The last two months have seen a numerous amounts of varying types of Solid State Drives here, like all articles these take time to process and collate data from the various test systems we have in house.  In June 2010 we saw the Crucial 256GB RealSSD C300 hit the streets in a big way, causing many upsets with the raw I/O performance required within todays professional workstations.   A year later and we see the successor the m4 Solid State Drive from Crucial.   Will it make the differences, well in theory there should be some remarkable uptakes in performance as the company have moved to 25nm NAND flash modules and the higher density means lowered costs in manufacturing and increased performance.   Bring with it a 3 year warranty, 6GB/s SATA compliance and you have  the makings of an excellent product.

Crucial have been around now for a good period being one of the few that have constantly rising to the challenge to make better, faster and more affordable SSD's to the community and on this venture we not only see a 128GB and 256GB standard but a huge leap upwards to a 512GB variant.  To make a commitment of this  magnitude the company has to be feeling extremely confident that the new m4 series SSD’s will make that added difference not only to the consumer but the ever grower enterprise market that is slowly adopting these new drives in many different scenario’s.   Its also claimed by Crucial that the m4 series employ a standard hard drive interface and dimensions and therefore an easy storage upgrade for most performance hungry notebooks.

Moving onwards we look at the Public Relations draft to the product

Product details

• Most advanced NAND process technology in the semiconductor industry

• Limited three-year warranty

Speed demon.
Hungry for more?     The Crucial m4 SSD builds on the success of our award-winning, wildly popular Crucial RealSSD C300 solid-state drive by offering mobile and desktop users scorching-fast read and write speeds, ground-breaking SATA SSD computing, and unparalleled performance for the dollar.

Latest and greatest.
Designed for client computing, the Crucial m4 SSD delivers faster boot and application load times for mobile and desktop users alike. Low power, lightweight, and durable, it empowers high-speed synchronous MLC NAND, advanced controller technology, optimized NAND management, and the second-generation SATA 6Gb/s interface. Together, that technology dramatically improves data transfers for bandwidth-demanding applications.

Clear advantage
SSDs provide many benefits over traditional hard drives.

• Reduced power consumption

• Groundbreaking SATA SSD performance

• Read speeds up to 415MB/s

• Second-generation SATA 6Gb/s w/ Native Command Queuing (3Gb/s backward compatible)

• Less heat generation

• Quiet

• Increased portability, lightweight

• No moving parts

• Rugged and reliable operation in even the most demanding operating environments

Memory Experts.
Delivering on the highest quality based upon Micron's leading-edge NAND media, the Crucial brand of memory has long been synonymous with reliability and high-performance. Our expertise in NAND process technology enables us to optimize the performance and durability of Crucial solid-state drives.

On a side note which is sometimes often overlooked there is another variant of Crucial’s m4 SSD 2.5" SATA Solid-State Drive with data transfer kit which will help those in the need of the vital upgrade help as the picture below shows.

The Data Transfer Kit makes it simple to copy everything on your hard drive, including operating system, data, email settings and applications, to your Crucial m4. The kit includes the EZ Gig III Cloning and Imaging Software for Windows®, ShirtPocket's SuperDuper! for Mac®, a USB to SATA cable and a Quick Start Guide. Upgrade your notebook drive in just three simple steps.

Moving over the page we look at the m4 256GB in the flesh

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - m4 in the Flesh
Page 3 - System Set -Up and Software Used
Page 4 - SiSoftware Sandra 2011 Drive Tests
Page 5 - Miscellaneous Solid State Drive Benchmark Tests
Page 6 - System I/O Tests - PCMark 7 and POVRAY
Page 7 - Miscellaneous Professional Graphic Card Benchmark Tests
Page 8 - SPECviewperf® and SPECapc™ Benchmark Tests
Page 9 - Conclusions and Award