The Crucial BX200 (480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Crucial's First TLC NAND SSD
by Billy Tallis on November 3, 2015 9:00 AM ESTIdle Power Consumption
Many SATA drives are getting close to the limits of what our equipment can measure for power consumption. It's hard to build a meter than has sub-milliwatt accuracy and can withstand the high peak currents drawn by devices like high-performance PCIe drives. Our test rig can't measure the deepest power saving modes (DevSlp), but we can look for any red flags that the intermediate modes aren't working.
The BX200 joins the club of drives than are very poor at managing power without DevSlp support. Its active power consumption and poor efficiency are enough to exclude it from being useful for laptops, so idle power isn't as important, but it's another disapointment.
TRIM Validation
A drive that didn't correctly implement the ATA TRIM command would be very surprising to find today, but it's a quick enough check. The trimcheck tool creates and then deletes a file on the disk, and later checks if the contents of the file are still accessible. In addition to verifying that TRIM is working correctly, this test also demonstrates that, for better or worse, files that are deleted cannot be easily recovered.
Nothing about the drive is completely broken, and TRIM does indeed work.
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ilkhan - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
If a company is going to shoot for the value proposition, they really need to beat samsung by more than 10%. Paying an extra 10% to get a really solid drive like the 850EVO is just too tempting for anyone who does even the tiniest of research before buying.You either need to be the cheapest, best name brand recognition, or fastest. Crucial isn't any of those on the 250GB market.
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Crucial has better quality and is a U.S. company. You shouldn't give Samung so much credit.squngy - Thursday, November 26, 2015 - link
What does the county of the home office got to do with anything?Samus - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Support. Samsungs is a joke. Fortunately the 840 Evo is the only drive they've botched. Crucial has excellent support and an excellent track record to go with their products. Shows good QA. Wouldn't expect anything else from an Intel subsidiary.zeeBomb - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
What's the difference between TLC NAND to MLC or SLC NAND again?Beararam - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/flash-data-cente...dakishimesan - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6337/samsung-ssd-840...coconutboy - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
slc = premium, reliable, fast, expensive, etcmlc = middle ground
tlc = cheap, lowest reliability, but Samsung has gotten tlc quality up to a level sufficient for most non-enterprise users
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell
zeeBomb - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
Okay awesome, thanks.FalcomPSX - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
SLC NAND stores one bit per flash cell. MLC stores two bits per cell. and TLC stores three bits per cell.