Crucial M550 SSD Review (1TB) – Increased Speed, Capacity and Value

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of highly compressible data (oFill/1Fill), or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

 

If we look back at our Crystal DiskMark result of the M500, we definitely see a speed boost, perhaps at the cost of 4KQD32 read and writes speeds as they are distinctly lower than the M500. Very impressive is the low 4K write speed of 127MB/s which is the highest we have seen to date on any single SSD, whether it be in a CPU optimized or standard system.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.6

The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance.  For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

Looking at throughput, once again the high sequential performance is great with the low 4K write speed at 107MB/s and a score of 1093.  We also get our first look at IOPS with 87635 being the high for read and 73764 IOPS being the high for write.  These are a bit lower than listed IOPS specs of 95K read and 85K write.

AS SSD Copy Benchmark shows great transfer speeds and total transfer times when transferring the .ISO ans Game, however, transfer of a program could have stepped it up a bit.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today.  The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

Although throughput and IOPS were decent, we wanted to see if we could increase IOPS to listed specifications of 95K read and 85K write:

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

CRUCIAL M550 1TB SSD PCMARK VANTAGE RESULTS

The Crucial M550 1TB SSD achieved a Total Score of 75885 which is an excellent result.  Seven of the eight tests had resulting transfer speeds in the SATA 3 range and the highest recorded was 429MB/s when video editing in Windows Movie Maker.

Let’s take a look at where this SSD stands in our PCMark Vantage SSD Hierarchy of 2.5″ notebook SSDs: