Micron C400 mSATA (128GB) SSD Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 10, 2012 8:00 AM ESTTRIM Performance
To ensure TRIM's functionality and understand the SSD's behavior in a highly fragmented state I wrote sequential data across all user addressable LBAs and then wrote random data (4KB, QD=32) for 20 minutes across all LBAs. Finally I used HDTach to give me a simple visualization of write performance across all available LBAs (aka the Malventano Method):
This pattern is what we've come to expect from the C400/m4. TRIMing the drive completely restores performance of course, but if you're running a highly random workload you're going to see a fairly sharp drop off in performance as the C400/m4 were really only designed for client workloads.
Power Consumption
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GreenEnergy - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
"Micron does not disclose its OEM pricing structure, but a company rep told us that the mSATA version of the C400 would cost a little bit less than the standard SATA versions that are available today."I could do with a 256GB mSATA SSD only in the mSATA/mPCIe slot. If I didnt own a 300GB SSD 320 series already....
Its just amazing to see. Tiny and powerful.
skildner - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
If this is actually less than their current lineup of standard SATA versions, that would be amazing. There are a number of good mSATA drives out there, but prices haven't dropped like the standard SATA drives. The Runcore mSATA III would be my pick as it destroys all other mSATA drives, but it's about $2.50/gb. I would really take any second gen mSATA drive though as long as it hovered in the $1/gb range. The OCZ Nocti currently has the best price/performance and is around $1.50/gb.DanNeely - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
I suppose the real question is if they're loss-leadering it to build market share, or if the smaller package actually is meaningfully cheaper to produce.GreenEnergy - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Its essentially the same package inside the bigger 2½" SSD. So saving a few $ on casing and such adds to it. But note they said a little bit.klmccaughey - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
My mobo only has SATA 2 on the mSata port, and a quick look around it seems this is pretty standard.Is it still worth it? I already have 2x Vertex 3 128GB, one as C drive and the other as a games drive, but I would love to have a cache as well for my 1TB HD (where most of 250 games from Steam are /juntioned.
iwod - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Now i really hope Apple would adopt the Marvell controller, or even its next gen controller instead of using Samsung or Toshiba...Drizzt321 - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Any clue what the availability is? I've been wanting to put an mSATA as my primary OS for a while, but they seem to top out at 120GB for the OCZ Octi right now, but I really want more. Too bad my notebook only does SATA2 over mSATA :\Hubb1e - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
My Gigabyte board as a mSATA port on it but is limited to 3gb. Is there any performance penalty for going with a 3Gb port? This form facter on a Gigabyte board would be an extremely clean system and is a great way to save some cabling mess in a case but it's not worth it if it's going to be slower.frostyfiredude - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Essentially what will happen is the data transfer between your motherboard and SSD will be capped at ~300MB/s. So look though the charts, you will only notice a difference between a 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s port in the loads that allow the drive to push past that ~300MB/s. For this C400/M4 SSD the only time that port difference will be relevant is during sequential reads.So my take is to not be concerned unless you absolutely need to maximize the performance of sequential reads, because all other aspects of the SSDs performance won't be affected at all. Most desktop loads are fairly random, so I doubt you'll notice a difference in normal use.
For what it's worth, I have a Corsair Force3GT plugged into a 3Gb/s port and it still feels the tiniest amount faster than my parents Crucial M4 which is plugged into a 6Gb/s port.
GreenEnergy - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Also raw sequal bandwidth doesnt make SSD fast. Random I/O does aswell as the seektime.And in 95% of all I/O operations are random I/O. And you get on a good day 50-100MB/sec there.