I ordered a Crucial M4 256GB...

It seems to be getting great reviews and the Intel 3190 is way too pricey. I am going to clone my Intel 160GB to it. Win 7. I guess I should really do a fresh install.

But I like to get up and running right away and can do the fresh install later.

I hope I like it. I will miss the Intel Toolbox!

 

Intel Toolbox is needed when there is no TRIM support in your OS.

 

You should be fine cloning a Win7 install to a Win7 install as long as the Win7 was done as a fresh install at some point (with a format, which would get the alignment right). Bottom line, if it is aligned now, you'll be fine cloning.

The M4 is a terrific drive, I have the 256GB myself and love it. Just make sure you have at least firmware 0002 on that drive before using it. 0002 fixed an issue with LPM that could cause stuttering. If you want, there is also firmware 0009 (don't ask me why 0003-0008 were skipped...) which boosted speeds some. In fact, sequential read speeds top 500MB/s on that firmware. But it isn't necessary, 0002 is.

The drive will have the firmware revision stamped on it, it will be it's own line and will likely be either 0001 or 0002, as 0009 JUST came out last week.

Enjoy it!

And Honzik, Intel Toolbox is useless if you don't have an Intel SSD...and he has Win 7 anyway, which does TRIM.

 

Yeah, I cannot really remember when I last did a fresh Windows 7 install. Maybe never. Yikes! But maybe I did and I forgot. Anyways, a fresh install will most likely get done this time. I will keep my "old" Intel 320 up until it is ready to go.

I just think the tool box is a nice touch and think all SSD's should have one. I am looking forward to this drive. I may flash to the latest firmware before any installs.

It will be here in a day!

 

Enjoy it, like I am doing!!

 

Cape, I think you should flash the drive first!

See:
AnandTech - The Crucial m4 SSD Update: Faster with FW0009

 

nice review

 

Definitely get at least 0002 on there if it isn't already, 0009 does give some nice boosts on sequential reads, not that those are terribly important on a boot drive. Slight boost in random 4k reads, which is worth the update.

 

Good idea, I will flash first! Now looking for where to get that. Found it. I am thinking the drive will be here tomorrow!

 

Interesting 'final word'
If you don't want a SandForce drive and want something more affordable than Intel's SSD 510, the m4 just started looking a lot better.


M4 was a much better model from day 1, at least comparing with anything with SF. He seems to forget that the #1 criteria of a storage device is 'YOU DON'T LOSS DATA'. SF(even assuming it is faster which is a big question mark) is like a sport car that can get up to 250km/h but you may find the brake not working when you want it.

 

With the performance increase thanks to 0009 and the aggressive pricing, the m4 is a very nice option. I'm not sure what Intel is doing with the 510 pricing right now, it's not even close to competitive, at least at NE.

 

Indeed, M4 as of 0009 is kind of flawless. I don't recall any repeatable outstanding issue(other than Anand's random 4K write test but without knowing exactly what he did, can't comment and 35MB/s for random 4K is still very fast).

 

Nice comment on the car Right on the money.

AnAnd's SSD reviews have long been an issue of hot debate. His tests are rather odd and tailored to Sandforce drives. OCZ apparently will refuse to send another drive for review if a reviewer says a single negative thing about them, and AnAnd has been rather kiss-upping to Sandforce stuff the last 2 years. I was surprised to see him even say something that positive about the M4. Honestly the M4 was nearly perfect the day it launched, there was only the LPM issue that affected some but not all systems. And Crucial was quick to fix that. Sandforce 22xx drives were a disaster the day they launched.

For the last couple of months, the M4 has really been the best drive to get. Terrific speed (which just got even better), very competitive pricing for an SSD, and great reliability. Crucial has been using the Marvell controllers for quite a while now, they seem to have them down pretty good. Now if Intel would lower the pricing on the 510 to be more competitive, you would have a choice to make. But with the 510 using the more expensive NAND (30-whatever it is nm versus the 22 for the M4), you aren't going to see it priced the same as the M4 anytime soon. But even with that, there is over a $100 difference in price between the two ~250GB models...

 

thank you and to extend that a little bit, the brake also may suddenly kick in when you don't want it, their lovely DuraWrite.

 

Flawless maybe a little strong, but yeah, I get your point, it's a very nice drive. This is also the first time we've ever given an Editor's Choice award to a drive after a firmware release, really is an interesting situation. I was on the phone with Crucial engineers the other day talking through the firmware ins and outs, I give them a ton of credit for really listening to the needs of the client space and adjusting on the fly. We're also going to put through the 128GB model soon, so we'll see how that goes.

 

Yeah, 'flawless' is a little strong for the issues this drive still has (by an addmitedly very small % of users). The $100 difference to an Intel 510 is easily worth it to me for my production systems.

What we need as users is a bootable Intel SSD ToolBox (or similar) that can adjust the firmware parameters to more closely match the aspects of the drive our specific usage patterns demand from our storage subsystems.

As the following link seems to indicate, wearing out the current drives is simply not possible - at least not in 'normal' usage scenarios:

See:
SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm


With the leeway to give up long term usability (1-2 yrs of service vs. 3-5yrs of service) for the possibility to increase real world performance in aspects that really matter to us, a 'tuneable' firmware would really make an SSD a real performance enhancing upgrade, especially if each such SSD could be uniquely tuned in a multi-SSD system.

Way back when (~1995...) a multi-HDD setup with each HDD specifically selected for the function it was to perform optimally (O/S drive, Program drive, Data drive, etc.), the overall response of the system was greatly improved compared to even the most expensive, biggest and fastest single drive at the time (SCSI...). A 'tuneable' SSD firmware could achieve that same jump in performance today, imo.

That same kind of system 'tuning' with multiple SSD's of impeccable reliability (Intel, otherwise, we could be just mix and matching currently available SSD's from different manufacturers...) would really give us a system that is performing at a markedly different level than what is currently possible. Especially in the production environment that I am (only/mostly) interested in.

I would be the first to try even the gimmicky SF based drives with all the firmware parameters open to my interpretations instead of being optimized for useless ATTO runs. (Just to see if actual performance than mostly 'snappiness' is gained by such a setup).

Wonder who will be the first to offer such a product?

I know I would be the first to buy it.

 

Interested to know the outstanding issues you were referring to.

 

The same ones as mentioned in Anand's article: instead of BSOD's he gets stutters of several seconds - from several per day to a few per month (with the new firmware).

Others are still reporting BSOD's with the new firmware.

 

The stutters in that article refer to Sandforce 22xx drives:

I've heard of only 1-2 issues with the M4 since FW 0002, with those being MAC issues. Not heard anything about BSOD with the M4. Sandforce drives? Heck yea, plenty.

 

You ordered a 256 GB M4? Me, too. It cost nearly as much as my entire notebook (Best Buy Asus K53TA), but I had some extra cash burning a hole in my pocket this month.

 

Thanks for the correction.

I still have read about these issues (obviously elsewhere), but thought that Anand was also repeating/verifying them.

I'll try to search a bit later to see if I can find a link for my statements.

 

Yes, I got the 256GB M4. Do not really need all the space but want the speed! Gonna track it now but I think tomorrow for delivery!

 

M4 128 GB on Shell Shocker at NE right now. Likely won't last the day at 30% off.

 

Yea, not saying the issues don't exist. I would be interested in seeing them as i have not heard of any problems wince FW 0002 aside from a couple MAC users, and we all know how nicely MAc can play with hardware sometimes

 

FWIW we have the 128GB inbound I'm told and will post benchmarks as soon as we can. Probably next week.

 

Darn. Was supposed to come today. Delayed by the storm. Should be here tomorrow.

 

OK, I got it and did a fresh install. It was so slow to install that I thought maybe my external USB CD player had broken but I did get Windows 7 and most of my software. then dragged my data from the old drive.

Somehow, I managed to install Windows without creating a small extra partition like it usually does. I do not care about this, but it made me think did I do the right things so that I will have a properly aligned SSD?

Of course, as long as I was doing a fresh install, I wanted it to be properly aligned.

The drive works great so far. Nice and fast. Any thoughts about how I can check alignment would be most welcome.

Also, before I did anything, I flashed the firmware to 0009. Went very smooth.

 

Check ASSSD for alignment, or you can maths it yourself.

 

See attached. Seems to be good for alignment? My board only does SATA 2. I hope it will be faster if I get a new board with SATA 3.

Overall, I am quite satisfied. Now, to see how it holds up longer term.

 

how does the m4 compare to intel sata 2 and 3 ssd and samsung ssd when comaring power consumption? m4 uses most still even after firmware?

 

My windows didn't create it as well. I wonder why??

 

Only thing I can think of is maybe I formatted the drive from my existing Windows drive in Disk Manager as opposed to letting the new Win 7 format the drive.

 

Yea that is why.

And you are aligned fine, the green 1024=ok means alignment is correct. Windows 7 aligns correctly when you use it to format. XP does not.

 

Thanks for the info. I like the drive much so far.

 

In my case, I formatted it with the DVD of windows 7. But the small system data partition is not there anyway.

Could it be that its installed in the 8GB that I can't use of my M4?

 

I do not think so. I think for some reason the SSD is being detected in such a way as it does not require that extra partition. I read somewhere that there was a way to install Win 7 so that the extra partition was not there. But I forget the details.

 

I see, makes sense. I will look up in the net, I am curious about it.

 

it is the boot partition equivalent of linux, mainly intended for whole disk encrypton, i.e. bitlocker. basically, the boot loader(boot sector) doesn't have enough space for complicated things so one needs a 'larger' boot loader.

If the disk is virgin(partition table empty), it will be created(and I am not sure if it is only on W7 Pro+ as that is where you get bitlocker) otherwise it would be skipped(my samsung which has a vendor partition already there doesn't have this one created).

 

No, that 8GB is not "lost", it is in how capacities are displayed. If you look at the drive in My Computer and right-click and view properties, the listed capacity will be nearly 256,000,000,000 bytes (for a 256GB), but formatting uses 1MB=1024bytes, not 1000bytes. Hence a few GB difference. I really wish drive manufacturers would list the capacities in the 1024 form since that is what space you actually get...

 

Bitlocker is only found on W7 Ultimate.

Amen to that.

 

Indeed, they should work in base 2 instead of base 10 for drive capacities.

In any case, if you installed windows with another HDD hooked to the computer, it might have installed the 100Mb partition there. Happened to me when i installed windows for the first time on my desktop, forgot to unplug the HDDs when i installed windows...

 

stand corrected. I was using W7 enterprise and mixed up with Pro.

 

curious. I have the Intel 160 GB X-25M in my HP Envy17. Motherboard does SATA III. Will I see any appreciable performance increase going to the M4???

Thanks

 

Yes, current SSD's are noticeably faster than G1/G2 X25-M's - especially on a SATA3 connection (AHCI, of course).

 

Good to know...thanks

 

No prob, but just to clarify a little: 'appreciable' performance increase may be different than 'noticeable'.

Just depends on how deep your pockets are.

 

The jump between SSD generations is not as noticeable as the jump from HDD to SSD, not by a long shot.

 

Indeed this kind of upgrade is a waste of money, you are going to save tops 1s of an application opening

 

If you don't have an SSD at the moment, go ahead and buy a SATA 6 Gb/s model even if your system only support 3 Gb/s. This way, when you do upgrade, you can simply take the SSD with you. However, if you already have a 3 Gb/s drive, there's no real need to move to 6 Gb.

 

The jump from SSD generations is very noticeable to me.

As in it was at the 'not worth it' stage pre Series 320 and 510 (Intel) drives for the money thrown at the 'problem' (storage subsystem).

If you were used to (as I am) fast, premium HDD's, properly partitioned and maintained, then an SSD needed to be at the excellent end of the scale to even make my eyebrow raise. In other words, almost all initial SSD offerings were very unbalanced storage solutions - fast reads yes, but writes slower than 1999 4200 RPM systems (not a solution that I would pay premium $$$$ for).

With the generation 3 drives, we finally have solid state solutions that rival traditional magnetic storage in all aspects - except for price (still!!!) and reliability/compatibility in all systems.

If your usage doesn't/didn't push the storage subsystem to the edge, I can see how you think there is only an HDD to SSD 'jump' - but, for the rest of us, SSD's have matured (since 2009 when I started getting interested in them) considerably and have finally begun to offer a real performance increase from yesteryear's top flight mechanical HDD champs.

If only they drop the SSD prices by 10x, work out the little (power) glitches and make them as compatible and plug and play as HDD's are, we can really say HDD's are 'ancient tech'.

Browsing the net, working facebook or crusing youtube... I agree the upgrade from gen2 to gen3 SSD is a waste of money.

But, if your usage scenario really pushes the storage subsystem to the edge, then you are not just saving 1s 'tops', you may be able to complete your work in half the time or less (this is from moving to an gen3 SSD from a HDD, from a gen2 SSD - the time savings are even more because the mechanical HDD's were faster overall in my workflow than even the gen1/gen2 SSD's were).