Crucial 256GB M4 mSATA SSD $160

StormUP said:
Yes, the mSATA version is back in stock @189.99. I suspect the code wouldn't work anyhow even if you could locate the box to put the code in during checkout as the OP said it expried on the 10th. I went to look for promo during checkout just to test it...and I can't find a promo box either, just the one for gift certificates. I know I've used the promo box on buy.com in the past, but either it's not available if they have no promos going or they've made it incredibly hard to find these days.
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Well, I had a stroke of great and then terrible luck.

So I called CS and asked if they would extend the promo, they said no but it took them like an hour to tell me that. So, they gave me store credit as compensation for my time, and they ended up giving me $30 credit. (same as the coupon so yay me). I was told the coupon would arrive instantly... it didn't. It came about an hour after I was off the phone (hey at least it came in) but it literally came moments after the drive went back OOS. Seriously? All I want to do is give them my money and get this drive before christmas, but they just wont take it from me. :( So now I have $30 of useless buy.com credit and no SSD.
 
^^^, ouch, that sucks the mighty big one. Seems like customer service at a lot of places around X-Mas goes right into das crapper. I'd be melting some ears on the phone, you might get another credit hehe. :cool:
 
Let's see....you asked them to do you a favor and then bitch about a FREE 30.00 credit?

Some people's sense of entitlement makes me wanna gag.
 
I'm not sure how that is terrible luck...you already got $30 you didn't really deserve.

Anywho....it's not like this is some magical drive that was just released, I'm sure they will get more soon.
 
l3uLLDoZeR said:
I'm not sure how that is terrible luck...you already got $30 you didn't really deserve.
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Welcome to new internet. Came here looking for information on an SSD and instead its a emotion diary, a flood of drivel
 
ir0nw0lf said:
^^^, ouch, that sucks the mighty big one. Seems like customer service at a lot of places around X-Mas goes right into das crapper. I'd be melting some ears on the phone, you might get another credit hehe. :cool:
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It ended up coming back in stock early this morning and I placed an order.

Old Hippie said:
Let's see....you asked them to do you a favor and then bitch about a FREE 30.00 credit?

Some people's sense of entitlement makes me wanna gag.
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Entitlement? I asked if they would extend the promo, and it took them a very long time to tell me no. Then they offered to compensate me for it anyways because of the long time it took to give me an answer. I was very happy, obviously, because they helped me out, and I really appreciated it. As far as entitlement goes though, I figured I might as well try my luck and it paid off.

l3uLLDoZeR said:
I'm not sure how that is terrible luck...you already got $30 you didn't really deserve.

Anywho....it's not like this is some magical drive that was just released, I'm sure they will get more soon.
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Terrible luck in the sense that it became out of stock as soon as I was about to order, which is exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to order on the 10th.
 
I got the SATA version of the M4 (also 256 GB) via UPS yesterday. As I mentioned, it's my 1st SSD. I took it inside the house, opened the box, and saw the very small M4 box. I opened that up and was disappointed to see that it's just the SSD, no screws. WTF? This is the retail version, not OEM. (I bought it from Newegg when they had the "Green Monday" $40 off promo.) Luckily, I had 4 small screws somewhere. I mounted it in my case and my BIOS recognized it. :cool:

I was shocked that the 040H firmware that was published on crucial.com on 12/4/12 was already on this SSD! :eek: So I guess there's nothing for me to update. This weekend, I'll install Windows 7 on it. Before I do and uninstall it from my magnetic HDD, what real-life testing should I do? I plan to time Windows 7 boot-up with a stop watch (HDD vs. SSD) and also how quickly Firefox loads after a computer reboot. I don't care for synthetic benchmarking.
 
Forget Firefox, try opening Firefox and two or three other apps simultaneously and then compare that to your HDD. ;)
 
Impulse said:
Forget Firefox, try opening Firefox and two or three other apps simultaneously and then compare that to your HDD. ;)
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Well the thing is, the image I have on the magnetic HDD has minimal apps b/c I didn't want to waste much time installing apps that I'd have to new install on the SSD. But true, I can open a few apps that I have in there and apps that come with Windows.

I was going to upload the firmware that I mentioned I got on my M4 SSD but it looks like ImageShack now requires a login account. :(
 
I was going to upload the firmware that I mentioned I got on my M4 SSD but it looks like ImageShack now requires a login account
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Is that a problem?

Takes 60 seconds.

Just curious....why are you making this so difficult? There's really no testing to be done and unless you have an image/clone of your old HD just do a fresh install.
 
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Old Hippie said:
Is that a problem?

Takes 60 seconds.

Just curious....why are you making this so difficult? There's really no testing to be done and unless you have an image/clone of your old HD just do a fresh install.
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I installed Win 7 on the new SSD. :cool: It literally took less than 10 min.! :eek:

Anyway, I went ahead and created an Image Shack account. Here's the pic I meant to post earlier showing that my Crucial M4 SSD SATA (not mSATA) drive already has the latest firmware version on it.

crucialm4256gbfwver.jpg


As far as benchmarking goes, since I have 2 instances of Windows 7 running (1 on the SSD and 1 on the magnetic HDD), I can do some benchmarking by booting the appropriate drive. One of the first apps I installed was Firefox. After I installed it, when I clicked on the FF icon to launch it, literally the browser was up the moment I was done clicking. Amazing. This is my first SSD, so for you SSD veterans out there, I'm sure you remember your first time as well.

Wow.

Now if only I had a decent Internet speed. Damn AT&T DSL.
 
beowulf7 said:
I installed Win 7 on the new SSD. :cool: It literally took less than 10 min.! :eek:

Anyway, I went ahead and created an Image Shack account. Here's the pic I meant to post earlier showing that my Crucial M4 SSD SATA (not mSATA) drive already has the latest firmware version on it.

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/5416/crucialm4256gbfwver.jpg

As far as benchmarking goes, since I have 2 instances of Windows 7 running (1 on the SSD and 1 on the magnetic HDD), I can do some benchmarking by booting the appropriate drive. One of the first apps I installed was Firefox. After I installed it, when I clicked on the FF icon to launch it, literally the browser was up the moment I was done clicking. Amazing. This is my first SSD, so for you SSD veterans out there, I'm sure you remember your first time as well.

Wow.

Now if only I had a decent Internet speed. Damn AT&T DSL.
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I put my first SSD in a totally new build, so I can't honestly say I knew the difference between the new machine in general and the SSD specifically...to me it was just a really fast new build.
But being used to an SSD and going back to platter based machines? Torture. I often quadruple-click things on platter based machines because the delay spinning up and accessing the disk makes me think my first double-click didn't work.
 
My wife's M4 is in transit and hopefully will be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest. :D
 
I installed Win 7 on the new SSD. It literally took less than 10 min.!
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Nice!

It's hard to believe it takes soo long for some to change to SSD's.

I've been using them for 4-5 yrs.and they are easily the best update you can do. :)

Have fun!
 
Also, my WEI (Windows Experience Index) score went up from 5.9 to 7.9 for the "Primary hard disk" section. Now my limiting factor for the overall score is my AMD 7770 card. :p (7.5 in WEI for both Graphics and Gaming graphics).

Kueller said:
I put my first SSD in a totally new build, so I can't honestly say I knew the difference between the new machine in general and the SSD specifically...to me it was just a really fast new build.
But being used to an SSD and going back to platter based machines? Torture. I often quadruple-click things on platter based machines because the delay spinning up and accessing the disk makes me think my first double-click didn't work.
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LOL about quadruple clicking, I guess I'll start doing it as well when I get so used to my new computer at home that when I use my slow PoS Windows Vista laptop at work, I'll be 4 or even 6-clicking the damn icons to launch apps and then 10 sec. later, get multiple instances of them to appear. :p

Old Hippie said:
Nice!

It's hard to believe it takes soo long for some to change to SSD's.

I've been using them for 4-5 yrs.and they are easily the best update you can do. :)

Have fun!
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Thanks! Wow, you've been using SSDs since they cost multiple dollars per GB! :eek: A friend asked me if he'd see any benefits in his Vista media center PC (I think it's 3 or 4 years old) since he doesn't game on it. I told him he definitely will.

I was trying to time launches of apps but most of them areat 1 sec. or less. :D So far, the app that's taking the longest to appear is CPU-Z. After I confirm to Win 7 I want to launch it, it takes about 3.8 sec. to appear. But I'm sure that delay is it's figuring out what the computer consists of.
 
Thanks for making this thread. I didn't realize 240-256GB were so cheap now. I got $150 in Amazon gift certificates, so I'm gonna get myself one. Replace my Intel G2 160. The Intel is still fine, just running out of space.

Think I payed $430 for my G2 160 :(
 
beowulf7 said:
II opened that up and was disappointed to see that it's just the SSD, no screws. WTF?.....Luckily, I had 4 small screws somewhere. I mounted it in my case and my BIOS recognized it. :cool:
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w[H]at you don't have containers full of extra screw over the years of computer building? :D
 
Thanks! Wow, you've been using SSDs since they cost multiple dollars per GB!
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My first was a GSkill Titan 128GB and it was pretty horrible.

No TRIM and GC took forever.

The only way to revive it's true potential was with HDDErase.

All around just plain crappy. :D
 
Old Hippie said:
My first was a GSkill Titan 128GB and it was pretty horrible.

No TRIM and GC took forever.

The only way to revive it's true potential was with HDDErase.

All around just plain crappy. :D
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My first was a Patriot Warp 128GB from 2009. Its still in service, but it only manages about 30-40MB/s sustained transfer. TRIM didn't exist back then and garbage collection wasn't on the "low end" stuff. And it doesn't support Secure Erase.

Amazing how far we've come in 3 years.
 
Amazing how far we've come in 3 years.
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Seems technology doesn't take "baby steps" but "leaps and bounds". :D

Or maybe it's because I'm 60 and thngs fly by anyway!
 
westrock2000 said:
w[H]at you don't have containers full of extra screw over the years of computer building? :D
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Yeah, luckily I saved some of those screws and found 4 of them the right size. :cool:

Old Hippie said:
My first was a GSkill Titan 128GB and it was pretty horrible.

No TRIM and GC took forever.

The only way to revive it's true potential was with HDDErase.

All around just plain crappy. :D
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How much did that cost? Was that a 1st gen. SDD? Are the current high performing SSDs (like 830, 840 Pro, M4) considered as 3rd gen.? :confused:
 
Definately first Gen. but I don't remember the cost.

The link should give ya a clue......300.00?

BTW, ALL SSDs had and still have GC.

Are the current high performing SSDs (like 830, 840 Pro, M4) considered as 3rd gen.?
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Yep.
 
^ I meant the cost at the time you bought it.

For those interested, I did a little more informal benchmarking of the 2 drives in my new computer. To refresh your memory, I have an instance of Windows 7 on a 2 TB HDD and another instance of Windows 7 on the 256 GB M4 SSD. The images are not identical (I've spent more time on the M4, loaded my Steam apps, etc.), but close enough.

When I reboot my computer (i7-3770K, stock clocked), from when I get to the BIOS screen and select which drive I want to booth, the SSD takes 17 sec. from when I hit enter at the BIOS screen until when I get the password prompt. When I boot from the HDD, it takes 27.5 sec. I hand timed it w/ a stopwatch.

I'm going to wipe out the 2 TB HDD's Windows 7 to reformat it so that I can use it for data storage from my old computer (documents and multimedia files).
 
Old Hippie said:
If you look that review is from 4/12/2009.

I'd say 300.00 is about right. Had you read on.....
The 128GB (FM-25S2S-128GBT1) version we tested for this article is offered for $299. ;)
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Yeah I saw that 299 USD/EUR street price but wasn't sure if you paid about that. I guess that's not *too* shabby at being under $3/GB. I remember when SSD prices hit $2/GB, I couldn't wait until they broke the $1/GB barrier. Now we're seeing previous gen. SSDs go for under $0.50/GB. :cool:
 
My first was an 80GB X25-M G2, I got lucky and bought one for like $220 from some online shop in CA before everyone started gouging on them for like six months straight... I think I jumped in at just the right time (post TRIM etc), and don't regret it for a second. That one drive is still working great on my mother's desktop. I hope prices keep dropping next year and they don't settle back at $1/GB for the current gen drives. Lots of great deals out there right now tho, excellent time to jump in.
 
Impulse said:
I hope prices keep dropping next year and they don't settle back at $1/GB for the current gen drives. Lots of great deals out there right now tho, excellent time to jump in.
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My expectation is that by this time next year 256GB SSD's will be around $100-$130 and 128GB will be the smallest available (at about $60-$80). I also imagine we will start to see consumer 1TB SSD's, hopefully around the $500-$600 range.

Assuming no floods.... ;)
 
I went ahead and bought one. It was about $220 after taxes and shipping. Said its guarenteed to be here by Monday so it can still go under the tree.

The Intel 160 will then replace the Patriot Warp as my music storage disk.
 
My first was an 80GB X25-M G2,
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Those were/are great drives.

After my GSkill drive I purchased an 80GB G1 and that went so well I purchased another G1 to put in RAID0.

I sold those and bought two 80GB G2s but thought I could do a little better.

I now have 3 Crucial 256GB C300s connected thru an LSI 9260-4i w/FastPath and I'm satsified......for awhile. :)

It's been quite an education but experience is what gives ya knowledge.
 
westrock2000 said:
I went ahead and bought one. It was about $220 after taxes and shipping. Said its guarenteed to be here by Monday so it can still go under the tree.

The Intel 160 will then replace the Patriot Warp as my music storage disk.
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$220 for m4 or $250 for 840 Pro.... :confused:

Why didn't you step it up :D
 
I suspect a large portion of the $220 was shipping for the purchaser to get it by Monday so 220 vs 250 is not a valid comparison as the $250 doesn't include overnight shipping.
 
StormUP said:
I suspect a large portion of the $220 was shipping for the purchaser to get it by Monday so 220 vs 250 is not a valid comparison as the $250 doesn't include overnight shipping.
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Overnight shipping cost $5 on amazon... so YES it does count in my opinion.

I COULD have ordered yesterday (SATURDAY) and got it tomorrow for Christmas...
 
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