 in some and the Vertex 3 is ahead in others. PC Vantage test that mimics normal system usage, both drives are very close. That was my point in response to the unqualified comment that the Vertex 3 is the fastest drive available.

 

[rev.b]

rev.b, I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the M4 once you've installed it.

Of course, but keep in mind that my '10 MBP is 3 Gbps only, so I'm expecting less problems than those reported on some '11.

 

[Benito]

Hi Benito.
Macbook Pro and Vespa together. What a great couple!!!
M4 is great, however there are many choices for you to consider.
If you want reliable SSD i think Intel is the best.

Hey, do we know each other from somewhere? How did you know I ride a Vespa?

Yes Vespas and Macs do go together very well.

 

[adnoh]

Its a latest gen drive and the c300 had very good performance.

I think its a good choice.

 

[johnnyturbouk]

Go look at the various speed tests in the review. The M4 beats the Vertex 3 in some and the Vertex 3 is ahead in others. PC Wtf! No he needs to grow a pair and accept some responsibility / I'm so sick of parasites preying on innocent victims then makin out they are the victims!* in this drive, as real life performance goes- will depend on on the usage requirements of the user- for me seq read/write is important for my needs!

Since the trim hack is somewhat temperamental on says 6 drives, and with lion only rumoured to support trim for apple ssds only- like anand said, the M4 with its mediocre performance overall and poor garbage control is ruled out for osx. Since the 510 is far from trouble free on the sata6 interface; I'm pretty impressed with the sandforce drives.

As for reliability goes, are people quoting that one single French study which showed intel to have a failure rate of 0.5% and OCZ 2.9%?
when looking at evidence based studies one needs to appreciate the limitations and shortcomings of the study in question. How many ssds are actually sold in France? I'm pretty confident ocz drives ship a lot more in Europe than intel. I know the USA market is many times larger than the Pan-European Market and would be a more reliable representation of sales and failure rates. Also companies such as OWC, mushkin, patriot etc are absent

Has anybody got proof of the reliability of intel drives, not subjective anecdotes?

 

[Weaselboy]

As for reliability goes, are people quoting that one single French study which showed intel to have a failure rate of 0.5% and OCZ 2.9%?
when looking at evidence based studies one needs to appreciate the limitations and shortcomings of the study in question. How many ssds are actually sold in France? I'm pretty confident ocz drives ship a lot more in Europe than intel. I know the USA market is many times larger than the Pan-European Market and would be a more reliable representation of sales and failure rates. Also companies such as OWC, mushkin, patriot etc

Has anybody got proof of the reliability of intel drives, not subjective anecdotes?

Although the reliability info cited by Anandtech may be imperfect, I have not seen anything better or any information that it is anything other than objectively collected data. France alone has a population of 62 million people, and the EU over 500 million, so it is a relatively large market.

I'm not sure what you base your assertion on that OCZ sells more SSD than Intel in Europe.

 

[johnnyturbouk]

Yes the EU has an estimated population of 500 million, but one needs to bear in mind that not all European markets and especially hight-tech electrical equipment and computer components shipments will be standardised across EU member states! The UK, Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavian countries are far more likely to represent a larger share of the SSd market than poorer EU member states like those in the former Soviet block.

As for France having a population of 65million, i doubt population is truly representative of the sales of SSD drives - China and India have a combined population of 2.5 billion - and im very confident that SSD sales in these countries will not be x5 greater than those in the EU or USA. Without actual studies done on the matter, and clear delineation of product distribution, density and failure rate its not so clear the true reliability of these drives world-wide. I also doubt that the SSD sales in Frances are greater than those in other EU states such as the UK or Germany.

If one goes to any high street computer component distributor in the UK - e.g PC World, they will se a large variety of OCZ products. I recall seing a few intel x-25 on sales, but it is still relatively difficult to order the intel 320 and 510 within Europe - compared to OCZ and crucial products.

My assertion is based on google shopping -products review and other similar price comparison sites - also the big electrical distributors in the UK for e.g. like amazon, dabs, scan.com stock both ocz and intel drives, but far more smaller electrical companies stock ocz and crucial drives.

.

 

[johnnyturbouk]

thanks for the link - i did read this a while back and forgot to bookmark it!

Hitachi is plummeting, which was first in the previous ranking! Western Digital retained its second place despite a failure rate increasing, while Maxtor is occupying the first place.

More specifically the failure rate for 1TB drives:

- 5.76% Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B
- 5.20% Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C
- 3.68% Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
- 3.37%: Samsung SpinPoint F1
- 2.51% Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
- 2.37%: WD Caviar Green WD10EARS
- 2.10% Seagate Barracuda LP
- 1.57%: Samsung SpinPoint F3
- 1.55%: WD Caviar Green WD10EADS
- 1.35%: WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS
- 1.24%: Maxtor DiamondMax 23

Hitachi is logically the less well placed, what with two separate lines! What about the 2 TB version?

- 9.71%: WD Caviar Black WD2001FASS
- 6.87% Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000
- 4.83%: WD Caviar Green WD20EARS
- 4.35% Seagate Barracuda LP
- 4.17%: Samsung EcoGreen F3
- 2.90%: WD Caviar Green WD20EADS

Overall, failure rates recorded are bad. That does not really want to entrust to 2TB of data to these discs alone: ​​a mirroring will not be too much for securing data. Logically 7200 rpm disks are less reliable than the 5400/5900 rpm, with almost 10% for the Western model!

For the first time, we also integrate SSDs in this article type. The rates of failure recorded by manufacturer:

- Intel 0.59%
- Corsair 2.17%
- Crucial 2.25%
- Kingston 2.39%
- OCZ 2.93%

Intel stands here with a failure rate of the most flattering. Among the few models sold over 100 copies, displays a rate of no more than 5% VAS.

compared to the spinning platter drives - the OCZ failure rate of 2.9% is really not that bad - pity he did not state what the total number of drives sold were for a more accurate representation of no. shipped compared to no. stated as faulty!

 

[rev.b]

Mine just shipped today (crucial uk was closed because of the royal wedding...) when I get it I will test it. *Fingers crossed*

 

[mac jones]

The 512GB version of the M4 can be had for $900 US.
This is about half of what OWC and OCZ want for their new 6gb/s drives.

Something to consider if you want more room. Most of us will want the new 6gb/s drives for the new Macbooks, so the options are much fewer.

Any thoughts about this?

UPDATE: I googled around and found a disturbing post on the Crucial forum. Someone with a 2011 15" pro is getting beachballs with a 512GB M4. A reply to his somewhat distraught post, was to the effect that he should return it to Apple and have them put in a new SATA cable (not exactly a realistic option).

So i'd stay way clear of these until we hear more about this. It's improbable that this was user error or and isolated issue; it just sounds so familiar. Also, this is a 15" pro, which hasn't had any issues compared to the 13" and 17" 2011 pro's.

UPDATE #2 (gotta love these real-time updates)

Another person is having problems. Here's the thread

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/M4-512gb-Macbook-Pro-15-i7-2-3-2011/td-p/45848

 

[kappaknight]

I was one of the early adopters of the Micron C400, the 512GB version on a 2011 SB MBP. I did apply the Trim hack from the get go and I am experiencing sporadic beach ball activities.

Is it fast? Very. Boots up in 2.5 gears and Photoshop opens in 1 second. However, until a permanent fix has been found for 3rd party SATA III SSD's, I'm not sure I would recommend any of them. While regular hard drives may be slower, it's worth it to not have the beach balls randomly stop you from working.

 

[mac jones]

I was one of the early adopters of the Micron C400, the 512GB version on a 2011 SB MBP. I did apply the Trim hack from the get go and I am experiencing sporadic beach ball activities.

Is it fast? Very. Boots up in 2.5 gears and Photoshop opens in 1 second. However, until a permanent fix has been found for 3rd party SATA III SSD's, I'm not sure I would recommend any of them. While regular hard drives may be slower, it's worth it to not have the beach balls randomly stop you from working.

I'm not having any issues with a Vertex 3, but that might just be either temporary, or just lucky.

There needs to be a comprehensive analysis done on the various new models and how the interact with the Apple products and PC's. Until then, your advise may be the less costly solution.