32GB Crucial SSD Review

by Kevin O'Brien

Crucial has recently entered the notebook Solid State Drive (SSD) market and received fantastic reaction at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Crucial is driving home the fact that flash-based storage drives really hold up well under stress, with things like added performance and lower power consumption being runnerup. Read on to see if you should consider purchasing one of the Crucial SSD's in this saturated market.

For this review, we tested the 32GB SSD. Crucial also offers a larger 64GB version at this time if you have a big enough wallet.

• Form factor: 2.5-inch industry-standard metal housing
• Dimensions: 100.2mm (l) x 69.85mm (w) x 9.5mm(h)
• Weight: 82g
• Available capacities: 32GB and 64GB
• Host interface: Serial ATA (SATA)
• Host data transfer rate: 3Gb/s (backwards compatible with 1.5Gb/s)
• Read/write speeds: 32GB: up to 100MB/s (read), 60MB/s (write); 64GB: up to 100MB/s (read), 35MB/s (write)
• IOPS (inputs/outputs per second): 80K sequential read IOPS for a 512-byte transfer
• Shock: 1,500G/0.5msec
• Vibration: 20G (20-2000HZ)
• Temperature: Operating (0°C to 70°C); Non-operating (-40° to 85°C)
• Acoustics: 0dB
• MTBF (mean time between failures): > 1 million hours
• Endurance: Static & Dynamic wear-leveling with 6-bit ECC error correction
• Crucial Warranty: 5 years
• MSRP: $799.99

(view large image)

Build and Design

It seems that SSD manufacturers aren't going the extra mile when it comes to making the SSD as cool as possible. For spending almost half the price of your notebook on one, they might include a fancy hologram sticker across the top with "SSD" in big bold letters. The Crucial SSD is no different, making nerds scratch their heads when they look at the packaging the drive came in, and the drive itself. It really looks like something you would take off the shelf in the dollar store.

(view large image)

(view large image)

Build quality is top notch on this drive, and Crucial is sure to make everyone know this fact. At CES they showed off the durability of this drive, with it functioning inside a shaking paint shaker. If this doesn't convince you that these drives can stand up to almost anything, I don't know what will. Personally I think your notebook would shake to bits before the drive decides to stop working. These things are like the Chuck Norris of mobile storage.

(Video courtesy of reghardware.co.uk)

Setup

Setup is as simple as installing your operating system or other software on a standard hard drive, only faster. No additional drivers are needed; just follow the prompts during the installation. Crucial also sells an external enclosure for this drive, but any external SATA/USB enclosure for standard 2.5" hard drives will work.

(view large image)