Official Crucial M500 Series Thread

Figured it was time to start a new thread for the Crucial M500 series of SSDs, since the products are now shipping.

Crucial M500 Product Page

The purpose of this thread is to discuss ownership and answer questions about these drives.

 

Nice 1st post to kick this thread off.

One really nice thing about the new 2.5" M500 units is that they're in fact 7mm and have an attached 2.5mm spacer screwed on.

When I 1st saw only text saying they are available in 7mm and 9.5mm, I thought "Oh no!" they're repeating the M4 mistake!

Then I saw a picture of the unit. Lots of flexibility with an included 2.5mm spacer.

 

That's not entirely true. The spacer is just a cheap ring of plastic that secures to the drive with double-sided tape. Fortunately, I didn't need the spacer to secure the drive to my MacBook Pro.

I got the drive installed much earlier this afternoon but screwed something up on the software side so I had to do a reinstall. I wanted to perform a SATA secure erase of the drive. To OCZ's credit, they make the task really easy with their bootable tools suite. Other brands, not so much. It involved digging out my external dock (good thing I hadn't sold it yet), connecting the drive via USB, booting off a gparted live CD, and entering a bunch of terminal commands.

After much blood, sweat, and tears, I finally have most everything back up and running, at least on the OS X side of things.

I've only done some preliminary benchmarks with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (probably the most well known testing utility for OS X), and using a 2 GB file size, the drive is clocking around 425 MB/s read and 450 MB/s write. That's only a couple percentage points shy of the OCZ Vertex 4 that the M500 is replacing.

 

Where the heck did you find that? Crucial product page says not available yet.

 

The Intel 320 I bought a couple of years ago came with a spacer. However, I had to buy some shorter screws to hold the cover without the spacer. In reality, a 7mm driver will normally fit a 9.5mm bay without needing the spacer: The screws that usually hold drive in place fit into the lower part of the drive and fresh air above it doesn't matter.

Perhaps they will change that when available on the Crucial website.
For now, see this thread. Start by checking Amazon.

I'm watching for the UK arrival of the 480GB mSATA. The place where I bought my 256GB m4 last year currently says 16th April. The 120GB mSATA is available at Amazon.co.uk.

John

 

The drive actually went on sale Monday afternoon and apparently sold out of its initial batch about 24 hours later.

 

LOL. Amazon says available within 1-2 months. This is what I was talking about artificial price inflation. If they don't make enough of them, prices will start to go up and will take a while for them to go down. $600 is a good price for 1TB of fast SSD storage, but wouldn't pay much more than that. Awesome that it's 7mm too. Should make a lot of UltraThin users happy.

 

Any benchmark requests? If you have software you'd like me to use, let me know and be specific as to exactly what settings to use (how many passes, file size, etc). This won't be anything too definitive I'll be running the tests on a drive that's partitioned between OS X and Windows 7. From what I can tell, the Mac's Boot Camp Assistant partitions and aligns the drive correctly. I'll be using the stock Apple Boot Camp 5.0 chipset drivers, which I believe are based on the Intel 9.xx series. They work perfectly fine, and I will not change them. Keep in mind, I won't be able to do all this right away, but I plan to have my Windows partition back up and running over the weekend.

 

It will be useful to verify some of the results given in the very thorough review here which is more positive than Anandtech's review. Also, any perception on whether your battery run time is better or worse than before given the comment about the power drain.

John

 

Both refs well worth reading!

 

Benchmarks? No - don't care for them.

Just want to know your 'base-line' usage scenario (at least a week or more) NOW (w/new drive) vs. old drive with the same usage scenario (again: at least a week or more 'real world usage).

Of course, the specifics are also important too (and hopefully they're the same new vs. old):

O/S:
RAM:
CPU:
Other:



Thanks in advance - looking forward to reading your impressions vs your old drive/ssd.

 

Just like how pretty much anything you say on the subject of computer storage is pointless to me and arguably 90 percent of the rest of this forum, what I have to say about these drives will be useless to you. I do not hammer my drives 24/7, so there is not going to be any meaningful difference in performance between my M500 and previous Vertex 4.

 

Can you run some really quick benches for me (with some easy prerequisites)? Screen shots would be nice, thanks in advance.

These requirements are for comparison against my 830's current state (spare area, capacity filled, etc.). I'm still very interested in the M500 and i want to see what difference there is against my dependable and fast 830. I want the M500 for its pure large capacities. From what Anandtech wrote, it seems the M500 handles better and more consistent than the 840 Pro when almost completely filled. For example, I've seen my 830 go as low as 72MB/s in sequential writes recently when i had it almost completely filled and not properly maintained. This happened while not using any spare area/unallocated partition and using the SSD as it were an HDD. I didn't shut off or adjust anything to the OS and just ran it AS IS. Reads were still very fast programs were quick to load however writes took a toll for the worse. I reinstalled Windows 7 64bit, adjusted a few things, added 21.80GB SA/UP and now hit 279.4MB/s in sequential write or more again (on battery power saver). Next time i will try using the Secure Erase feature.


Anyways, here's what i want but no worries if its not exact. No need to rush either, take your time.

Requirements:
Windows 7 64bit (if you want you can add an OSX bench or two)
Must use a power supply unit
"High Performance" in Windows power plan
SATA III 6Gb/s connection
21.80GB spare area/unallocated partition
25%-26% full SSD capacity after spare area



First run and add a screen shot of your WEI here:


1. CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2
Test parameters: 1x1000MB ALL
Start test, when finished take screenshot and post here:


2. HD Tune Pro 5.00
Go into the Benchmark tab, start the test without changing any parameters and when finished take screenshot and post here:


3. AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088
Click start, when finished take screenshot and post here:


4. ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.47
Start test, when finished take screenshot and post here:


5. Anvil's Storage Utilities 1.0.51 RC6 (2013-Jan-3)
Run test without changing test parameters, and when finished take a screenshot and post it here:


Lastly, If you wouldn't mind redoing these benchmarks when your SSD becomes 75% filled that would be awesome too! Take a before and after screenshot AFTER using defrag'd/disk cleanup to see what little difference there may be. Otherwise just a running the tests again at 75% filled will be ok.

Thanks for doing this and for your time,
David

 

I'm not sure if 1x1000MB is really necessary for benchmarking. 100MB should be more than accurate, quicker, and less wear on the SSD. Otherwise yeah, that is a good full suite of tests. Good recommendations.

 

Your prejudice is showing - I don't ask for things I don't want to know about (I want to broaden my knowledge beyond my immediate experience...) - besides - others with workflows close to yours may find it useful - even if I don't.

So, you ask what we want and then tell us why we can't have it. (???)


I'll repeat this again: almost all benchmarks are useless to determine which drive is 'better' - in real world use an M4 500GB SSD is 97.9% equivalent to an 840 PRO 256GB SSD (and no, not in my 'normal' workflow... a little more tame than that). The benchmarks would have you believe otherwise.


I can't make you give us your subjective evaluation of the drive (which is what I want to know) - but you did ask what we wanted...


Thanks for replying at least.

 

That date is gradually moving - it seems to be set at a week ahead - ie expected soon.

John

 

Newly released version 5.6.0 of CrystalDiskInfo

Added Micron/Crucial M500 support
Improved Micron/Crucial SSD support
Improved compatibility
Added new strings to language files

Crystal Dew World

 

Awesome, thanks for looking out! Downloading update now...

 

The full 2.5" M500 lineup seems to now be in stock. e.g. Amazon has the 480GB M500 2.5" unit at $400 (free shipping) and available for next day delivery. Which to me is not a great price, maybe $350 or lower is. So I'll be following prices to see how long it takes for that unit to drop below $350. Given that available competition for that size is already at that lower price point.

Given your high interest in getting the new 480GB M500 mSATA ASAP, odds are you won't wait long, but I will.

 

so whats the deal with the m500's? is it performing as anandtech (slow reads and writes, seq and random) or as ssdreview/storagereveiew (at par with top brands in read in write) says?

 

Considering that the M500's eclipse the M4's (and they're still 'more than good enough' even today - even with some of the worst 'scores' in benchmarks...), I think both (Anandtech/other review sites) are correct:

The 'scores' are lower - but the experience is still enhanced 'enough'. And with up to 960GB capacity - it can be 'all' (O/S, programs and data) enhanced (as soon as they become available again!!!). (This is from the online user reviews I have just been reading myself about these model).


I have been tempted a few times to get/try a 480GB M500 - but I really need to test the 960GB version instead (and then I can make a better contribution towards your question then).

 

the 960gb is a no brainer if you want that size since right now it has no competition.
its the lower capacities that has me perplexed. and as much as any modern ssd will enhance user experience considerably, those three reviews basically say the opposite. i actually cancelled an m500 480gb after anand compared its performance to ssd's from last gen, while the ssdreview and storagereview give it editor's choice and place it on par with the samsung pro. i mean, why such a discrepancy?

 

I'm buying a 960GB as soon as available as well (and at or below list $599). All I can say is if it's at least as good as the M4, at the 960GB capacity, that's all I could ask for.

I'm surprised the M4 mSATA drives are no longer for sale at the Crucial website though. Hopefully they intend to release an mSATA version of the M500, up to 480GB perhaps?

It's pretty phenomenal to imagine 1.5TB (960GB M500 + 480GB mSATA) of fast SSD storage without completely breaking the bank and also fitting inside a thin and light.

 

Having owned M4s of both 256 and 512 GB, the M500 is just as good. In capacities of 512 GB or less, the M500 isn't an upgrade from other SSDs that have been on the market for a while. However, if you're a first-time SSD buyer, this new Crucial is certainly worth considering, and of course, for ultra-high capacity, it's the only game in town (the grossly overpriced, comparatively slow, and power guzzling 960 GB OWC Mercury Electra 3G doesn't count).

 

I guess power consumption would be the only concern, but it seems it's at least as good as m4.

 

the problem with that owc ssd is the fact that it uses 2 SF 2281 controllers, I dont want to imagine the mess

there is also the ocz everest or something like that its a 1tb drive

 

You were probably thinking of the OCZ Octane, which was more than 2x as costly as the OWC drive.

 

i think yes

 

B&H charged my CC today. That generally means the product is shipping very quickly. This was for the 960 GB M500.

PS: It is a "pending charge" not a completed charge so this likely is just the placeholder for the charge. They still show 5-30 as availability.

 

I see that Crucial is now offering the new 480GB M500 mSATA, on their web site, at $399 and I suggest you be quick because I expect it to go out of stock quickly.

I myself will wait a month and watch what happens.

Among it's few competitors is Mushkin 480GB Atlas Series mSATA SATA III, which is slightly out of spec (too thick given daughter card for the extra NAND chips). Currently sells at $440 at Newegg. Odds are that it's pricing will be affected by the new arrival?

And how does it's performance compare to the performance of the very new 480GB mSATA Crucial M500?

Meaning I'd like to see at least one thorough review.

 

Out of stock already

 

The early bird gets the worm.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, as it only took Crucial about one month to get production of their new 2.5" M500 960GB units ramped up, so that the 3rd party seller gouging quickly diminished.

 

If Samsung would wise up and release an mSATA 840 Pro (PM841 doesn't count as a consumer SSD, although its selling like hotcakes) that would light a fire under Mushkin and Crucials butts. We need to see more competition in the mSATA arena to drive prices down.

Glad to see the mSATA 480GB model is available for purchase. I'd also love to see a thurough review.

 

What do you mean, it hasn't been available since day 1, and still isn't.

 

Had a chance to play with a 480GB M500 for a few hours. Installed Windows 8 x64 Pro. Installed drivers (ThinkPAD). Installed Office 2013. Installed all Windows Updates.

The system felt just slightly more sluggish than an Intel 520 240GB install (although the Intel setup has much more software and DATA installed).

I was happy! I thought that it would be noticeably worse...

I was searching for my software disks and found a brand new M4 512GB SSD (with original firmware...).

I was going to repeat on the M4 what I had just finished with the M500... however...


The first reboot of the system (during Windows 8 Install...) took almost 20 minutes - ah? Is the SSD borked? I stopped the install an tried again: same thing, but I let it continue the install this time. At the Windows desktop I updated the firmware for the M4 to the latest without issue.

Re-did the Windows installation - this time, no pauses. Finally! I updated the drivers, installed office and did all the Windows updates to make it comparable to the M500.

The differences between the two drives after getting the system setup is small - yes, the M4 feels a little slower and 'sluggish' - and being brand new, it isn't the nand's health that is at fault either... but the M500 seemed to be getting faster the more it was used. Hmmm... this is nice. Boot up and shut down was definitely faster/smoother and program launches would 'snap' onto the screen with the M500 - while the M4 based install would seem to need a few moments to think about what to do before it did it (at about the same speed, it seemed - but still slower, overall).

I also noticed that Intel RST v12.6 indicated that the SSD was using 4096 (not 512) blocks - this may be the reason (just like the first HDD's with the larger sectors a few years ago) that the M500 seems slightly behind the Intel 520 Series... just a guess; but I'm hoping new firmware will eliminate even this tiny 'glitch' that is apparent vs. other SSD's.

While normal use would seem 'close enough' to the same for some, doing the program installs and the updates (ie. 'real work') made the M4 feel like a steam engine driven SSD... yeah; the M500 is definitely in 2013 vs. the M4's 2011 roots...

Crucial has made a very worthy upgrade to the M4 and simply because of capacity (and the fact that Intel 520 Series SSD's only shine at 240GB capacity points...) this drive will become my new O/S drive going forward.

But not the 480GB capacity (which I had partitioned with a 100GB 'C:' drive and a 233GB 'D:' drive - along with 134GB remaining as 'unallocated') - but looking forward to the 960GB model which I'll set up as:

C: 100GB (O/S and Programs)

D: 100GB (Cloud based services)

E: 425GB (DATA archive - 'finished' work on hand).


and of course ~268GB (30%) will be left 'unallocated' to ensure the performance is sustained for the lifetime of the system.


(I had considered needing to use less than 30% OP'ing with the higher capacities: however, for this particular SSD with RAIN enabled, I might even need to give more OP than 30%... I'll address this when I get a 960GB model to test with).


See:
AnandTech | The Crucial/Micron M500 Review (960GB, 480GB, 240GB, 120GB)


Anand Lal Shimpi said;

Crucial had my respect for their real world performance of the M4 series of SSD's - with the M500 series, not only have they offered us what Samsung can't with the 840 TLC based drives - but they have surpassed even my expectations for the 'baby' (480GB) version of the M500 series too.


When these drives become widely available, HDD's will officially be 'dead' to notebook users (especially with the new systems with multiple M.2 NGFF connectors).


Does anybody who has bought a 480/960GB M500 have any additional hands on experience to report?


Sorry, I only had a few hours with this one... (Scored 957 in AS SSD, btw...).

 

I don't think HDD's will be dead with a 6:1 price difference (600%, 6 times, $600 vs $100, you get the idea) between a 1TB HDD vs 1TB SSD I don't think so. Maybe at $200 a 1TB drive will negate the need for HDD's in laptops.

 

The 960gb model seems to be a real boon for Laptops that only have 1 SATA bay (like the w110er). I don't think SSDs will overtake HDDs anytime soon when it comes to bulk storage on the cheap.

 

TigerDirect is offering the M500 480GB mSATA for $399.99

Crucial M500 Series 480GB SSD - 2.5 Form Factor, mSATA, Encryption Technology, Advanced Controller Technology, Adaptive Thermal Protection (CT480M500SSD3) at TigerDirect.com

 

Out of stock too?

"Item C19-2006 is currently unavailable to purchase, please seek an alternative."

 

with that price and being a top performer what did you expect?

 

Wow,that was quick.

I guess they didn't have that many to begin with but they should mark it as "Out Of Stock" without going to add to cart.

There is no mlc sync nand alternative.

 

Just got auto-notify from Newegg that 960GB was in stock, at 12:01pm today. I clicked add to cart at 12:05pm, and it's already sold out... This is ridiculous.

 

B&H has modified their availability to Jun 15 from May 30.

 

soumds like yields on those high density mlc chips are pretty bad for micron. Shame samsung is in love with tlc.

 

@tilleroftheearth

So you feel the M500 has better real world performance than your 840pro, im stil debating between a Samsung 840pro 512gb vs Crucial M500 480gb.

 

No, let's not kid ourselves: the 840 Pro 'should' have the better 'performance' overall - it just feels comparatively sluggish to me (like all other Samsung SSD's I've used).


I would want to see what HARDOCP - HardOCP Computer Hardware Reviews and News comes up with in the Mixed Read/Write Steady State 'scores' for the M500 before I could say what the performance difference may be like.

(Don't forget, I didn't do any real work on the systems - mainly, I got to install and explore the O/S with a few different SSD's (and/or SSD Firmware versions)).


If I were to go with the Crucial M500 Series at this point in time; I'd only be considering the 960GB (and only 1GB DRAM equipped) model right now (sans the above 'review scores').


Hope I answered your question(s) fully?

 

Yea thanks. Im probably going to end up with the Samsung 840 pro, as there are no 960gb at $600 anywhere, but tbh i never felt much of a difference moving from X25-m to Crucial M4, so i was thinking on just going with the cheaper M500 480gb and just call it until we see sata express.

 

Just a little update on the 'feel' of how different SSD's respond ime,

See:
Samsung Serie 840 Pro 512GB 2.5 Inch / DXM03B0Q - SSD Review - SSD Reviews, Data Sheets and Comparison - ssdreview.com

See:
Intel 520 Series 240GB 2.5 Inch / 400i - SSD Review - SSD Reviews, Data Sheets and Comparison - ssdreview.com

See:
Crucial M500 480GB 2.5 Inch / MU02 - SSD Review - SSD Reviews, Data Sheets and Comparison - ssdreview.com

See:
Crucial m4 256GB 2.5 Inch / 0009 - SSD Review - SSD Reviews, Data Sheets and Comparison - ssdreview.com

See:


The above links are interesting to me in one aspect: the final 'score' (near the bottom of each page) with a mixed reading and writing workload ('IOMix Access Time (Read+Write)') for the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD, the Intel 520 240GB SSD and the Crucial M500 960GB SSD.


With a respective 'score' of 5.71ms, 3.39ms and 12.13ms for the Samsung, Intel and Crucial drives, I have yet another data point as to why I feel the Intel 520 Series is still the one to beat in real world use.


That is exactly how I would place them:


Intel 520 Series 240GB followed by the

Samsung 840 Pro 256/512GB and both obviously 'snappier' than the

Crucial M500 960GB and 480GB models which is also obviously better than the

Crucial M4 256GB SSD.


Do keep in mind though that even the lowly M4 with 27.47ms 'score' that is almost a magnitude slower (~8x actually) than the Intel 520 Series makes a desktop or a notebook 'modern' again.


But - I can feel these differences and I'm just now seeing numbers to prove it (the other numbers are the steady state Read/Write mix workload that Hardocp.com reports...).


Anybody else feels these differences?

Anybody else knows where more of these 'next gen', real world applicable 'scores' are available?

 

1st this really belongs in it's own thread, and not in the M500 thread.

2nd many (most?) NBR people have nowhere near the widely varied SSD exposure that you have.

3rd is the laptop itself which varies widely for the same person, as well as not only the cpu, but also the key supporting chips!

e.g. my new T530 very consistently does a cold boot about 4-to-5 seconds faster than my older X220 (see sig for specs of both). T530 averages 27 seconds, X220 averages 31.5 seconds.

A warm boot is slightly faster with both machines, but I'm less certain of the exact time difference.

OTOH most of the cold boot time difference occurs right after pressing the "on" button (the 1st 2 to 4 seconds when "ThinkPad" flashes on the screen in BIG letters. So is that a BIOS timing difference? Meaning that Lenovo (or Phoenix) simply provided a faster BIOS with the T530?

But exactly which laptop differences result in the slightly "snappier" feel that I feel (both lovely words for a "review" (note sarcasm)) with my T530???

Is it the slightly faster i5 cpu and newer chipset that it has? Or is it that the T530 boot (2.5" M4 512GB (SATA III capable)) is on a SATA III port whereas the X220 boot (mSATA M4 256GB (SATA III capable)) is only on a SATA II port? Or is it the chipset? Or the BIOS? Or...

 

It's everything; it's called the platform.

Yes; I do have direct experience with different storage subsystems on the same (identical: hardware AND O/S AND software) machines too, more than most people.


The M4 256GB mSATA SSD I took out of an IB QC 16GB RAM ThinkPAD seemed horribly slow (SATA II) vs. the SATA III NUC platform I transferred it to (also with 16GB RAM but with 'only' an i3 3217U cpu - both with Win8x64).


You can be as sarcastic as you like - as long as you report the true experience; it will always be more valuable than 'numbers/scores' from benchmarks that can be 'fixed' (as the Samsung 840 Pro seems to do so well with single, individual test runs...) with special sauce firmware from manufacturers that offer no direct real world advantage to users (well; in the 840 Pro's case, it does excel in bootup/shut down - but... yawn...).

I have always valued the 'snappiness' of my systems since my first taste of computers in the early 80's - and you know what? I still haven't found a system that is the ultimate in that regard.

Though my OC'd desktops come close.



As in audio - 'fixing' one aspect of a system ultimately just shows (glaringly) the shortcomings somewhere else in the system. In my i3 350M based 'Arrandale' platform - an SSD is almost a joke vs. the real performance in my desktops with i7 QC's OC'd to ~5GHz+ (SNB and IB setups). And I'm not talking about doing any work with the hugely different systems - no, I'm just comparing how they feel surfing the web, replying to email and navigating the O/S.


Yes, it does make a difference: the platform, the cpu, the RAM (capacity and speed) and the SSD used.

The newer, the better. Always.

(And the IB based NUC is in a different league than the AMD E350 based Foxconn Nano - even with the same gen SSD inside (M4 256GB, mSATA and SATA - both SATA III).


So, to make subjective calls like 'snappier' mean something to everyone here: give us as much info as you can about the REST of your platform/system. And if you can; give a basis of comparison too.


(This is actually what I came looking for (~4 years ago) when I joined NBR; subjective, but real world 'experience' reports).


And I do think it belongs here as anywhere else: it compares the latest 'big' SSD to the 'best' SSD... which is of course, the 'old' Intel 520 Series SSD.


Thanks for your comments.