Crucial MX200 and BX100 SSDs

I just bought 5 MX100 256GB drives because of the price point and the capacitors ^.^
 
It'll be interesting to see the street prices and how the MX200 compares to the 850 EVO.
 
According to the article above they will have a very similar pricing scheme to the current MX100 - making them a much better value then the 840 EVO or Pro IMO. I almost bought EVOs but couldn't justify the cost.
 
Chandler said:
I just bought 5 MX100 256GB drives because of the price point and the capacitors ^.^
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You know that these capacitors do not provide a full power-loss protection?
They are to small for that, they are probably just enough to keep the drive from corrupting its mapping table from a power loss and bricking.

The specified endurance rating is much better than Samsung guarantees even for their Pro line.
And now Crucial even has a 1TB model on the budged line.
 
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Heres hoping for 60mm (2260) M.2 SATA drive version for my Zenbook. Was hoping for a 1TB SSD to put in.
 
omniscence said:
You know that these capacitors do not provide a full power-loss protection?
They are to small for that, they are probably just enough to keep the drive from corrupting its mapping table from a power loss and bricking.

The specified endurance rating is much better than Samsung guarantees even for their Pro line.
And now Crucial even has a 1TB model on the budged line.
Click to expand...

Would it have been better to go with something such as an S3500/ S3700? I can't seem to find any write ups on the actual capacitors used in such drives (economy/ desktop SSDs). I would love it if the manufactures released more information....
 
The bigger question is, with their new Storage Executive software they just released, is there finally an easy way to enable the on drive hardware encryption without jumping through a ton of hoops of which there aren't really properly laid out steps?
 
I installed that last night. It is a web server that accesses your hardware. I like the interface it works on all drives in the system for SMART status (well at least SSDs). I am not sure of the encryption option because the 2 Crucial drives I have in the windows box are M4s. I recently moved the M500 to my linux based htpc when I added the 1TB 850 pro.

I did see the option for encryption but it was not available for any of my drives.
 
Chandler said:
Would it have been better to go with something such as an S3500/ S3700? I can't seem to find any write ups on the actual capacitors used in such drives (economy/ desktop SSDs). I would love it if the manufactures released more information....
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The Intel 730, which is based on the S3500, is the only desktop-class drive that provides full power loss protection.

Anandtech did a write-up about Crucial/Micron's power loss protection in their M600 article.
 
omniscence said:
You know that these capacitors do not provide a full power-loss protection?
They are to small for that, they are probably just enough to keep the drive from corrupting its mapping table from a power loss and bricking.

The specified endurance rating is much better than Samsung guarantees even for their Pro line.
And now Crucial even has a 1TB model on the budged line.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I was under the impression that the MX100 drives had power loss protection as well. Good to know that isn't the case before I picked up a full set!
 
raiderj said:
Interesting, I was under the impression that the MX100 drives had power loss protection as well. Good to know that isn't the case before I picked up a full set!
Click to expand...

It does have PLP, just not end-to-end PLP like the Intel 730 does.
The Crucial drives will prevent corruption happening for data already residing on the SSD in the event of a power loss. The Intel has enough capacitance to allow the same thing, as well as any cached data to be written to the drive during a power loss.

What you do gain with the MX100/M500/M550 over the Intel 730 is Opal 2, Microsoft eDrive, and IEEE-1667 compliancy, which the 730 lacks on all fronts. When I purchased an SSD for my BDE-enabled work laptop, the MX100 was a no-brainer because of the balance of low cost, very good performance, and those key encryption-friendly features.
 
raiderj said:
Interesting, I was under the impression that the MX100 drives had power loss protection as well. Good to know that isn't the case before I picked up a full set!
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Same - except I just bought 545 worth of them.
 
Chandler said:
Would it have been better to go with something such as an S3500/ S3700? I can't seem to find any write ups on the actual capacitors used in such drives (economy/ desktop SSDs). I would love it if the manufactures released more information....
Click to expand...

SATA Drives with full power loss protection are the S3700/S3500, the Seagate 600 Pro, and and the datacenter versions of the consumer drives like the Crucial/Micron M500DC, Samsung 845DC. The 730 supposedly has the same hardware design as the S3500, but there is an article about that from Patrick on STH that the 730 has a bit different set of SMART attributes and is also advertised differently.
 
omniscence said:
SATA Drives with full power loss protection are the S3700/S3500, the Seagate 600 Pro, and and the datacenter versions of the consumer drives like the Crucial/Micron M500DC, Samsung 845DC. The 730 supposedly has the same hardware design as the S3500, but there is an article about that from Patrick on STH that the 730 has a bit different set of SMART attributes and is also advertised differently.
Click to expand...

Don't forget about the Plextor M6!
 
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DejaWiz said:
It does have PLP, just not end-to-end PLP like the Intel 730 does.
The Crucial drives will prevent corruption happening for data already residing on the SSD in the event of a power loss. The Intel has enough capacitance to allow the same thing, as well as any cached data to be written to the drive during a power loss.

What you do gain with the MX100/M500/M550 over the Intel 730 is Opal 2, Microsoft eDrive, and IEEE-1667 compliancy, which the 730 lacks on all fronts. When I purchased an SSD for my BDE-enabled work laptop, the MX100 was a no-brainer because of the balance of low cost, very good performance, and those key encryption-friendly features.
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I remember reading out the Opal 2 features. Not sure how I'd take advantage of it... I think there's something in the software stack that would be needed to leverage it? I was thinking that a RAIDz1/2 array of them would be great if you could somehow tie the encryption side of ZFS to it. Not sure that could be done though?
 
DejaWiz said:
What you do gain with the MX100/M500/M550 over the Intel 730 is Opal 2, Microsoft eDrive, and IEEE-1667 compliancy, which the 730 lacks on all fronts. When I purchased an SSD for my BDE-enabled work laptop, the MX100 was a no-brainer because of the balance of low cost, very good performance, and those key encryption-friendly features.
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Yes, but the question is HOW do you take advantage of these features easily without jumping through hoops. It seems like how to do it properly is different for different machines, and it took me days to figure out how to utilize Microsoft eDrive for my wife's new Latitude and MX100 I bought for her.
Seems overly ridiculous to me to not have some kind of software to simply enable these features like how Dell has DDPE (Dell Data Protection Encryption) to enable the hardware features on Dell's OPAL SSD's.
 
AMD T-type said:
Yes, but the question is HOW do you take advantage of these features easily without jumping through hoops. It seems like how to do it properly is different for different machines, and it took me days to figure out how to utilize Microsoft eDrive for my wife's new Latitude and MX100 I bought for her.
Seems overly ridiculous to me to not have some kind of software to simply enable these features like how Dell has DDPE (Dell Data Protection Encryption) to enable the hardware features on Dell's OPAL SSD's.
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TPM + Bitlocker + AD + OPAL/eDrive/IEEE-1667 = hardware and software based data protection.

More robust than DDPE, imo.
 
DejaWiz said:
TPM + Bitlocker + AD + OPAL/eDrive/IEEE-1667 = hardware and software based data protection.

More robust than DDPE, imo.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm just dense here and not fully understanding, but from what I understand, when you have a drive that is capable of on drive hardware encryption and you use bitlocker, it is enabled instantly without going through the process of encrypting the whole disk like say TrueCrypt did.
What I've ran into is getting this feature to work does not seem to be a universal process and differs between machines.

Here is a post from a Crucial Admin on the requirements for enabling hardware encryption on an MX100 drive

•The boot order must be set to start first from the SSD (not the USB or CD drives)

•Make sure UEFI boot is enabled and you have a UEFI enabled Windows 8 installed

•The system needs to support UEFI 2.3.1

•BitLocker only supports TPM version 1.2 and 2.0 (or newer). In addition, you must use a Microsoft-provided TPM driver
(Please note, BitLocker can also work without a TPM, it will need a USB flash drive to set the password instead then)

•The computer must boot natively from UEFI.

•Dynamic discs are not supported by BitLocker

•The SSD must have two partitions (drives with Windows installed generally do anyway) and the main partition to be encrypted must be NTFS

•Ensure Secure Boot is disabled in the UEFI.
The MX100 supports either ATA Security (like Secure Boot) or TCG Opal (which is needed for SED) but not both.

•The computer must have the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) disabled in UEFI.
Click to expand...
 
I assume the relatively new MX100 series will still be offered. So would the Crucial SSD product lineup look like this in terms of both price and performance?

MX200 > MX100 > BX100
 
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