Crucial MX300 2TB SSD Review

 

	Review: Crucial MX300 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Crucial Model: Crucial MX300 2TB SSD Firmware version: M0CR031

Few months ago I took a look at the brand
new MX300 SSD by Crucial. The drive was 750GB and the major change was the
NAND, as it used the latest TLC 3D NAND that micron had to offer. Fast forward
to today and the Crucial MX300 SSD is available in m.2 and 2.5” form factors both
of which are SATA. TheMX300 SSD however is available in different capacities,
275GB, 525GB, 1TB, and also a 2TB drive, which is the drive that I will be
reviewing.

A big thanks to Crucial for providing me with
the 2TB MX300 SSD, and you can also click here
to find out more about Crucial and their products.

So let's move on and start this review by
taking a look at the packaging and its contents, and followed by some
benchmarks.

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD

As always I will start by taking a look at
the package and the contents that are included with the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD. We'll
start with the package.

Here is a look at the front of the box.

Also the rear of the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD.

The usual card that has the Acronis True
Image HD info and serial number.

The front of the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD.

Here is the rear of the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD.

Here is a look inside the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD, and on this side we can see the four Micron 3D NAND chips and the DDRAM.

On the other side of the PCB we find
another set of four micron 3D NAND, another memory chip, and the Marvel
88SS1074-BSW2 controller.

A closer look at the Marvel 88SS1074-BSW2 controller.

The Micron 3D NAND.

Specifications of the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD

We can see that the 2TB MX300 comes with a
three year warranty, a copy of Acronis true image. The drive has a maximum read
speed of 530MB/Sec and 510MB/Sec when it comes to write speed, so everything is
looking good for anSATA 6.0Gb/s drive.

Pricing for the 275GB drive at the Crucial
web store starts at 94 Euros including VAT moving up to 145€ for the 525GB,
291€ for the 1TB, and finally 548€for the 2TB. As always those prices are here for
reference purposes so expect them to change over time.

CrystalDiskInfo

In
the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD.

 

Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

Test machine

For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:

PC 1:

• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
• RAM: RAM: Crucial Ballistix Elite 4x8GB
• GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
  controller
• OS SSD: HyperX Fury 240GB
• PSU: Seasonic 750W
• Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 10 x64

 

PC 2:

• Motherboard: ASUS H110M-A/M.2 (Intel H110
  chipset)
• Processor: Intel Celeron G3900
• RAM: RAM: Crucial 2133 4x4GB DDR4
• GFX: Intel HD 510
• Sound: Onboard
• OS SSD: Netac
  N580 m.2 240GB
• PSU: Thermaltake 400W
• Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 10 x64

 

PC 2 is only used to measure the idle power consumption of
the test drive, all other tests and power measures are done with PC 1.

The Crucial MX300 2TB SSD was connected to second
SATA port on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power saving features were
disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.

The
SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology
(RST) Version 14.5.0.1081.

Test applications

To test the performance of the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this review.

• HD Tune
  Pro
• ATTO
• Iometer
• AS SSD
  Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• Anvil’s
  Storage Utilities
• PCMark

Test procedures

I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.

SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Cruail MX300 2TB SSD performs in the real world.

The reality of SSD performance

While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.

A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.

Let’s look at why this is the case.

Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?

The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.

Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance

IOPS

This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.

The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random
read output transactions in a one second interval.

Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?

This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.

On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of application
does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.

So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?

In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.

OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?

You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?

While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.

In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.

So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?

Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.

Sequential performance

I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.

To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using
their PCs these days?

Summary

So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?

In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS
performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random
performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high
performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.

However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.

Drive preparation for running the tests

All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.

• Both our spinning HDD drives were
  defragged before the start of each test.

• All SSD and HDD used in this article had
  their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.

Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.

 Crucial MX300 2TB SSD

 Comparison SDD

 

Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...

Reading Benchmarks

HD Tune

HD
Tune Test – Sequential reading test

Not the fastest result for the Crucial
MX300 SSD in this test.

ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.

Testing the drive with ATTO we can see that
it achieves its maximum rated read and write speed.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems
for a system drive.

The result for the MX300 2TB SSD is very
good.

The two graphs below will give a more
detailed view of how the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD compares with other SSDs that I
have tested.

Here I present the graph for the read speed
tests. You can compare the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD performance with other drives
I have tested.

Finally, the results for the Crucial MX300
2TBB SSD for write speed, and again you can compare it with other drives.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.

AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at a
time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.

After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.

Now let’s look at the results for the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.

For an SATA SSD the 2TB MX300 SSD gave an
excellent result.

Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....

 

PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite

We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.

I will describe the basic way that each test
is carried out, above the graph for each test.

PC Mark 8 HDD suite results

Here
is a screenshot displaying the results for the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD.

We can see form the above chart that the
performance of the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD is very good.

The
result for the After Effects test.

The
result for the InDesign test.

The
result for Photoshop heavy test.

The
result for the Illustrator test.

The
result for the Photoshop light test.

The
result for Battlefield 3.

The
result for World of Warcraft.

The
result for the Word test.

The
result for the Excel test.

The
result for the PowerPoint test.

Summary:

The Crucial MX300 2TB SSD was able to give a
very good performance.

Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....

 

I/O Performance

There is little point of having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.

The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.

Partition alignment and sector boundaries

Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Crucial MX300 2TB SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these
boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility
with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.

IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.

I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.

If any of you would like to see a
screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to
request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.

All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.

IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.

The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.

Queue depth 1

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 1)

The result is very good.

Queue depth 4

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 4)

The result is excellent.

Queue depth 32

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 32)

It's clear that with higher queue depths
the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD isn’t that impressive.

4K random write queue depth profile

For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.

The performance of the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD is in the middle of the chart but overall not that impressive.

IOMeter 4K random read test.

If there are many 4k files created, then
that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.

Queue depth 1

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 1)

A good result for the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD.

Queue depth 4

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 4)

Again the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD delivers a
good result.

Queue depth 32

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (Queue depth 32)

Another good result for the Crucial MX300
2TB SSD.

4K random read queue depth profile.     

This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.

The overall performance of the Crucial
MX300 2TB is good, however I would have like to see better numbers for lower queue
depths.

IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.

Sequential writing performance is also very
important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing
performance of the drive.

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data

The sequential write test gave an excellent
result.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD – 512K sequential reading test

Sequential read result is a little lower than
most drives but overall it's an acceptable one.

IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).

When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64
(threaded).

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD – Workstation simulation

The result is very good for the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD.

Summary

The performance of the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD is generally very good, but an improvement for lower queue depths would
have given the drive more positives.

Let's head to the next page for our
power consumption test results.....

Power requirements and efficiency

Storage device manufacturers by law must
provide power consumption specifications with their storage device products.
Quite often these specifications are quite vague, and rarely, if ever, publish
the power efficiency of their storage devices with regard to how much work a
storage device can do for a given amount of energy consumed. In this article we
will disclose with unprecedented precision, the energy efficiency of some
popular storage devices. 

Myce has now secured a piece of 'state of
the art' test equipment, which takes a sample every four micro-seconds, that I will
be using to measure the power consumption of consumer grade SSDs and HDDs. I'm so
very proud to be able to announce that Myce.wiki, in partnership with Quarch Technology, now aims to bring our
readers the most comprehensive, and accurate, power consumption tests ever
carried out on consumer grade storage devices, to be found anywhere on the
Internet.

Myce’s Power Testing will be carried out using
Quarch Technology products. More specifically we are privileged that Quarch has
allowed us to use their latest Programmable Power Module (‘PPM’) and we would
also like to take this opportunity to give a huge 'thank you' to Quarch for
providing this equipment. The PPM is specifically designed for testing low
power sleep states on modern SSDs and as such has a remarkably accurate low
level current measurement, down to 100μA (micro amps, or
millionths of an amp). Please click here
for details.

Quarch Technology is a world leader in the
supply of testing solutions for the data storage industry and if you would like
any further information please visit their website by clicking here. 

Let's take a closer look at the Quarch PPM
box in a bit more detail.

Quarch
Technology PPM

The Quarch Technology PPM is able to
provide two power supply rails to the target SSD. A 12V (volt) rail is required
for PCIe based SSDs, and also for SATA HDDs, SATA HDDs also require the 5V rail
to function. All the power requirements of a SATA SSD are handled by the 5V
rail.

The Quarch Technology PPM can switch
between 5V and 3.3V on the secondary power output channel as required. So for
SATA based SSDs it is set to 5V, and for PCIe based SSDs, it is set to 3.3V.  

On the right of the Quarch PPM, you can see
the socket where the main power injection lead connects.

On the rear of the box (not shown) you will
find a USB 2 socket, a power socket (to supply power to the unit) and a
Torridon connection interface, for connecting to external equipment.

My setup.

Although the Quarch Technology PPM can be
used on a single PC, which can act both as host and measurement system, I will
be using two PCs to run the tests. One PC will handle the measurements, and the
second PC will act both as a host for the target SSD, and will also be used to
load the target SSD with data. This will allow me to do some pretty fancy power
consumption tests.

 

I will first show the type of workload
being used to load the SSD during the power consumption test. I will then
present the power consumption graph, and power consumption statistics of the
SSD.

I will display the results in the form of
bar graphs, at the end of each test carried out in this article, so one can
compare the results obtained on all the SSDs featured in this article.

I will use the following IOMeter test
patterns to load the SSD or HDD.

• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 1 (to emulate a lightweight consumer workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 4 (to emulate a medium workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 32 (to emulate a heavy workload).
• 512K sequential read (to emulate reading
  a sequential file from the storage device).
• 512K sequential write (to emulate writing
  a sequential file to the storage device).

Power requirements for a lightweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD1

A typical lightweight consumer workload
will generally be at very low queue depths. Typically at a queue depth of one
or less. I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block
size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently
occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

There will actually be two bar graphs for
each test. The first graph will show the average power consumption during the
test run. The second graph, which is much more important, will indicate the
power efficiency of the storage device, showing how much work the storage
device can do for each Watt of energy it consumes.

4K Random Read - queue depth 1

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random read QD1

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD1 random read test.

An excellent result for the Crucial MX300
SSD on the IOPS per watt graph.

 

4K Random Write - queue depth 1

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random write QD1

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD1 random write test.

Again the Crucial MX300 is at the top of
the chart.

Power requirements for a medium weight consumer workload.
- 4K random read and write QD4

A typical medium weight consumer workload
will generally be at a queue depth of four or lower. This workload would
typically involve some multitasking, with perhaps two or three applications
running, and processing data simultaneously.  I'm testing random data at a
block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is
generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer
environment.

I will show the charts generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 4

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random read QD4

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD4 random read test.

Another excellent result for the Crucial
SSD.

4K Random Write - queue depth 4

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random write QD4

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD4 random write test.

Again the Crucial MX300 SSD is at the top
of the chart.

Power requirements for a heavyweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD32

Whilst this workload is unlikely arise for
the casual consumer PC user, it could well appear in a semi-professional
consumer environment, such as in a graphics workstation. This workload would
usually involve heavy multitasking, and having several processes running
concurrently that require constant access to small files located on the storage
device for input or output.

I'm testing random data at a block size of
4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as
the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 32

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random read QD32

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD32 random read test.

Another top result for the Crucial MX300.

4K Random Write - queue depth 32

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – 4K random write QD32

The average power consumption for the 4K
QD32 random write test.

Finishing the 4K test result we can see
that the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD continues to stay at the top of the chart.

Power requirements of a storage device when reading and
writing sequential data

Not all of a consumer workload is based
around the reading and writing of small random files. Many files are sequential
in nature, and can vary in size from a few Kilobytes to several Gigabytes, so
your storage device will spend a lot of time reading and writing sequential
data.

I'm testing sequential data at a block size
of 512 Kilobytes.

512KB Sequential read

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – Sequential read

The average power consumption for the 512K
read test.

The result is good for the Crucial MX300
2TB SSD.

512KB Sequential write

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – Sequential write

The average power consumption for the 512K
write test.

The write result for the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD is excellent.

Power requirements of storage devices when they are idle
and doing no work at all

The practical reality relating to power
consumption is that it can be quite erratic and sometimes unpredictable. Some
of us will invest in the most powerful PC we can afford, only to find that the
PC can spend quite a lot of time running and doing absolutely nothing. Storage
devices are no different.

Often we can be sitting idly pondering what
to do next, or perhaps browsing the Internet. When we arrive at a page that
interests us, we will read it, and that can take a fair amount of time to
complete. During this period the storage device will most likely be idle, but
still consuming energy.

In this test, I'm measuring how much energy
the storage device consumes when doing no work at all and with link power
management disabled.

Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD – Drive idle

It’s clear that Crucial has done an
excellent job when it comes to power saving while the drive is idle.

I will now show one more test, and this
should be regarded as for information purposes only.

Power requirement trace of an SSD booting Windows 10, in
real time.

This test is for interest only, and shows
the power requirements of the review SSD booting Windows 10 to the desktop.

Crucial
MX300 2TB – Real time trace of the drive booting Windows 10 to the desktop.

 

Summary

Since I upgraded to the newer Quarch unit I
also needed to re-test some drives, but time was a limiting factor so I only
tested three SSDs, and to my surprise the Crucial MX300 was able to give
excellent results. Initially with the idle test where the Crucial MX300 gives an
outstanding result, but this also continued in the rest of the tests,
especially in the IOPS per WATT graphs where the MX300 2TB SSD was able to give
excellent results.

Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD performs using Anvil's Storage
utilities....

 

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.

I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.

I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.

• 0 fill (100% compressible data)
• Application simulation profile (46%
  compressed)
• 100% (non compressible data)

 So let’s begin the tests.

0 fill

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (0 fill)

Results
are ranked by highest total score.

A very good result for the Crucial MX300 2TB
SSD.

Application profile

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (application profile)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

Another very good result for the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD.

100% incompressible

Crucial MX300 2TB SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the highest total score.

For the final test the result is again very
good.

Summary

The Crucial MX300 2TB SSD was able to deliver
very good performance in all three tests.

 

Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....

 

It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.

Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.

If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.

From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.

Real
world copy tests

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I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.

As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.

Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.

As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.

Read write tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)

I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to
the RAM disk.

The result is excellent.

Read write tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)

Continuing my set of tests, but this time I
will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the
currently testing SSD and vice versa.

The read result is very good, and the write
result is excellent.

Read write tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)

Copying a movie is very common task for all
of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM
disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

Overall all the result is very good.

Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)

For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.

Another very good result for the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD.

Read write tests – Small files (533MB)

I have decided to adapt the very small
files test that I am using as part of my USB3 flash tests, so this time I will
be also copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD, and again from the
SSD to the RAM disk.

As I have seen earlier with the MX300
750GB, the 2TB SSD also does not like to be used with very small files.

Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00

Start-up time

On the next screen shot you can compare the
current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I
present the results.

Boot time is also very good for the Crucial
MX300 2TB SSD, and 27.5 seconds is an impressive result. Keep in mind that over
time the boot time will change.

Installing applications

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Installing applications is possibly
something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk,
then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications,
most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.

For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.

We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.

MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)

Now let’s see
how the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD performs with the installation of MS Office 2007
Enterprise Edition.

The procedure
followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and
used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.

 

The Crucial MX300 2TB SSD needed 107 seconds
to install Office 2007.

Speed degradation after heavy testing

On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.

I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when
the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive
performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its
capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be
filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that
the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.

In this picture you can see the test files
that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary
from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.

In the picture below you will find all the
applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.

Now let’s start our tests.

 

This is a very impressive result,
considering that the drive has the OS and it's set to balance, in the power
options menu.

We can clearly see that there is a big drop
in the write performance, and the read speed is also lowered, so it's not the
best idea to have the drive filled with data and use it at the same time. Once
again I would advise you to either leave some unallocated space on the drive,
to be used as over-provisioning, or avoid filling the drive to its maximum
capacity.

After deleting a lot of the extra files and
leaving the drive to idle for almost 20 minutes, we can see that the results
are very close to the ones that I got when I first ran the test.

With all the extra files deleted there is a
small drop in the overall score, but the performance of the drive should be
restored back to its maximum. Maybe a later run would have shown better result?
But I am happy with this so no need to re run them.

Write Speed test

At this moment I would like to say HD Tune
write speed test was the very first test that I ran on this drive right after I
got it out of the box, and from looking at the result it was obvious that it
wouldn’t be very difficult to push it to its limits.

The write result is not that impressive but
at least it is consistent.

This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....

 

The cons:

My main complaint would be the price. At
the time of writing this review €500 is a lot of money for most people, and
when you invest that much you expect the drive to have higher write speeds.

The pros:

I will start with some things that I didn’t
mention earlier in this review, and these are the Crucial Storage Executive
tool, a very useful tool, and Crucial's firmware support. Over the years
Crucial has shown that they continue to support their SSDs and this is
something that I value, especially as most of us don’t change drives every year.
Having firmware updates is for me more important than outright speed.

Speed is another positive of the MX300 SSD,
as it offers read and write speeds that are very good for an SATA 6Gb/s SSD which
will only drop when really pushed to its limits. In daily use though the drive
is very fast. The power consumption of the drive is also very good and when you
compare the IOPS that it offers and the power that it consumes, you can only
have a smile in your face. The same applies for the IDLE power consumption.

The three-year warranty and the key for
Acronis True image also add more value to the drive.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

“Crucial might not have reinvented the
SSD but they do offer a great drive, with very good performance, and also at a
very aggressive price. The MX300 is a very impressive drive.”

Therefore, I give the 'Very Good' and the
‘Editor’s choice’ awards to the Crucial MX300 2TB SSD.

 

Thanks to:

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You may comment on this review here, you
can also post your benchmarks in our forum.