Plextor M3 Pro (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 1, 2012 1:45 PM ESTRandom Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews. Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see).
We perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data for each write as well as fully random data to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why this matters, read our original SandForce article.
Random performance has not changed and the M3 Pro performs equally with the M3. The M3 Pro is actually slightly slower but the difference is only 1-3%, which is so small that it's within the margin of error.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we ran a one minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
When moving to sequential read, the M3 Pro comes out as a faster drive compared to the M3. The difference is a mere 10.7MB/s, which translates to ~3%, so we aren't looking at a massive improvement here.
Sequential write speed turns out to be a surprise: the M3 is nearly 30MB/s (~9%) faster here. I even ran the sequential write test on the M3 Pro several times to make sure this is not an error on our end. However, it should be kept in mind that sequential write is just one aspect of performance—this doesn't mean that the M3 Pro is worse than the M3.
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NCM - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Three things I forgot to include in my post above:- The Plextor needs to be reformatted for the Mac. You use Apple's Disk Utility to handle that, as with any other drive.
- Cloning the original drive using DU's Restore function will also automatically clone Lion's hidden Recovery partition.
- Absolute SSD performance is limited by my 2010 MBP's 3 Gb/s SATA interface, so I could have bought a cheaper last generation drive. However I hope to be keeping this pricey SSD long enough for it to see at least one more host computer, and that will support faster transfers.
Belard - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Pretty much ALL new SSDs are SATA3.0 / 6GB/s... so its not really an issue.Its older tech or mix tech models that are SATA2.
Kristian Vättö - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Not with the regular updater at least. In theory, someone could modify the installer and make it possible though.Kyanzes - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
"relatively unknown brand" :)Okay.
bobsmith1492 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Yes they are relatively unknown. Yes they used to be more well-known but only for optical drives.eanazag - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
I would like to see a 2.5" HDD at 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm sample data for a baseline included in the reviews. I don't care if they ever get updated after that. I would just like to be able to quickly see where the mechanical drives chime in.Performance would data would be icing, but power data is nice.
If I upgrade my users to a drive off this list, which is very likely. I'd like to be able to tell them if they are going to take a hit on battery life or a boost.
Belard - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
They stopped doing that some time ago because it messes up the charts somewhat. Basically, they just don't compare... and that was before the SATA 6Gbps drives came out.Here is a early 2011 review with a WD VelociRaptor (The fastest HD money can buy for a consumer drive). And yet, its a sliver. Only SSDs that perform almost as slow are the bottom end SSD. And keep in mind, the Raptors are 2-3 times faster than a 5400RPM drive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4346/ocz-agility-3-2...
RANDOM READ (MB/s)
00.68 = Raptor
58.10 = Intel X25-M G2 (still a very good drive)
93.50 = Crucial C300 (early 6Gbps drives)
Sequential READ (MB/s)
145.30 = Raptor
226.30 = Intel X25-M G2 (still a very good drive)
307.20 = Crucial C300 (early 6Gbps drives)
392.20 = Intel 510 SSD (6Gbps)
A modern high end SSD is about 100x faster in random R / W operations over any HD.
Oh, here is a GOOD older 2010 review which includes a Seagate 5400 RPM 2.5" drive. OUCH!
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3690/the-impact-of-s...
See how the chart becomes somewhat meaningless? And thats with 3Gbps drives!
Imagine looking at a chart comparing a 16mhz 286 to a quad core 3400mhz i5 CPU.
hechacker1 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Probably, assuming there isn't some checksum that can't be cracked to flash the drive.In my experience, almost all drive firmwares can be flashed.
sulu1977 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Speed and performance of such a device is important, but not as important as reliability. Reliability is hands down my top priority. Just wanted to mention this.octoploid - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link
There is already an unofficial tool available that can transform a normal M3 into an M3-Pro:http://bbs.pceva.com.cn/thread-47279-1-1.html