The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)
You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility. 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 utilize in our benchmark testing.
ASU brings are performance benchmarks down to the area of listed specifications, although IOPS are three times higher than advertised for write performance.
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 V4 PCMARK VANTAGE TOTAL POINT SCORE
PCMark Vantage HDD Suite returned a Total Point Score of 33640 for the Crucial V4 which is not, by any means, the best we have seen to date but this is a SATA 2 SSD. The highest transfer speed reached was 201MB/s while importing pictures and the remainder of the test results are as follows:
To give you an example of where Vantage standing is with the V4, I seem to remember the Intel X25 SATA 2 SSD bringing in similar Vantage scores a few years back.
They sold a Indilinx barefoot controlled M225 had similar performance to this drive even at sata2, can’t understand the thinking behind this drive at all. Phison ere great controllers anyway. Have a good day Les.
Missed a few letters there, meant to say Phison weren’t great controllers anyway. Where’s the edit button.
How about doing a summary of the best SATA2 SSDs, if one needed one today?
In the time of SATA 3, we do so very few SATA 2 SSDs as SATA 3 is just as compatible. Will consider such but most SSDs listed on the chart would be last gen SSDs…or rather… older release.
I’m afraid I’ve gotten a little lost in the technical details here, if someone doesn’t mind helping a brother out! I have a 2008 white Macbook (SATA) and want to upgrade to SSD. Is there a reason why I would pick the V4 over the M4 if not for a slightly cheaper price at this time? Or is there some reason I should consider the M4 over the V4? And, do I need any special mounting hardware or will it plug into the existing slot in my laptop?
m4 is sata3 which is backwards compatible with sata 2. sata 2 itself is backwards compatible with Sata1. if your mac is sata1 you should go with v4 and not m4
I’ve just purchased thw 256GB model and installed as an OS drive on my Macbook and it has worse performance than a HDD. Try multitasking with real world use and you’ll see how dire the drive is.
The V4 256gb version is HORRIBLE at multitasking and cannot perform a replay service which is a relatively lite read sample, smoothly! I am hugely disappointed with this ssd.
I was shocked at the performance of this V4 SSD. It is very similar to a spinning HDD and is the slowest SSD I have encountered. Shame on Crucial for ever releasing such a dullard.