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

DarwinOSX said:
why people are installing this TRIM hack as if its seem kind of reliable standard solution is beyond me.
Click to expand...

as anand said:

"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

This rules the M4 out for me

Im not very happy with the OWC 6G either and the crippled f/w

OCZ or intel 510 seems like the best bet - i prefer the V3 due to the sandforce controller GC -

I will wait till late next month when i return from Tibet -

hopefully the sata cable debacle will have been sorted and more is known about compatibility - currently my OWC mercury extreme is working flawlessly - avg seq. reads 265mbs; write 255 mb/s
boot-up 12-15secs
 
^If you're running that now, which is a kick ass drive, it may not be worth upgrading :eek:

I wish I could see a side-by-side comparison of the same systems using the faster SATA2 drives (ex the older 34nm Mercury Extreme Pro or the older 34nm Vertex) compared to the current SATA3 ones. I am just really curious as to if load times are that much better, as a 12-15 second boot time is already fast to the point of stupor to those not familiar with the SSD and OSX.
 
NickZac said:
The factory SSD works like a charm and it is built off of some of the finest flash memory made. And if anything, it is a problem with the drives themselves. Many current SSDs seem to have questionable levels of quality and reliability, so it may not be the Mac...
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Not to be rude but I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. Yes, the factory SSD works like a charm, but it's also connecting only at a SATA II speed.

Most of the SATA III SSD's are great! (No wake sleep issues, faster than SATA II on a number of operations.) The only thing that we're having issues with is the occasional beach ball from whatever I/O issues the Mac is having with the SSD. If the factory SSD connected at SATA III speeds, I'd expect to see similar issues as well. Something is definitely wrong here but it has nothing to do with the quality of the SSD's NAND chips.

We're not talking about file corruptions or the SSD losing space due to bad sectors. We're talking about the inability for the two devices to communicate effectively together at the highest connection speed both devices are saying they can handle.
 
kappaknight said:
Not to be rude but I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. Yes, the factory SSD works like a charm, but it's also connecting only at a SATA II speed.

Most of the SATA III SSD's are great! (No wake sleep issues, faster than SATA II on a number of operations.) The only thing that we're having issues with is the occasional beach ball from whatever I/O issues the Mac is having with the SSD. If the factory SSD connected at SATA III speeds, I'd expect to see similar issues as well. Something is definitely wrong here but it has nothing to do with the quality of the SSD's NAND chips.

We're not talking about file corruptions or the SSD losing space due to bad sectors. We're talking about the inability for the two devices to communicate effectively together at the highest connection speed both devices are saying they can handle.
Click to expand...

You just validated of half of what I said. :confused::confused::confused:

Beachball issues in themselves are an issue that the factory SSD does not have. I don't think most people want to pay MORE money to have their computer freeze up. Even you said yourself that something is wrong. I assume Apple decided to use the SATAII SSD for a reason. And the 2xnm technology used in the SATA3 SSDs (Hold Intel's 510) is NOT proven like 34nm flash as it has not been around very long. Furthermore, companies are shafting consumers on 2xnm flash and most of the current SATAIII SSDs have had questions raised regarding them, such as the recent review of the OWC's 6.0 Mercury Extreme Pro. Perhaps it is not an issue, but I think it is ridiculous to pay more for less, and to consider spending more money on something that is problematic.

If I want to watch a beachball spin, I will go play volleyball in my pool and not play data transfer on my computer.
 
so what's the dealio on this?

i have a '11 13" i5 MBP

will the full speed of this drive work? i was considering the OCZ v3 but this drive is 33% cheaper so the discount is very tempting..
 
TXBDan said:
I have the 128g M4 installed in the primary bay of my 2011 15" MBP now.

Installed fine, shows 6gigabit connection properly.

Runs mighty fast, but i'm not sure its fully up to speed. Here are the results from Xbench:

sequential:
4k write: 193 MB/s
256k write: 169 MB/s
4k read: 33.33 MB/s
256k read: 270 MB/s

random:
4k write: 150 MB/s
256k write: 180 MB/s
4k read: 16.82 MB/s
256k read: 248 MB/s

Does that seem normal or on the slow side? I'm going to go compare with benchmarks from other sites, etc later on. Is there a different/better HD bench tool for mac?

Oh and no hiccups or beach balls so far, but i've only had it running for about an hour.
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Which installation process did you follow?
 
I want to elaborate on this further. Have you by chance looked at user reviews for the Vertex 3, which everyone is praising like crazy? The issues are not limited to the MacBook Pro only...

At New Egg, the 120GB Vertex III MAX IOPS Edition has the following reviews:
5 Stars: 50% (11)
4 Stars: 14% (3)
3 Stars: 0% (0)
2 Stars: 14% (3)
1 Star: 23% (5)

One quarter of all users gave it 1 star, most who reported mass hardware malfunction.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0227714&cm_re=vertex_3-_-20-227-714-_-Product



Ok? Let's try another Vertex 3.

5 Stars: 75% (40)
4 Stars: 8% (4)
3 Stars: 0% (0)
2 Stars: 4% (2)
1 Star: 13% (7)

Should we say that 13% giving this product 1 star is good? For $300? No way Jose!!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0227706&cm_re=vertex_3-_-20-227-706-_-Product


Does this make you want spend money on this? With that said, the Vertex 2 reviews are even less flattering (especially the "award-winning" models), so this may be related to OCZ's manufacturing and/or quality control, but this does not make what everyone calls the 'best' SATAIII drive to be anywhere near "great" as you say, at least by my logic. The OWC drive has also had quality issues considered. The Crucial M4 has limited and mixed reviews, and it at least seems that the Crucial C300 has been changed from its previous design. The one exception to this is the Intel 510, which despite being slower than the Vertex and OWC, seems to be a much better built drive and users are much happier with.


kappaknight said:
Not to be rude but I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. Yes, the factory SSD works like a charm, but it's also connecting only at a SATA II speed.

Most of the SATA III SSD's are great! (No wake sleep issues, faster than SATA II on a number of operations.) The only thing that we're having issues with is the occasional beach ball from whatever I/O issues the Mac is having with the SSD. If the factory SSD connected at SATA III speeds, I'd expect to see similar issues as well. Something is definitely wrong here but it has nothing to do with the quality of the SSD's NAND chips.

We're not talking about file corruptions or the SSD losing space due to bad sectors. We're talking about the inability for the two devices to communicate effectively together at the highest connection speed both devices are saying they can handle.
Click to expand...
 
johnnyturbouk said:
as anand said:

"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

This rules the M4 out for me
Click to expand...

I ran a 256GB C300 for just over a year, filled it bar 20GB, rewrote GBs daily and it didn't develop poor write speeds. And that was with just the original firmware. The M4 is likely a very good drive indeed. Reviews and synthetic benchmarks simply don't reflect reality, they're a guide yes, but YMMV. Mine did.
 
JasonH42 said:
I ran a 256GB C300 for just over a year, filled it bar 20GB, rewrote GBs daily and it didn't develop poor write speeds. And that was with just the original firmware. The M4 is likely a very good drive indeed. Reviews and synthetic benchmarks simply don't reflect reality, they're a guide yes, but YMMV. Mine did.
Click to expand...

Mac OSX is pretty good at looking after SSDs, however SSDs without firmware garbage collection or TRIM, are currently a poort decision. They do degrade overtime and often has been reported that under heavy use can become slower then conventional Hard Drives. Luckily as I mentioned OSX is usually less heavy on SSDs, drives do degrade and thus the TRIM support in Lion, but it is not as bad as a SSD on a windows comp without TRIM. Unfortunately there is no factual reason for this which has been discovered as yet, if there was i would link to it.
 
NickZac said:
You just validated of half of what I said. :confused::confused::confused:

Beachball issues in themselves are an issue that the factory SSD does not have. I don't think most people want to pay MORE money to have their computer freeze up. Even you said yourself that something is wrong. I assume Apple decided to use the SATAII SSD for a reason. And the 2xnm technology used in the SATA3 SSDs (Hold Intel's 510) is NOT proven like 34nm flash as it has not been around very long. Furthermore, companies are shafting consumers on 2xnm flash and most of the current SATAIII SSDs have had questions raised regarding them, such as the recent review of the OWC's 6.0 Mercury Extreme Pro. Perhaps it is not an issue, but I think it is ridiculous to pay more for less, and to consider spending more money on something that is problematic.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how I validated what you said. I'm not claiming SATA III drives to be trouble free, I just don't think the issues are with the NAND chips - which is what you're suggesting.

Also, companies are switching to 25nm chips cause they are cheaper. While I'm personally not a fan, I don't think people are paying more for them than their 34nm counter parts.
 
kappaknight said:
I'm not sure how I validated what you said. I'm not claiming SATA III drives to be trouble free, I just don't think the issues are with the NAND chips - which is what you're suggesting.

Also, companies are switching to 25nm chips cause they are cheaper. While I'm personally not a fan, I don't think people are paying more for them than their 34nm counter parts.
Click to expand...

22-28nm technology is simply untested to the degree of 34nm. 2xnm has a limited lifespan by design, although this is likely a mute point given both sizes can do a stupidly high amount of read/write cycles. Is the 2xnm design bad by default? Likely not, but the big 2xnm drives now have, at least for me, raised questions about longevity, and this is more related to the maker of the 2x nm chips, as well as many makers who are refusing to disclose any details on their 2xnm chips, some which will not even disclose the exact size.

At least some of them have not had costs decrease, such as how a few makers have dropped 2xnm flash memory into their former 34nm drives without any type of notice and kept on selling them for the exact same price.
 
I just wanted to update this thread and say that after a solid 3 weeks of use, this thing is working fine. Maybe one 10sec beachball per week or so. Definitely a nonissue to me. Its running along like a champ.
 
Thanks for the update Dan. I am thinking that I'll wait until Lion is released and reassess my needs at that time. The release of Lion might fix any remaining issues and it would give me a good opportunity to do a new install.
 
m4 256GB

Here's what I got from my 15" 2011 2.2GHz MBP with a 256GB m4. My MBP has 8GB ram installed.

Drive Type M4-CT256M4SSD2
Disk Test 418.97
Sequential 253.85
Uncached Write 483.23 296.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 347.34 196.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 111.83 32.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 535.77 269.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1198.66
Uncached Write 2257.77 239.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 645.21 206.55 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2050.59 14.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1167.41 216.62 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
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