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Brand | Crucial |
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Series | MX100 |
Model | CT256MX100SSD1 |
Device Type | Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) |
Used For | Consumer |
Form Factor | 2.5" |
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Capacity | 256GB |
Memory Components | MLC |
Interface | SATA III |
Controller | Marvell 88SS9189 with Micron Custom Firmware |
Max Sequential Read | Up to 550 MBps |
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Max Sequential Write | Up to 330 MBps |
4KB Random Read | Up to 85,000 IOPS |
4KB Random Write | Up to 70,000 IOPS |
MTTF | 1.5 million hours |
Features | Endurance (TBW): 72TB Extended Feature Set: RAIN Reliability, Opal (eDrive), Robust Data Protection, and Adaptive Thermal Monitoring Warranty: 3 Year Run your system longer than ever before -using less power. -With Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the Crucial MX100 is up to 94% more energy efficient than a typical hard drive. Push your drive to the limit and avoid overheating. -Adaptive Thermal Protection technology enables the Crucial MX100 to dynamically adjust activity based on how you're using the drive, allowing your system to stay cool. 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. Every NAND component in the MX100 is armed with four layers of Exclusive Data Defense. Protect all your data - even if the power goes out. -With Power Loss Protection, if you happen to be saving a file and you suddenly loose power, your data will still be preserved. 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. Get best-in-class hardware encryption. -Keep personal files information secure from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit encryption - the same grade used by banks and hospitals. The MX100 meets Microsoft eDrive, IEEE-1667, and TCG Opal 2.0. 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 perform write-related tasks in seconds rather than minutes. Attain consistently fast speeds without compromising data reliability. -Our engineers created RAIN technology. This enterprise-class, RAID-like technology increases the protection of data to a level rarely seen in consumer SSD's. |
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Power Consumption (Idle) | 0.1W |
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Power Consumption (Active) | 0.15W |
Operating Temperature | 0°C ~ +70°C |
Height | 7.00mm |
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Weight | 0.25 |
Date First Available | August 02, 2021 |
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Pros: Installed into a Toshiba laptop without any issue. Comes with 9mm adapter, and was very reliable. Cloned from old drive without issue and everything has booted up. Can't really speak on speed just because I install SSDs into a lot of old computers to get more life out of them.
Cons: It didn't make the CPU any faster. Start up is fast until it hits some of the larger start up programs, but thats not the SSDs fault.
Overall Review: The price was right until NewEgg raised it again, now it costs more than the MSRP and the older M500. So now I am off to buy more M500s because they cost less and work just as well in the systems I install these into.
Pros: Fast Quiet Cheap Coupon for Acronis True Image
Cons: Not as fast as other SSD's...
Overall Review: While not as fast as other SSD's this is by far the best value SSD I have purchased recently. I have been replacing HDD's with this SSD to get tremendous performance upgrades. It is quiet, cool and a tremendous upgrade to old, slow HDD's... Crucial have great support and warranty. Recommended.
Pros: Blazing speed Crucial brand Great bang for the buck My son's home-built i7-4790k GTX970 desktop PC now boots Win 8.1 in 10 seconds instead of 2 minutes Didn't use bundled Acronis, used Macrium Reflect free version to migrate OS drive to Crucial MX100 SSD
Cons: Okay, here's the caveat I referred to above. These Crucial SSDs with the Marvell controller are incompatible with the LPM (Link Power Management) feature of Intel SATA controllers. LPM is a power saving feature. On many PCs LPM is enabled by default and will cause the Crucial SSD to "freeze" or lock up the PC. Just Google "SSD freezing fix" or "SSD freeze" for more info on the problem. The only way to recover from this is to do a hard reset. To fix the issue, LPM must be disabled in Win7/8/8.1 either through a registry edit or by installing the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) RAID driver. The RST method worked for me. Now, I'm enjoying all of the high performance that the Crucial MX100 256GB SSD can deliver with no crashes or freeze ups.
Overall Review: When I first installed this Crucial MX100 SSD in my son's home-built i7-4790k desktop I got random system lockups and freezes. The only thing I could do to regain control was reboot the system. After learning about the freeze up issue with SSDs and Intel SATA controllers I downloaded and installed the Intel Rapid Storage Technology RAID driver which allowed me to disable LPM (look under the Performance tab). This SOLVED the problem and there were no more system freeze ups, crashes or lockups. I recommend Googling the article by Chris Coulson entitled "SSD Freezing Fix" or searching for "Fix SSD Hanging/Freezing/Slowdown" on YouTube. This issue dates back at least two years so I'm surprised to find that it is still unresolved and can still wreak havoc on new PCs having Intel SATA Controllers and Crucial SSDs. I hope that this post helps someone successfully diagnose and fix this difficult and frustrating problem. The Crucial MX100 256GB SSD is a fantastic piece of hardware and it's worth trying these tips to get it to work with your PC if you're having problems with lockups, crashes, etc. Specs: i7-4790k, 8GB Corsair Vengeance LP (2 x 4GB), EVGA GTX970 4GB VRAM, Corsair Vengeance w/ Corsair 750 W power supply, Acer 22" LCD monitor 1680x1050, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Crucial MX100 256GB SSD SSD, WDC Blue 1TB 7200rpm.
Pros: Super fast. I installed this in an older Dell desktop with 3gig SATA. Here are the Crystal Disk Mark results: Sequential Read : 220.405 MB/s Sequential Write : 253.371 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 219.069 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 236.064 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 23.227 MB/s [ 5670.5 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 41.545 MB/s [ 10142.7 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 27.136 MB/s [ 6624.9 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 55.833 MB/s [ 13631.2 IOPS] Pretty respectable for an older PC, and significantly faster than the WD Blue that was installed before. Windows Experience Index for boot drive increased from 5.9 to 7.4. The SSD included a downloadable LE version of Acronis True Image 2014, which is mostly an ad for buying the full version. It will help you migrate to the new drive, but that's about all. Acronis OEM is basically the same as Macrium Reflect Free, but I like Macrium better. Nice touch: the SSD comes with a spacer in the box, for laptop carriers that need the larger size. Didn't need it for this PC, but I was impressed that the spacer was included.
Cons: The MX100 does not come with any software or documentation about how to optimize your system settings for an SSD, and I didn't find anything like that on crucial.com. I installed a Samsung 840 EVO in another PC recently. Sammy provides a utility that can optimize your system settings based on various use profiles, perform diagnostics, and more. The Crucial drive is cheaper than the Sammy, so I didn't deduct an egg for the lack of SW or docs; but be aware that you will have to find optimization info on your own. (There might be some info on Crucial's forums, but they require you to register in order to even *read* forum posts. I have too many accounts already, so no.)
Overall Review: If you're installing this in a desktop PC, make sure you order an adapter to mount the drive to a 3.5" bay. I got the Rosewill plastic mounting kit, which was fine.
Pros: This is my 4th SSD so far, and is by far the fastest while also being the cheapest. I got this for $100 on release day when newegg had the $10 discount promo code, $100 for a newly release 256GB SSD from a well known brand is way too good of a deal to pass up. The read and write sequential is on par and in most cases surpasses the advertised speed. Getting 520/330 mb read/write sequential on AS SSD. When I raid 0 this with my M500 240gb, read and right almost double but not quite there, about 80% increase in performance which is still very good scaling.
Cons: Absolutely none, I do wish that Crucial put more effort in to their packaging because it completely sucks compare to other brand but that's just me being nitpicky.
Overall Review: The sata port and 4 screw holes should be flip so that the top is facing up when mounted.
Pros: Speed and Price. With prices falling the way they are, everyone should have one of these.
Cons: Why is this mandatory.
Overall Review: I jumped on the SSD bandwagon when they first hit the market, very expensive and unreliable in the beginning. We have come a long way in just a few years. Spinners will be something you tell your children about in a few years. I feel old.
Pros: So far so good. -My laptop speed increased dramatically. Exponentially. If you have basic IT knowledge and know an SSD will increase speed, take the extra time to learn how to make the SSD primary drive like I did with this solid state drive. Your games/media will not run as efficiently if you just add the SSD as a secondary drive. -I can run certain games on full screen I could not before with my disk drive! :D -Can boot in 7 seconds!!! WHOOOOO!
Cons: this is hardly a con (because I already knew what I was getting into) but no documentation included. Just a drive bay spacer included. Only added the website link for information on the box. -Single and only major con: since using a Samsung Evo SSD (which includes Cloning software) I figured cloning the SSD would be easy. Not so much for me. Crucial encourages you to drop an extra $50 on Acronis HD to clone SSD to make primary drive. After trying to mount Microsoft Backup images without a recovery disc, ended with frustration and began research on free cloning software. Found MACRIUM REFLECT gets the job done, now I'm running like a dream.
Overall Review: Having this SSD as a primary drive, and using an optical adapter bay for my old disk drive (1 TB) makes for an amazing machine.
Pros: We purchased one of these drives to compare to the Samsung 840 and 850 drives we use in the majority of our laptops and workstations. From a speed perspective, there are no concerns. The Crucial drive more than holds its own against the EVO-series drives. Samsung's 850 Pro drives are faster, but cost twice as much. Overall performance consistency is reasonably good as well. If the drive is nearly filled there are noticeable stalls until TRIM completes. Underprovisioning the drive by 20% solved this issue (see below).
Cons: The MX100 claims to have TCG Opal 2.0 support for hardware encryption. This is flaky at best. The first drive we had did allow encryption using a passphrase, but lost its configuration after three weeks. This led to a bricked drive - no available partitions. Crucial does not offer a utility to reset the PSID - essentially wiping the drive clean. This is a problem with other Crucial SSDs, but hdparm could reset those back to factory default conditions. The MX100 is reported as not being Opal 2 compliant by hdparm, so the drive could not be reset. Crucial sent a replacement MX100 with newer firmware, which did not allow setting a drive password at all. Not only did hdparm in Linux complain about lacking Opal 2 support, but so did Bitlocker and Symantec Endpoint Encryption under Windows. If having hardware-encrypted data is a requirement for your use, the MX100 is not a good choice. Crucial's tech support claimed this should be fixed in a firmware upgrade, but 7 months after launch no revised firmware is available.
Overall Review: We opted to stick with Samsung SSDs - the EVO series for most work, the Pro series for high performance needs. The $30 price premium buys a more compatible drive with full support for firmware upgrades and optimization utilities. Having a SSD where, depending on the firmware revision, encryption either needs to be done through software (with the associated performance hit) or is unreliable and can brick the drive isn't worth the lower cost. If encryption is not a requirement for you, the MX100 offers excellent speed. To keep performance consistent, however, we found the drive needed to be underprovisioned. When installing the operating system simply make a partition having 80% of the drive capacity. This gives enough free space for Crucial's garbage collection algorithms to maintain performance without causing noticeable hangs and slowing.