I am thoroughly impressed. And that's not something I take lightly. Samsung will have to get their game on now, with the age old 850 series no longer being king of the hill in SATA drives.
Until now the 850 line was unquestionably better than everything else in almost every regard, except price maybe. It's enough if the competition is "close enough", even without actually taking the crown. Right now Samsung isn't the go-to SSD with good alternatives like the MX500. That's enough for me.
Samsung has by far the worst customer service and warranty coverage. Good luck actually getting them to replace a drive in Canada. Glad to see Crucial stepping up their game, buying one immediately.
Just to expand on this. Samsung is forcing customers to contact newegg for warranty coverage. I've already spent weeks just trying to get Samsung to respond to their normal emails. Newegg obviously isn't responsible for a year old drive failing. They have no RMA process, and I've already contacted their chat, voice, and email.
Dear Samsung Valued Customer,
We have received your email and would like to thank you for the information that you sent us however, you will need to contact the place of purchase for warranty coverage. We already have notify the dealer and they will be calling you shortly to offer warranty coverage. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
Interesting. Over here in EU it is far more common to deal with the seller/store.
I buy hardware from a store, not the manufacturer, store gives me warranty on goods purchased and I don't care what hoops they have to jump through (RMA with the manufacturer? Deal with the national distributor? etc.) to get things settled as long as they beat the deadline(s).
You remind me of the path I crossed with Samsung customer service about my 840 Evo (2 months old then).
Dear valued customer, Please contact your seller (Newegg).... We acknowledged the issue. Please wait for firmware update....
The worst of all is that all their customer service reps don't know shit but they insisted to guide me, a veteran in IT field, how to install an SSD in my laptop. After firmware update, BSOD still happened but less frequent. Best thing I did was throwing that sucker in the trash.
Forget Shamesung and their shameless fanboys. This MX500 is a good deal but I prefer the BX300 because of MLC over TLC.
@sonny73n, I'll just repost this here: https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical... Short version: the difference between SLC and MLC is almost indistinguishable. Don't imagine that MLC vs. TLC will be a world of difference either. Not with new drives.
I had one of the worst warranty experiences ever with the 840 EVO years ago. Haven't given Samsung money since. OCZ and Mushkin, and Crucial for that matter, all have advanced RMA options and very smooth exchange processes. Crucial offers data recovery starting at $200.
Samsung doesn't even return initial emails and they lie through their teeth on the phone, if you can even get ahold of the right person after being in a transfer loop for 30 minutes.
Recently??? Lol try well over 3 years ago. The 850 EVO's been using Samsung's V-NAND (V = vertical, as in 3D) pretty much since it's inception. In fact, they have used 3 (iirc) different types of V-NAND (differing in layer density) so far through production. You need to get with the program lol. Micron's slapping the EVO upside the head here, and I say that as someone who's bought more EVO's then I can count.
They just need to lower their damn price, and they'd still be good to go. Their 850 series is tried and proven, with a much better warranty, which is a significant advantage over newly released SATA models.
Just cut the 850 Pro's price in half already Samsung.... I don't mind if they even cut the 10 year warranty in half dammit.
Agreed. Performance is pretty decent for a change! And having the 1TB available at the 250$ price point is also pretty aggressive as I'm sure it'll come down a stitch more in the next month or two.
The M550, MX100, MX200 and MX300 have always been decent contenders to Samsung 830, 840, 850 and 860, often priced lower and in the same performance bracket. Support and reliability are excellent.
Most of it is going to mobile and industrial applications, of which both have very strict quality requirements. The ones that don't meet the criteria can either be sold as wafer/component or used in a retail client SSD, the latter obviously having a better profit margin.
Memory is yielded at wafer level. Dies from a low yielding wafer statistically have a higher probability of failure in long-term, even if individual dies are OK in initial probing.
"WTH are you talking about? Testing endurance and write performance of every die? It's not common sense at all. Therefore, you're a bullshit. "
that's not what he said. what he said was, post mortem analyses have shown that wafers with a low yield produce dies with short lifespans. those dies are then shipped out as retail SSD.
MLC and TLC are different at die level. Once the wafer is produced it's no longer possible to switch from MLC to TLC or vice versa. Sure TLC could be used in pseudo-MLC mode by only programming the lower and middle pages, but that is not the same thing.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but please explain how Crucial's Dynamic Write Acceleration gets a significant write performance benefit by doing similar.
Got other capacities prices, unofficialy ofc. Excl VAT, incl distributors' margin, for both M.2 and 2.5'' versions, that will be: 250GB ~74USD 500GB ~130USD 1TB ~238USD ; for comparison 2TB 2.5'' only ~465USD Availability here in duckland ;) please don't mistake with Deutchland ;))) for W02/18
I supposes my comment wasn't clear enough, wasn't suggesting it's your fault. Anyway, these things are always on purpose and it seems that they don't want to talk about lower capacities at all, they want people to see the MX500 perf as it is today at 1TB. A bit of a red flag but hopefully 512GB will be ok too.
I'm expecting them to sample at least one of the smaller capacities, if not all of them. I did mention recently that I probably would have given the BX300 an award if they had sent me the 120GB model, because that one is such a clear winner above the sparse competition in that capacity range.
They've been doing a pretty good job with both MX and BX series, good deals usually. With the new CEO they should start pushing harder in SSD. I think they had some issues a few months back and maybe that's why this one got delayed but I would expect to see them focusing more on SSD.
Oddly they note in the pdf that those numbers are: "Based on the published specs of the 1TB model. Speeds based on internal testing. Actual performance may vary"
Actually, you don't need it to upgrade the firmware. But it also does things like over-provisioning and secure-erase. And it can tell you roughly how much write endurance is remaining.
Overprovisioning, that very advanced function that translates to shrinking a partition and leaving some free space somewhere at the end of the drive using nothing but Windows tools... There is no killer function in these SSD tools. They make FW updates a lot easier for regular people. I don't want to make boot disks and type in my updates. Just click click form the GUI and I'm done. Maybe something like Samsung's RAPID needs the software but other than that you can do it yourself.
Good luck with that. First, it's not much (I usually OP by anywhere from 6.25% to 25% - if you search SSD reviews on this site, you'll see performance benefits even up to 25%).
Second, it definitely won't work for all vendors. The SSD firmware needs to know that the unpartitioned space doesn't hold user data, and they don't all derive this information by simply looking for a partition table and parsing that, as you seem to believe.
Any link for that? The point of overprovisioning is to have space to swap data and do internal reorganization even when the drive is full, for wear leveling. Since most drives support TRIM and you can trigger it manually it's impossible to assume there will be data there. It's like the SSD should stop with the wear leveling because I might have some data in that free space it's using anyway.
The ONLY difference between normal free space and OP is that OP will be there even when you regular partition is full. Wear leveling and data reorganization works even with 0 OP when there actually is user data everywhere. It just takes longer.
The second you create an empty chunk of disk space it will be TRIMmed anyway and it becomes really free space. It can even be a partition that you never write to. Windows will TRIM it regardless and the SSD will know the LBAs are empty. No flag needed. But I'd love to see some docs from recent times to say otherwise.
Their documentation seems to suggest it writes something to flag the unpartitioned space as useable for over-provisioning. I don't know how you can easily prove that simply leaving unpartitioned space is equivalent.
With certain other vendors, I've seen official statements that simply leaving unpartitioned space is not sufficient for overprovisioning.
Dumb question, but what do you need to use it for? I've never used it, that I can remember, and I've got a couple of Crucial drives. I don't have Java on any of my personal systems either.
While Java apps tend to be clunky to use, for a firmware updater usability isn't a top priority; and Java is an easy way to create an app with the needed low level system access that will run on almost any OS.
What on earth are you talking about? Don't install the browser plugin- no security problem. And get JDK, not JRE. Java language or runtime environment is not a security threat in any way. Browser plugin is, but it's been obsolete for more than a decade and only used for legacy applications, and shouldn't be used at all.
Wait, what? Unless you're compiling Java applications, or trying to profile a running Java application and want to tune jvm settings, there's no real need anymore for the jdk. The jre is more than sufficient for the vast majority of needs. The days of the jre java.exe being subpar to java.exe included in the jdk died in the 1.6 days.
Traditionally, you can use the Micron enterprise tool with many of these drives. They caution against it, but it works fine in at least some cases - probably the MX drives are a good bet.
I have an OCZ-VERTEX4.. so I was looking at reviews here on AnandTech of my device to make a comparison. However, my drive was reviewed in 2012... when they used Desktop Iometer... which shows really high numbers....
How do the newer testing methods at AnandTech differ from what they did in the past. Per these 2012 charts, my Vertex4 is faster.... but I know that's not the case after 5 years of progress...
I've run AS-SSD, CDM, ATTO and HDTach on drives going back to the Vertex 4 (also 3, 2E, Agility 4 and Vector). I have some M.2 results to add to the archive, but here it is atm:
"SMI controllers tend to be more popular for budget products"... "Silicon Motion has been working to improve their controllers and move toward the high end, but the MX500 isn't even adopting the newer SM2259"... "but they're not as large or numerous as on previous MX series drives"
Ugh, is EVERYONE using TLC now? I was uncomfortable enough with MLC.
I'm not crazy about switching away from Marvell either...though I suppose as long as it works and the software Micron writes is good...
I really want a higher end MLC (or SLC!) drive from Crucial/Micron.
My main system is still using a 2012 Crucial drive though. It literally launches programs in maybe 1-2 seconds MAX, so who the heck cares if it were 42x faster? (Literally the only time I've ever see it take any actual time to respond to anything was when I was doing something else while running TRIM on it for no real reason.)
But my next drive I'd like to be MLC Crucial/Micron too...
It's a bit higher but not outrageous by any means. It's FAR cheaper than several of the early SSD's I bought in terms of $/GB. Frankly for its performance, I think it's priced pretty aggressively, TBH.
SLC is dead in anything except very non-mainstream products (eg low capacity embedded flash built on a process so large that even doing ECC is optional), at only 1/3 the density of TLC per chip it's nowhere near cost competitive. The same factor is killing off MLC as 3d TLC improves. I suspect over the next year or three MLC flash will gradually fade away too.
If they can get the total write count up high enough, QLC will start displacing TLC over the next few years. That number was only a few dozen writes a few years ago; I haven't seen any updates since then. OTOH over similar timespans TLC write endurance has climbed from a few hundred writes to a few thousand; if QLC has been able to improve equally we might start seeing it soon in entry level products.
You seem to have a negative opinion on 3D TLC for no good reason while also not requiring much perf. If your current drive is from 2012, a Crucial m4 that was fashionable back then, has 72TB endurance while the this MX500 has 360TB for the 1TB version and 180TB for the 500GB.version.
Hey let's pay >3x/GB for SLC so we can have extra drive endurance where TLC already doesn't matter for 99.999% of the target market, of course he's the smart one and rest of us are teh dumbs.
10TB written over 3.5 years on my M550 1TB, yup can't wait for the drive to finally die in 300 years if it was *only* 1000 writes/bit TLC so I can buy a new one. Because TLC endurance sux amirite?
TLC is pretty good these days compared to planar MLC from 2012. You probably wouldn't have anything to worry about since a drive like the MX500 would be obsolete before endurance becomes a problem. But if you're worried, there's the BX300 that's still for sale like MajGenRelativity suggested. Mushkin was also selling a 3D MLC drive, the Reactor Armor3D that was released in January-ish of this year. They have a 1TB model available and it uses the same Silicon Motion SM2258 controller so you'd probably see similar performance.
BS. This study proved SLC and MLC aren't actually meaningfully different. By inference TLC is good enough for almost anything. If you're the kind of person who can't do with TLC it's either overstating your usage scenarios or you're in the NAND destruction business.
I'm really impressed with the QD1 random read performance of this drive. I didn't think you could achieve so many QD1 IOPS with SATA, or else Samsung probably would've done it.
The QD1 results are impressive in the tables but the charts seem to show lower figures (QD1 read: 44.7 v c. 35; write 164.2 v c. 146). Which is correct?
Unfortuantely, what this review couldn't account for was these SSDs have a serious defect where uptimes correlate to significant increases of write amplification in comparison to their older mx300 siblings and not fit for use as an OS drive.
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tech6 - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
It's nice to finally see a Samsung alternative that doesn't suck.ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I am thoroughly impressed. And that's not something I take lightly. Samsung will have to get their game on now, with the age old 850 series no longer being king of the hill in SATA drives.mode_13h - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Not sure if you noticed this, but they recently released a new 850 EVO with 3D NAND.ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Until now the 850 line was unquestionably better than everything else in almost every regard, except price maybe. It's enough if the competition is "close enough", even without actually taking the crown. Right now Samsung isn't the go-to SSD with good alternatives like the MX500. That's enough for me.Alistair - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Samsung has by far the worst customer service and warranty coverage. Good luck actually getting them to replace a drive in Canada. Glad to see Crucial stepping up their game, buying one immediately.Alistair - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Just to expand on this. Samsung is forcing customers to contact newegg for warranty coverage. I've already spent weeks just trying to get Samsung to respond to their normal emails. Newegg obviously isn't responsible for a year old drive failing. They have no RMA process, and I've already contacted their chat, voice, and email.Dear Samsung Valued Customer,
We have received your email and would like to thank you for the information that you sent us however, you will need to contact the place of purchase for warranty coverage. We already have notify the dealer and they will be calling you shortly to offer warranty coverage.
We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
Thank you/Merci
Regards,
(name redacted)
Samsung Electronics Canada
Alistair - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Nobody is getting coverage in Canada:https://forums.redflagdeals.com/has-anyone-dealt-s...
Alistair - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
This was purchased from Newegg.caArnulf - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Interesting. Over here in EU it is far more common to deal with the seller/store.I buy hardware from a store, not the manufacturer, store gives me warranty on goods purchased and I don't care what hoops they have to jump through (RMA with the manufacturer? Deal with the national distributor? etc.) to get things settled as long as they beat the deadline(s).
Alistair - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Basically they sell the product in Canada, but have no procedure in place to provide their warranty service. That's not a warranty at all.ddrіver - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
@Arnulf, Europe is a civilized land.sonny73n - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
You remind me of the path I crossed with Samsung customer service about my 840 Evo (2 months old then).Dear valued customer,
Please contact your seller (Newegg)....
We acknowledged the issue. Please wait for firmware update....
The worst of all is that all their customer service reps don't know shit but they insisted to guide me, a veteran in IT field, how to install an SSD in my laptop. After firmware update, BSOD still happened but less frequent. Best thing I did was throwing that sucker in the trash.
Forget Shamesung and their shameless fanboys. This MX500 is a good deal but I prefer the BX300 because of MLC over TLC.
Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
The BX300 is such an incredibly good drive. I've outfitted 20 office PC's with them since they were introduced, no problems whatsoever.ddrіver - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
@sonny73n, I'll just repost this here: https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical...Short version: the difference between SLC and MLC is almost indistinguishable. Don't imagine that MLC vs. TLC will be a world of difference either. Not with new drives.
Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
I had one of the worst warranty experiences ever with the 840 EVO years ago. Haven't given Samsung money since. OCZ and Mushkin, and Crucial for that matter, all have advanced RMA options and very smooth exchange processes. Crucial offers data recovery starting at $200.Samsung doesn't even return initial emails and they lie through their teeth on the phone, if you can even get ahold of the right person after being in a transfer loop for 30 minutes.
Cooe - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Recently??? Lol try well over 3 years ago. The 850 EVO's been using Samsung's V-NAND (V = vertical, as in 3D) pretty much since it's inception. In fact, they have used 3 (iirc) different types of V-NAND (differing in layer density) so far through production. You need to get with the program lol. Micron's slapping the EVO upside the head here, and I say that as someone who's bought more EVO's then I can count.lilmoe - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
They just need to lower their damn price, and they'd still be good to go. Their 850 series is tried and proven, with a much better warranty, which is a significant advantage over newly released SATA models.Just cut the 850 Pro's price in half already Samsung.... I don't mind if they even cut the 10 year warranty in half dammit.
bill.rookard - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Agreed. Performance is pretty decent for a change! And having the 1TB available at the 250$ price point is also pretty aggressive as I'm sure it'll come down a stitch more in the next month or two.Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
The M550, MX100, MX200 and MX300 have always been decent contenders to Samsung 830, 840, 850 and 860, often priced lower and in the same performance bracket. Support and reliability are excellent.Chaitanya - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
surprising crucial decided to keep mx line on tlc nand while bx was upgraded to mlc nand.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The BX300 is merely a vehicle to consume low yielding MLC wafers.oRAirwolf - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Can you expand on that statement? Low yielding in what ways?hojnikb - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Probably not as good performing (endurance, write performance) dies get used with bx300 instead of discarding them or using them elsewhere.jabber - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
But where else would Crucial be using the good MLC ones if everything else is TLC?cblakely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Enterprise productsKristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Most of it is going to mobile and industrial applications, of which both have very strict quality requirements. The ones that don't meet the criteria can either be sold as wafer/component or used in a retail client SSD, the latter obviously having a better profit margin.Memory is yielded at wafer level. Dies from a low yielding wafer statistically have a higher probability of failure in long-term, even if individual dies are OK in initial probing.
sonny73n - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
WTH are you talking about? Testing endurance and write performance of every die? It's not common sense at all. Therefore, you're a bullshit.FunBunny2 - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
"WTH are you talking about? Testing endurance and write performance of every die? It's not common sense at all. Therefore, you're a bullshit. "that's not what he said. what he said was, post mortem analyses have shown that wafers with a low yield produce dies with short lifespans. those dies are then shipped out as retail SSD.
emvonline - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Kristian is a wise man. BX300 is a pragmatic response ... not a strategy. MX500 is very well positionedmalventano - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Low yield MLC wafers would likely not produce usable TLC dies with a higher endurance rating than Samsung's currently shipping V-NAND.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
MLC and TLC are different at die level. Once the wafer is produced it's no longer possible to switch from MLC to TLC or vice versa. Sure TLC could be used in pseudo-MLC mode by only programming the lower and middle pages, but that is not the same thing.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
I'm not saying you're wrong, but please explain how Crucial's Dynamic Write Acceleration gets a significant write performance benefit by doing similar.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I'm pleased with this product. Keep up the good work Micron, and keep lowering SSD prices!jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
A bit suspicious that there are no specs and prices for the 512GB version, hopefully the perf drop won't be too large.Other than that, all good here.
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Officially, Crucial is only launching the 1TB model today. The other capacities have to wait a little longer for a proper announcement.The Benjamins - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
They will offically have a 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB models in 2.5" and up to 1TB in M.2http://www.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/pdf/pro...
witp - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Got other capacities prices, unofficialy ofc.Excl VAT, incl distributors' margin, for both M.2 and 2.5'' versions, that will be:
250GB ~74USD
500GB ~130USD
1TB ~238USD ; for comparison
2TB 2.5'' only ~465USD
Availability here in duckland ;) please don't mistake with Deutchland ;))) for W02/18
jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I supposes my comment wasn't clear enough, wasn't suggesting it's your fault. Anyway, these things are always on purpose and it seems that they don't want to talk about lower capacities at all, they want people to see the MX500 perf as it is today at 1TB. A bit of a red flag but hopefully 512GB will be ok too.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I'm expecting them to sample at least one of the smaller capacities, if not all of them. I did mention recently that I probably would have given the BX300 an award if they had sent me the 120GB model, because that one is such a clear winner above the sparse competition in that capacity range.jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
They've been doing a pretty good job with both MX and BX series, good deals usually.With the new CEO they should start pushing harder in SSD. I think they had some issues a few months back and maybe that's why this one got delayed but I would expect to see them focusing more on SSD.
The Benjamins - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The flyer I link shows the rated Sequential speeds and IOPS are the same for all capacities, so I wouldn't expect it to vary muchDanNeely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
0 variation at all over all capacities strikes me as suspicious, not reassuring.jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Oddly they note in the pdf that those numbers are:"Based on the published specs of the 1TB model. Speeds based on internal testing. Actual performance may vary"
Ninhalem - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I think I finally found the drive to replace my aging mechanical drive in my venerable 2009 Macbook Pro.linkman10 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Still going on that with an HDD? I'm still using the same model and an SSD sure perked it up.casteve - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Nice part. Look forward to seeing the 256 and 512MB results. Too bad the Crucial Storage Executive is still Java based.hansmuff - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The tool that you have to use what, a few times a year being Java based is some sort of problem? How?ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Do you need it for anything but a FW update? I expect there'll be a few updates now in the beginning but I definitely wouldn't call it a problem.Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I think I've updated firmware on my Crucial drives, but I know I don't have Java on any of those systems.ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Java comes with the dashboard installer.mode_13h - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Actually, you don't need it to upgrade the firmware. But it also does things like over-provisioning and secure-erase. And it can tell you roughly how much write endurance is remaining.ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Overprovisioning, that very advanced function that translates to shrinking a partition and leaving some free space somewhere at the end of the drive using nothing but Windows tools... There is no killer function in these SSD tools. They make FW updates a lot easier for regular people. I don't want to make boot disks and type in my updates. Just click click form the GUI and I'm done. Maybe something like Samsung's RAPID needs the software but other than that you can do it yourself.jabber - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Yeah I just use Disk Management or Partition Wizard to leave 2-5GB (depending on size) free on all my SSDs.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Good luck with that. First, it's not much (I usually OP by anywhere from 6.25% to 25% - if you search SSD reviews on this site, you'll see performance benefits even up to 25%).Second, it definitely won't work for all vendors. The SSD firmware needs to know that the unpartitioned space doesn't hold user data, and they don't all derive this information by simply looking for a partition table and parsing that, as you seem to believe.
ddrіver - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Any link for that? The point of overprovisioning is to have space to swap data and do internal reorganization even when the drive is full, for wear leveling. Since most drives support TRIM and you can trigger it manually it's impossible to assume there will be data there. It's like the SSD should stop with the wear leveling because I might have some data in that free space it's using anyway.The ONLY difference between normal free space and OP is that OP will be there even when you regular partition is full. Wear leveling and data reorganization works even with 0 OP when there actually is user data everywhere. It just takes longer.
The second you create an empty chunk of disk space it will be TRIMmed anyway and it becomes really free space. It can even be a partition that you never write to. Windows will TRIM it regardless and the SSD will know the LBAs are empty. No flag needed. But I'd love to see some docs from recent times to say otherwise.
mode_13h - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I don't know why you think anyone is TRIMming unpartitioned space, but it's a bad assumption.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Their documentation seems to suggest it writes something to flag the unpartitioned space as useable for over-provisioning. I don't know how you can easily prove that simply leaving unpartitioned space is equivalent.With certain other vendors, I've seen official statements that simply leaving unpartitioned space is not sufficient for overprovisioning.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Dumb question, but what do you need to use it for? I've never used it, that I can remember, and I've got a couple of Crucial drives. I don't have Java on any of my personal systems either.mikato - Friday, January 19, 2018 - link
Agree. I don’t see how Java is a problem.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
*shrug*While Java apps tend to be clunky to use, for a firmware updater usability isn't a top priority; and Java is an easy way to create an app with the needed low level system access that will run on almost any OS.
Flunk - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
It's a shame they don't native compile it. The Oracle Java runtime is such a security problem I just don't have it installed on anything anymore.coder111 - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
What on earth are you talking about? Don't install the browser plugin- no security problem. And get JDK, not JRE. Java language or runtime environment is not a security threat in any way. Browser plugin is, but it's been obsolete for more than a decade and only used for legacy applications, and shouldn't be used at all.Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I still don't want it on my system...but I'm sure I've updated firmware on Crucial drives without Java installed.smilingcrow - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Just uninstall after using the software as it's not as if you need to run an SSD utility frequently.Cooe - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Tin foil hat alert :)erple2 - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
Wait, what? Unless you're compiling Java applications, or trying to profile a running Java application and want to tune jvm settings, there's no real need anymore for the jdk. The jre is more than sufficient for the vast majority of needs. The days of the jre java.exe being subpar to java.exe included in the jdk died in the 1.6 days.mode_13h - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Traditionally, you can use the Micron enterprise tool with many of these drives. They caution against it, but it works fine in at least some cases - probably the MX drives are a good bet.HardwareDufus - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I have an OCZ-VERTEX4.. so I was looking at reviews here on AnandTech of my device to make a comparison. However, my drive was reviewed in 2012... when they used Desktop Iometer... which shows really high numbers....How do the newer testing methods at AnandTech differ from what they did in the past. Per these 2012 charts, my Vertex4 is faster.... but I know that's not the case after 5 years of progress...
mapesdhs - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
I've run AS-SSD, CDM, ATTO and HDTach on drives going back to the Vertex 4 (also 3, 2E, Agility 4 and Vector). I have some M.2 results to add to the archive, but here it is atm:http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/ssdtests.zip
mapesdhs - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
Forgot to mention, the Vertex 4 is still a good drive. Just make sure the fw is up to date. Think the latest is 1.5.peevee - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
"SMI controllers tend to be more popular for budget products"... "Silicon Motion has been working to improve their controllers and move toward the high end, but the MX500 isn't even adopting the newer SM2259"... "but they're not as large or numerous as on previous MX series drives"race to the bottom.
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Did you look at the improved performance numbers? I'm not sure how that supports a race to the bottomWolfpup - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Ugh, is EVERYONE using TLC now? I was uncomfortable enough with MLC.I'm not crazy about switching away from Marvell either...though I suppose as long as it works and the software Micron writes is good...
I really want a higher end MLC (or SLC!) drive from Crucial/Micron.
My main system is still using a 2012 Crucial drive though. It literally launches programs in maybe 1-2 seconds MAX, so who the heck cares if it were 42x faster? (Literally the only time I've ever see it take any actual time to respond to anything was when I was doing something else while running TRIM on it for no real reason.)
But my next drive I'd like to be MLC Crucial/Micron too...
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
BX300 is your best betsmilingcrow - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Don't waste your time with SLC but look at Optane.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
That's another alternativevalinor89 - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Optane is a first gen product... I think I will pass this round and watch for the next generations .Also, Optane is not in the same price range as "conventional" SSD.
extide - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
It's a bit higher but not outrageous by any means. It's FAR cheaper than several of the early SSD's I bought in terms of $/GB. Frankly for its performance, I think it's priced pretty aggressively, TBH.DanNeely - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
SLC is dead in anything except very non-mainstream products (eg low capacity embedded flash built on a process so large that even doing ECC is optional), at only 1/3 the density of TLC per chip it's nowhere near cost competitive. The same factor is killing off MLC as 3d TLC improves. I suspect over the next year or three MLC flash will gradually fade away too.If they can get the total write count up high enough, QLC will start displacing TLC over the next few years. That number was only a few dozen writes a few years ago; I haven't seen any updates since then. OTOH over similar timespans TLC write endurance has climbed from a few hundred writes to a few thousand; if QLC has been able to improve equally we might start seeing it soon in entry level products.
jjj - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
You seem to have a negative opinion on 3D TLC for no good reason while also not requiring much perf.If your current drive is from 2012, a Crucial m4 that was fashionable back then, has 72TB endurance while the this MX500 has 360TB for the 1TB version and 180TB for the 500GB.version.
StrangerGuy - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Hey let's pay >3x/GB for SLC so we can have extra drive endurance where TLC already doesn't matter for 99.999% of the target market, of course he's the smart one and rest of us are teh dumbs.10TB written over 3.5 years on my M550 1TB, yup can't wait for the drive to finally die in 300 years if it was *only* 1000 writes/bit TLC so I can buy a new one. Because TLC endurance sux amirite?
PeachNCream - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
TLC is pretty good these days compared to planar MLC from 2012. You probably wouldn't have anything to worry about since a drive like the MX500 would be obsolete before endurance becomes a problem. But if you're worried, there's the BX300 that's still for sale like MajGenRelativity suggested. Mushkin was also selling a 3D MLC drive, the Reactor Armor3D that was released in January-ish of this year. They have a 1TB model available and it uses the same Silicon Motion SM2258 controller so you'd probably see similar performance.https://www.anandtech.com/show/11035/mushkin-launc...
ddrіver - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
BS. This study proved SLC and MLC aren't actually meaningfully different. By inference TLC is good enough for almost anything. If you're the kind of person who can't do with TLC it's either overstating your usage scenarios or you're in the NAND destruction business.https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical...
mode_13h - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I wouldn't get so hung up on # of bits per cell. What matters is performance, write endurance, and (for some use cases) power-off data retention.mode_13h - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
I'm really impressed with the QD1 random read performance of this drive. I didn't think you could achieve so many QD1 IOPS with SATA, or else Samsung probably would've done it.DoveOfTheSouth - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
The QD1 results are impressive in the tables but the charts seem to show lower figures (QD1 read: 44.7 v c. 35; write 164.2 v c. 146). Which is correct?StrangerGuy - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
The only thing that really matters is the 4K QD1 benchmark and that was extremely impressive for the asking price.shatteredx - Thursday, January 11, 2018 - link
Agreed. MX500 hard to beat for the price now.LordConrad - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
"With the MX500 arriving at $259.99 for the same capacity but with a longer warranty..."The Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial MX500 both have a 5-year warranty.
diceman2037 - Thursday, September 2, 2021 - link
Unfortuantely, what this review couldn't account for was these SSDs have a serious defect where uptimes correlate to significant increases of write amplification in comparison to their older mx300 siblings and not fit for use as an OS drive.https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/crucial-mx...