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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scottwilkins - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
@bji: while not "immature", SSD is stil much younger than Winchester drive technology.@sheh: I wouldn't keep data on a Winchester longer than I would on an SSD. IMHO.
B3an - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Irrelevant. You'll get many years out of any SSD, enough for any consumer. The people who buy these sort of performance SSD's usually upgrade again within 2 or 3 years anyway. I upgrade every 18 months.Neutron bomb - Sunday, September 9, 2012 - link
Yes, flash memory loses its charge eventually, but eventually may be a very long way off. Does anyone know just how long it takes before flash memory begins to lose its charge?Beenthere - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Actually SSD tech is very IMMATURE TECH and this is proven weekly with the need for frequent firmware updates, compatibility and reliability issues, lost data, lost drive capacity, frequent RMAs, missing TRIM function, etc.Just because half-baked SSDs have been sold for a number of years doesn't mean that the tech is sorted, reliable or standardised. In fact the tech changes almost monthly and has proven to be quite unreliable/incompatible.
Anand himself stated about a year ago that SSD tech was "immature" and that statement is still true today. He suggested back then to wait 6-12 months from the time an SSD was released to see how it pans out.
Unfortunately the same advice is still appropriate today - to wait 6-12 months as the SSD makers are rushing half-baked crap to market for undeserved profits instead of conducting thorough validation of their products. It doesn't matter what the brand, they are all shipping half-baked SSD products in one form or another and consumers have no means to know what to expect from any given product.
kyuu - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Yeah... what a bunch of bull. Please show me any reputable source showing that late-model SSDs have failure/return rates higher than any other electronic good. You're behind the times; SSDs have gotten cheaper, and the issues have mostly been sorted. The major issues were pretty much isolated to Sandforce drives anyway.No, SSDs aren't perfect, but nothing is. HDDs go bad, have issues, are DoA as well, just like any consumer electronic. Your propoganda aimed at scaring people away from SSDs is disingenuous at best.
mura - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
I have been using SSD extensively for the last two years - and (knock on wood) none of them has failed me yet. (4 x Intel X25V, 2 x Samsung 470, 2 x Samsung 830, Kingston V200+, Intel X18M, just to name a few - I don't remember the others exactly).They work in desktop computers, workstations and notebooks, and even in my office server. These machines FLY.
Oh, and to mention, almost all of these were bought, because some HDD has started producing bad sectors(mostly within the warranty period, but I did not want another slow and crappy product).
cosminmcm - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Come on guys, this is beenthere, why do you even bother?waldojim42 - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
As an owner of a Plextor M3 256GB drive (no S or P - this was made before then) I suffer none of the issues you commented about. I have never touched the firmware, it has been perfectly reliable, lost no data, and has yet to make me even consider an RMA. This is why people like me are willing to pay more for a quality product.When you talk about the immature drives, remember to differentiate a bit. The CHEAP drives are immature. Intel, Samsung, and Plextor all make top notch drives that easily rival the die hard 15K SCSI drives.
poccsx - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
A-men to thatdishayu - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
This is my first SSD for sure! Thanks for the review, although it took so much more time than expected.