Crucial MX500 SSD Review

[Guest]

Crucial pulls out a competitive consumer SSD to cap off 2017. The new series threatens Samsung's dominance but costs much less in most capacities.

Crucial MX500 SSD Review : Read more

 

[HERETIC-1]

Hi Chris,
That 4K read at QD1 is impressive.
Am holding my praise until I see the 250 size tho...........

 

[unityole]

2TB for $520? not bad at all for a TLC drive, especially one at this performance level considered to be better than the best in industry. nice review Chris! can't wait for a 4TB of this drive out for less than $800 though.

 

[bit_user]

...

Glad to see this. The MX300 was such a let down, performance-wise, and I'm eager to see prices drop in the 1 TB size.

Do they still advertise end-to-end data protection? The Crucial MX-line has tended to be one of the more reliable options, and I hope that doesn't change. It's one of the main reasons I've never been tempted by Samsung. I have 9 Crucial SSDs and no failures (yet).

Did they ever explain what happened to the MX400? Maybe a product that got cancelled?

Also, I wonder how much DRAM it's got.

 

[bit_user]

That 4K read at QD1 is impressive.

Truly. I always figured Samsung has got to be close to what SATA can deliver. I didn't expect anyone to provide such an improvement, much less for Crucial to take the lead.

 

[bit_user]

Partially answered my question about data protection. They don't advertise "end-to-end data protection", as before, but I recognize a number of features carried over from the MX200:
• Redundant Array of Independent NAND (RAIN)
• Exclusive Data Defense
• Error Correction Code (ECC)

Of course, all SSDs have some sort of ECC. However, the MX200 advertised what they call "Data Path Protection", while the MX500 lists "Multistep Data Integrity Algorithm". So, I'm still wondering if these are comparable.

Here are the datasheets I could find:
http://www.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/pdf/product-flyer/crucial-mx200-ssd-product-flyer-letter-en.pdf
http://www.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/pdf/product-flyer/crucial-mx500-ssd-productflyer-en.pdf

 

[TripleHeinz]

Similar to bit_user, I have crucial/micron for all my memory needs: From storage to RAM. I went with this brand 4 years ago and their products have never let me down. The reason I went with crucial/micron is because at the time of purchasing they were the only brand offering enterprise class solutions for workstations where data integrity, privacy and safe storage are critical. Their products had all kind of ecc and data integrity technologies, encryption of all kinds (providing whitepapers to teach how to implement them) and power loss safety through super caps which allow data to flush from cache even on power loss (you can safely disable "write-caching buffer flushing" in Windows for better performance). You can install Storage Executive for monitoring but you should not enable "momentum cache" because if I'm not mistaken you could lose your data on power outage.
I understand that now Samsung has most of these features in their products, but I can't simply go away from a brand that I trust and have been working with their products for years now with success. The SSDs have been working perfectly, they feel pretty fast too, I love them. They still report 100% life, can't explain that. I'm a satisfied customer and can recommend crucial/micron for workstations.

 

[bit_user]

You can install Storage Executive for monitoring but you should not enable "momentum cache" because if I'm not mistaken you could lose your data on power outage.

Yeah, I don't bother with it. The OS should do write buffering, and I see Momentum Cache as basically a Band-Aid over Windows' deficiencies.

But the biggest worry I have about system crashes is actually filesystem corruption, and there Momentum Cache has a lot more potential to harm than help.

Anyway, use a UPS to mitigate against power loss. Now that PCs and monitors are so power-efficient, you can get by with a much cheaper unit than before. I have a nice PFC-compatible CyberPower that was < $100, IIRC.

I understand that now Samsung has most of these features in their products,

Really? I've not seen that, and I had been checking until fairly recently.

Also, note that Crucial's BX line lacks many of the reliability features found in the MX line.

I can't simply go away from a brand that I trust and have been working with their products for years now with success.

The main thing for me is the user reviews. At least up through MX200, Crucial was rated highest. I didn't bother checking MX300, however.

A co-worker recently mentioned two Crucial SSD drive failures among his family members. He didn't say which model, but I wonder if they were BX drives.

 

[ilogic450]

Nice!

 

[JimmiG]

"CONS
The look appears dated"

Yeah, not a single RGB LED. Unacceptable.

Seriously though it's good to see the race to the bottom in consumer SATA SSD's seems to have reached an end. This drive from 2017 even manages to beat the 2014 Samsung 850 Evo in a few tests.

 

[CRamseyer]

You have to remember that we see every Crucial drive and the packaging hasn't changed much over the years.

I also had to think of something to fill in the space. That's the only part about the drive that I would improve if I was the product manager....and make a 4TB version.

 

[staging40purch]

This indeed is impressive.

 

[zodiacfml]

Finally, something against the ageing 850 EVO!

 

[AgentLozen]

$250 for 2TB!? WHAT AN AMAZING DEAL!

Oh wait....

Many of these benchmark tests show that all of the drives compete very similarly (especially in real world applications). It would add a nice contrast if you added a modern 2.5" mechanical hard drive to the mix just to show how important it is to have an SSD even if their performance is real close.

 

[msroadkill612]

FYI, to make sense of MTBF, one year is 365x24=8760 hours. We will all be long dead before we wear them out .

 

[bit_user]

FYI, to make sense of MTBF, one year is 365x24=8760 hours. We will all be long dead before we wear them out .

You understand that it's a mean, right? If we don't know the shape of the distribution, you don't know how many will fail far sooner.

Australia has a population density of 3.2 per square km. But that won't tell you a thing about how crowded you'll find Sydney, which is about 130 times as densely populated.

It's not uncommon for storage products to have million-hour MTBF ratings, but we still see failures.