Crucial MX500 250GB M.2 Type 2280 SSD Review

SSD by stefan @ 2018-08-27

The M.2 Type 2280 Crucial MX500 250GB does have about the same performance as its 500GB version and the installation process is pretty straight-forward. With a MTTF of 1.8 million hours, an endurance of 100TB (TBW) and a limited five-year warranty, we can consider it an ideal upgrade as a boot drive for many mainstream systems. MX500 does come with hardware-based encryption, while the integrated power loss immunity does avoid unwanted data corruption if the system would suddenly freeze or shut down.

Introduction

 

 

At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their MX500 250GB M.2 Type 2280 SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Crucial:

 

“Looking for computer memory or a new storage drive? You've come to the right place!

 

Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. We make computer memory upgrades (DRAM) and solid state drives (SSDs), and offer more than 250,000 upgrades for over 50,000 systems. For 17 years, we've sought to provide the Crucial Difference — award-winning products, outstanding support, and a team of memory and storage experts who explain complex lingo in everyday terms. We're here to help improve the performance of your system.

 

Crucial memory and SSDs have been qualified and approved by major original equipment manufacturers, and every single module that leaves our doors has been rigorously tested at the component and module level. That's a big deal in the memory industry, but it's not all. When it comes to our SSDs, each drive undergoes over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of qualification tests to ensure optimal reliability and performance.

 

To find upgrades in just a few clicks, our award-winning Crucial System Scanner or Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool will identify compatible upgrades for your system, and if you order on Crucial.com, we guarantee compatibility — or your money back. With fast and free shipping, outstanding tech support, and an exhaustive library of articles, videos, and install guides, we make it easy to find and install the right upgrade for your system.

 

Let us be your memory and storage experts.”

 

Product Features, Specifications

Product Features:

 

It's worth it.

 

Every time you turn on your computer, you’re using your storage drive. It holds all your irreplaceable files and it loads and saves almost everything your system does. Join more and more people who are keeping their family videos, travel photos, music, and important documents on an SSD, and get the near-instant performance and lasting reliability that comes with solid state storage. Upgrade with the Crucial MX500 SSD, a drive built on quality, speed, and security that’s all backed by helpful service and support. Even if you’ve never installed an SSD, don’t sweat it – our step-by-step guide walks you through the process to make installation easy. It’s worth it.

 

Fly through everything you do

 

Start your system in seconds, load files almost instantly, and accelerate the most demanding applications with the Crucial MX500. Our Dynamic Write Acceleration technology uses an adaptable pool of high-speed, single- level cell flash memory to generate blistering speeds.

 

Store up to 2TB of data

 

Save massive amounts of photos, music, and videos comfortably and securely. With fast access to your media, creations, and designs, you’re ready to share at the speed of your life.

 

Enjoy the efficiency of next-gen Micron ® 3D NAND

 

Our cutting-edge components are engineered from start to finish for efficiency. As a result, the Crucial MX500 uses only a minimal amount of power and still delivers a high price-to-performance ratio – without needing a financing plan to pay for it. Experience a faster, cooler, and quieter computer in your home or business. You’ll wonder how you ever put up with a hard drive.

 

Upgrade with a drive you can count on

 

With thousands of hours of pre-release validation, dozens of SSD qualification tests, and a heritage of award- winning SSDs, the Crucial MX500 has been thoroughly tried, tested, and proven. Secure your most important files on a drive with established dependability and these advanced features.

Hardware-based encryption: Keep personal files and confidential data restricted from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit encryption that meets all industry standards, including Microsoft ® eDrive, IEEE- 1667, and TCG Opal 2.0.

Integrated Power Loss Immunity: Avoid unintended data loss when the power unexpectedly goes out. This built-in feature of our new NAND protects your data swiftly and efficiently, so if your system suddenly shuts down, you keep all your saved work.

Exclusive Data Defense: Prevent your photos, music, videos, and other files from becoming corrupted and unusable with layers of error correction and adaptive read technology.

Redundant Array of Independent NAND: Protect your data at the component level with an SSD that automatically provides parity protection for your data. This high-end feature works similarly to how RAID is used with multiple hard drives and maintains the integrity of your data, especially for intense users.

Built-in durability: Because SSDs don’t use moving parts that wear out over time (unlike hard drives), your files are less susceptible to a crash. SSDs are better equipped to survive physical trauma, like getting dropped, because they don’t rely on mechanical parts.

 

Install with confidence

 

For many people, opening a computer and transferring data seems terrifying. That’s why we’ve made it easy in the step-by-step Crucial SSD Install Guide. Check it out before you buy, then install your own SSD quickly with everything transferred over successfully and hassle-free.

 

Micron ® quality – a higher level of reliability.

 

As a brand of Micron, one of the largest flash storage manufacturers in the world, the Crucial MX500 is backed by the same quality and engineering innovation that has produced some of the world’s most advanced memory and storage technologies for more than 35 years. Split-second speeds, lasting reliability, and a decades-long legacy – upgrading with the Crucial MX500 gives you the best combination of quality, performance, and security. It’s worth it.

 

Product Specifications:

 

Packaging, A Closer Look

After checking out the regular 2.5’’ MX500, it is time to also try out the M.2 2280 version but with a smaller, 250GB capacity. The 250GB version is single-sided and comes with rated speeds of 560MB/s (read) and 510MB/s (write). The product is using the same hardware combination as the 2.5’’ version, so we are expecting similar performance after performing the benchmarks. The MX500 M.2 version is shipped inside a small transparent plastic enclosure, with a top sticker that informs the user on the full product name, storage capacity, product code name but also the SN:

 

 

 

The inside contents is quite straight-forward: we do get the SSD, a guide on using the “Acronis True Image for Crucial” software but also mounting screws:

 

 

 

The SSD does feature a black sticker that covers the drive components; this can be easily removed in order to use the heatspreader from our motherboard (if applicable):

 

 

 

On the back side of the drive, we will find another sticker that does reveal the utilized bus, the power rating but also the product serial numbers and supported standards; since the 250GB version is single sided, we won’t find other components here:

 

 

 

After removing the logo cover, we can take a closer look at the internals:

 

 

 

The SM2258 4-channel controller does also feature SLC caching algorithms in order to get sustained performance from the packages; it is covered by a thermal pad in order to have a better heat dissipation:

 

 

 

The included DRAM chip is also manufactured by Micron and holds the D9PTK code name; we are talking about a 256MB of buffer on the 250GB MX500 version:

 

 

 

The board does also come with four 8HA2D NW912 3D TLC NAND packages:

 

 

 

Test Setup and Extra Info

Test Bench:

 

CPU: Intel I5 9700K Retail

CPU Cooler: Deepcool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming

RAM: Patriot Memory Viper RGB Series DDR4

Video: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

 

The drive has arrived unformatted:

 

 

For testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS; here is the total remaining free space afterwards:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

Crucial Storage Executive

Micron has also designed an easy to use application for managing your Crucial storage drives; the main menus are placed on the left side, while on the right we do have the details; the System Information tab does show the current occupation of system resources, but will also list details of the installed drives (even if not all are manufactured by Micron). From this screen, we can also perform drive firmware updates:

 

 

 

In-depth details can be checked out from the next section, such as drive usage, current temperature, SN, total bytes written, drive version, firmware version and more!

 

 

 

The S.M.A.R.T. information screen is next:

 

 

 

If newer firmware updates are available for the drive, we can perform different actions in the dedicated section; if the current computer does not have a live Internet connection, we can perform the update anyways by providing the offline firmware update package:

 

 

 

Drive sanitization can be performed in order to safely erase all data:

 

 

 

The PSID Revert option will help return the SSD to its original state if it has been TCG-enabled with a drive password:

 

 

 

Momentum Cache does help boosting the transfer speeds by allowing the user to use up to 25% of the available system memory:

 

 

 

The Flex Capacity option is available only on selected Micron-specific lines:

 

 

 

We can also allocate extra space on the drive for the controller to use; this will also mean that features such as Wear Leveling and Garbage Collection will run smoother:

 

 

 

 

Test Results (Blank) Part I

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

Test Results (Blank) Part II

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)


HDTune Test Suite


Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite


 

PCMark 7


 

Anvil [Read]


Anvil [Write]


 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

PCMark 8

Blank SSD

 

 

 

Test Results (Filled) Part I

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

Test Results (Filled) Part II

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)


HDTune Test Suite


Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite


 

PCMark 7


 

Anvil [Read]


Anvil [Write]


 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

PCMark 8

Filled SSD

 

 

 

Conclusive Thoughts

The M.2 Type 2280 Crucial MX500 250GB does have about the same performance as its 500GB version and the installation process is pretty straight-forward. With a MTTF of 1.8 million hours, an endurance of 100TB (TBW) and a limited five-year warranty, we can consider it an ideal upgrade as a boot drive for many mainstream systems. MX500 does come with hardware-based encryption, while the integrated power loss immunity does avoid unwanted data corruption if the system would suddenly freeze or shut down.

 

While the 2.5’’ drive format is available with capacities up to 2TB, the M.2 version is found in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB.

 

The 250GB drive can be bought for about 57 Euros, the 500GB for about 86 Euros, while the 1TB variant can be had for about 172 Euros.

Crucial MX500 250GB M.2 Type 2280 SSD is Recommended for:

 

We would like to thank again to Micron for making this review possible!

 

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