Plextor M5 Pro (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 31, 2012 11:32 AM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
Just like Plextor's other SSDs we have tested, the M5 Pro comes with Plextor's proprietary "True Speed" technology. At the ground level, "True Speed" is just a fancy name for Plextor's own garbage collection and wear leveling algorithms, which we have found to be fairly effective. As usual, lets run HD Tach on a secure erased drive to get baseline performance:
I secure erased the drive again, filled all user accessible LBAs with sequential data and proceeded with our 20-minute torture test (4KB random writes at queue depth of 32 and 100% LBA space):
There are no surprises here. Write speed is jumping back and forth from as low as 60MB/s to up to 340MB/s. Average write speed is 169.5MB/s, which is similar to what we have seen with other Plextor SSDs.
While 20 minutes of torture is more than enough to create a worst case scenario for a consumer workload, it's not enough to put today's drives in the worst possible state. Thus I secure erased the drive and extended the length of torture to 60 minutes:
And average performance drops to around 50MB/s. That's actually 12.3MB/s slower than what the M5S scored in a similar test, although 50MB/s is fairly normal for non-SandForce SSDs.
Next I let the drive idle for 30 minutes to let Plextor's idle time garbage collection go to work:
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Performance is significantly better compared to what it was before the idle time. Write speeds are now ranging from 80MB/s to up to 340MB/s, and the average ends up being 201.4MB/s. The M5S did recover better from dirty state, although this stuff isn't always deterministic.
Most SSDs are used in TRIM-supported environments thankfully. After 20-minute torture and one run of HD Tach, I TRIM'ed the drive to make sure TRIM works properly:
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poccsx - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Our it shop has installed about 50 Agility 3s. 2 were DOA and the rest have been fine. Agree with you on the PITA firmware update process.stalker27 - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
I was wondering if Plex kept their reputation, where I'm from they kinds faded away from the market.ksherman - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
With the M5S only seeming to be marginally slower than the Pro series, but a good bit cheaper, what would I be missing if I opted for an M5S drive?DukeN - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
The e-Penis factor.stalker27 - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Is it vital?Zak - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
5 year warranty versus 3 year?poccsx - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
I don't know about you guys but I don't have anything in my computer that's older than 3 years.Beenthere - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
The Pro version should be the only version Plextor releases IMO and they should be priced as the base model -which they are. The non-Pro versions are basically models without proper firmware to facilitate best performance. The base models are just under-achievers used to justify higher prices for the Pro models. Not cool IMO.BTW the minute theoretical gains do not make any substantial gains in typical operation so just buy whatever is on sale if you're ready to jump in a be an unpaid SSD beta tester as this is still very "immature tech" as Anand has stated.
bji - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
SSDs are not immature tech. Two years ago they were. I personally have not bought a mechanical hard drive in 2+ years and I don't ever intend to do so again.sheh - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
You should beware of longer term data retention.