Micron RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 6Gbps SSD Review

[Apoptosis]

Micron RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 6Gbps SSD Review

The Micron RealSSD C300 SSDs are the first SSDs in the World designed for the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Because moving to SATA 6 Gb/s removes the bandwidth bottleneck, the 256GB drive that we are reviewing today can deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 355 MB/s and 215 MB/s, respectively. That's much faster than drives that use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface and this could be the fastest SSD we have ever tested!




Article Title: Micron RealSSD C300 256GB SATA 6Gbps SSD Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1221/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $799 MSRP

[Spillertwo]

Really interesting product and great review.

The read figures are fantastic, in write however maybe the Vertex 2 will beat it.

Anyway i would love to see what these drives would give in Raid 0 on a motherboard like the GigaByte X58A-UD7 under SATA 600.

Would also be interesting to see the Vertex 2 in this configuration but then with SATA 300. I think those could beat a single Crucial real ssd.

The only thing you would lose today is the TRIM support under the raid configuration but maybe the drivers that support this are coming soon.

[gwolfman]

Thanks for the review.

The price-per-gigabyte breakdown was helpful. It put things into perspective.

[Major_A]

According to another site having an SSD is the cat's meow (did I really just say that?). These benchmarks look impressive and all but real world usage is it as noticable? Can you really "feel" that extra speed? Basically is it worth the money to save a few seconds when opening up Photoshop, etc...? For the cost of the drive you can buy a hardware RAID controller and a few nice drives.

[FZ1]

According to another site having an SSD is the cat's meow (did I really just say that?). These benchmarks look impressive and all but real world usage is it as noticable? Can you really "feel" that extra speed? Basically is it worth the money to save a few seconds when opening up Photoshop, etc...? For the cost of the drive you can buy a hardware RAID controller and a few nice drives.

Moving from a single (non-RAID) to an SSD is very noticeable. I didn't realize how much until the SSD I was using died and I used a Velociraptor drive while waiting for the replacement. It sucked. If you are on a RAID 0 configuration with an HDD, you may be getting close to the performance of an SSD but are incurring twice the risk of data loss.

[Apoptosis]

According to another site having an SSD is the cat's meow (did I really just say that?). These benchmarks look impressive and all but real world usage is it as noticable? Can you really "feel" that extra speed? Basically is it worth the money to save a few seconds when opening up Photoshop, etc...? For the cost of the drive you can buy a hardware RAID controller and a few nice drives.

It really depends on what you are comparing it to... If you don't look at the benchmarks and are comparing some of the top SSDs it's hard to 'feel' a difference. If you compare any of them to an HDD then the difference is very obvious.

[dicecca112]

According to another site having an SSD is the cat's meow (did I really just say that?). These benchmarks look impressive and all but real world usage is it as noticable? Can you really "feel" that extra speed? Basically is it worth the money to save a few seconds when opening up Photoshop, etc...? For the cost of the drive you can buy a hardware RAID controller and a few nice drives.

Moving from a single (non-RAID) to an SSD is very noticeable. I didn't realize how much until the SSD I was using died and I used a Velociraptor drive while waiting for the replacement. It sucked. If you are on a RAID 0 configuration with an HDD, you may be getting close to the performance of an SSD but are incurring twice the risk of data loss.

Same here, I didn't realize it until the SSD in my Macbook was sent back for RMA. I was used to my Work PC dragging. That being said, I've raided a lot of drives in my time, and I still don't think they come close to a proper SSD

[Major_A]

The consensus is yes it is faster in the "feel" department. Now I wish they would come down in price. Another problem is the technology is moving so fast it's hard to justify the spending. Meaning, 3 months from now you might get twice the capacity for the same price. Or they might come out with a new controller that changes things again. I understand this is all due to the newness of the tech but trying to compare drive A to B isn't that cut and dry yet.

[spitter]

They "feel" faster because they are, the access times are about the same as your RAM, .01ms or less. I have had an SSD for a year now and have no plans to buy a new one for my other machines. No matter what controller or capacity they get, it works as I intended, as a read only OS/programs drive for my business/shared family pc.

[Apoptosis]

They "feel" faster because they are, the access times are about the same as your RAM, .01ms or less. I have had an SSD for a year now and have no plans to buy a new one for my other machines. No matter what controller or capacity they get, it works as I intended, as a read only OS/programs drive for my business/shared family pc.

which drive do you have now?

[spitter]

OCZ Solid 30gigs, it has about 8 gigs of used space on it.

[eldiablopotato]

After reading both the OCZ Vertex LE review and now the Crucial C300, what SSD would you recommend going with? I plan on using the SSD simply to run my OS and apps (all user data on another HDD). I'm thinking the C300 is the one to go with but after reading about SSDs all over again, and all the review my brain is a little fried.

[Major_A]

They "feel" faster because they are, the access times are about the same as your RAM, .01ms or less. I have had an SSD for a year now and have no plans to buy a new one for my other machines. No matter what controller or capacity they get, it works as I intended, as a read only OS/programs drive for my business/shared family pc.

I'm confused by this. So you are saying that you really like it but you won't buy another one?

[spitter]

Yep, I have no plans on buying another one, the computer is fast enough for all the programs I have on it now, the time savings is really minimal. I like the drive, it works as intended, It will last another 40 years the way I have it set up, running windows xp.

[FZ1]

Yep, I have no plans on buying another one, the computer is fast enough for all the programs I have on it now, the time savings is really minimal. I like the drive, it works as intended, It will last another 40 years the way I have it set up, running windows xp.

I'm sorry to say that your SSD won't last 40 years. The NAND cells begin losing their charge at around 10 years.

[eldiablopotato]

What feature or features lead the RealSSD C300 to get the editor's choice award over the OCZ Vertex LE?

[Apoptosis]

1) It's a SATA 6Gbps Drive with the fasted read speeds we have ever seen. Some 60-70% of Windows usage is said to be sequential reads and this drive leads the pack
2) The random access read/write performance on the C300 was better overall as shown in IOMeter
3) It is the first SSD that we have seen that supports APM (Advanced Power Management). This is a feature other SSD companies talk about rolling out in their next round of products
4) It's Micron/Intel designed... You can rest assured that the firmware is solid and the controller is not going any place. The OCZ Vertex LE is a limited production run of just 5,000 pieces and the controller company Sandforce is a new comer in the market
5) price... the 256GB C300 is $799 versus $949 at Newegg for the 200GB version of the Vertex LE
6) the OCZ Vertex LE has a toolkit, but we have yet to see a fully working revision of this software as 0.59 is very beta and broken.

In summary... The C300 is using more advanced technologies, is faster, isn't a limited edition product, and it's less expensive with more storage space... That is why I gave the C300 the editor's choice award in a nut shell.

[spitter]

Yep, I have no plans on buying another one, the computer is fast enough for all the programs I have on it now, the time savings is really minimal. I like the drive, it works as intended, It will last another 40 years the way I have it set up, running windows xp.

I'm sorry to say that your SSD won't last 40 years. The NAND cells begin losing their charge at around 10 years.

I believe that is if you took the drive off the machine and put it in long term storage, you would lose data after ten years, not positive but I guess I will find out.

[FZ1]

I'm pretty sure that stands true regardless of the level of activity.

[Apoptosis]

most companies brief us as the life of the drive in cycles and others do it by year... For exampled I just got briefed this week on a new SSD and they are talking about the service life being 5 years:

ssd.jpg (23.57 KiB) Viewed 9846 times

They broke it down into GB/day of or TB of lifetime writes... This is an interesting subject as no one has given me a clear answer on it and all companies do the math differently. Not to mention firmware updates usually screw up the math anyway.