Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive
The 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive from Crucial Technology is a incandescently fast Solid State Drive (SSD) with 256GB of storage capacity. Taking advantage of the 6Gbps SATA interface, the SSD provides fast, reliable, and efficient data storage and retrieval. Unlike traditional hard drives, SSDs feature no moving parts, providing quiet, cool, and durable storage. The 2.5" form-factor and standard SATA interface make this SSD perfect for notebook users looking for the reliability Solid State Drives provide with a little added speed on top.
- Blazing Data Transfer Speeds
- The 2.5-inch Crucial m4 SSD drive offers laptop or notebook users fast sequential read speeds of up to 500MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 260 MB/sec (SATA 6Gbps)
- The Advantages of Solid State
- SSDs provide many benefits over traditional hard drives. You'll enjoy reduced power consumption and less heat generation. Because they have no moving parts, SSDs are quiet, more lightweight, and they're rugged and reliable even in the most demanding operating environments or temperature extremes
- Latest and Greatest
- Designed for client computing, the Crucial m4 SSD delivers faster boot and application load times for mobile users alike. Low power, lightweight, and durable, it empowers high-speed synchronous MLC NAND, advanced controller technology, optimized NAND management, and the second-generation SATA 6Gb/s interface. Together, that technology dramatically improves data transfers for bandwidth-demanding applications
- Memory Experts
- Delivering on the highest quality based upon Micron's leading-edge NAND media, the Crucial brand of SSDs has long been synonymous with reliability and highperformance. And because we're part of Micron, the m4 was bred and built entirely in-house. So you can rest assured you'll get one of the highest quality products available-from the company that knows memory.
- Highly Compatible
- The m4 SSD series drives employ a standard hard drive interface and dimensions, so it is an easy storage upgrade for most notebooks
Go To
| Performance | |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 256GB |
| Interface | SATA 6Gbps |
| Sustained Transfer Rate |
Up to 6Gbps Backwards compatible with SATA 3Gbps |
| Maximum Data Rate |
Sequential Read: Up to 500MB/sec(SATA 6Gbps) Sequential Write: up to 260 MB/sec (SATA 6Gbps) (SATA 6Gbps) Random 4k Read: 40,000 IOPS Random 4k Write: 50,000 IOPS |
| Access Time | On Average: <.1 ms |
| Reliability |
Data Reliability: Built-in EDC/ECC PCMark Vantage Score: 65K HDD test score |
| Monitoring | Self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology (SMART) command set |
| Controller | Integrated 8-channel single chip |
| MTBF | 1.2 Million Hours |
| Certification | FCC, CE, RoHS, UL |
| General | |
|---|---|
| System Requirements | Not Specified by Manufacturer |
| Hard Disk Space | 5V |
| Power Consumption |
Active Average Power: 160 mW Idle Average Power: <85 mW |
| Environmental Requirements |
Operating Temperature: 32 to 158°F / 0 to 70°C Non-Operating Temperature: -67 to 203°F / -55 to 95°C Shock Resistant: 1500G / 1.0ms Vibration Resistant: 2-500Hz at 3.1G |
| Dimensions (LxWxH) | 3.95 x 2.75 x 0.37" / 10.05 x 6.99 x 0.95 cm |
| Weight | 2.64 oz / 75 g |
REVIEW SNAPSHOT®
by PowerReviews(based on 40 reviews)
Ratings Distribution
100%
of respondents would recommend this to a friend.
Pros
- Quiet (37)
- Fast (32)
- Easy to install (29)
- Highly compatible (27)
- Reliable (25)
Cons
Best Uses
- High-end multimedia (17)
- Gaming (12)
- Reviewer Profile:
- Heavy duty user (28), Power user (5), Frequent user (3)
- Primary use:
- Personal (20), Business (18)
- Computer Platform:
- Mac (3), PC (3)
Most Liked Positive Review
Install hiccups, but still recommended!
I just bought a 15" MBP for photo management/editing and decided to further upgrade to a good capacity SSD drivewith a reasonable price. The drive that I found best meets my requirements ar...Read complete review
I just bought a 15" MBP for photo management/editing and decided to further upgrade to a good capacity SSD drivewith a reasonable price. The drive that I found best meets my requirements arethe Crucial SSDs. Talking about price/Mb, Crucial had the best value.B&H had the cheapest price for the 256gb m4 drive at the timeI bought it. [...]Initially, I mounted my drive on a USB enclosure to clone myexisting MBP drive. Formatting the drive with disk utility howeverproved impossible, format process would always get stuck at 50%. Waited for 30mins before terminating disk utility, and I did thisSeveral times. Tried using drive genius but got the same issue. I got a windows PC and formatted it using the same USB EnclosureAnd everything went well. Formatting actually took less than a minute. Tried formatting it again on my MBP but to no avail. Eventually I gotIn contact with Crucial tech support and they swore there were no knownIssues with using m4s on MBP. Tech support was of no use so I justSearched the web. Found that others had issues with the m4 on theirMBP but nothing similar to what I'm experiencing. Many suggested to upgrade the firmware to v0002 (mine came with v0001).I decided to upgrade my m4s firmware via USB but it doesn't work. So I took out my MBP hdd and swapped in the m4. Firmware upgradewas successful! Ran OSX installer and format finally came through!!!From then on everything was great! So far, I didn't experience the "30s freeze"that others on the web were complaining about. I even did the "TRIM enable"hack and got OSX lion to support TRIM function on my m4!Speed improvement was really great. I've used Kingston Sata2 SSD beforeand with the m4 sata3 ssd I really could feel further speed improvement. Overall, I'm quite happy with the purchase. Crucial m4 SSD Is value formoney with great performance!!! I highly recommend this! [...]
VS
Most Liked Negative Review
Not all SSD's will work with Macbook Pro
I bought this for a 2010 macbook pro unibody and the drive did install - but would hang, would not boot, and had serious corruption. I had a Samsung SSD in my PC laptop...Read complete review
I bought this for a 2010 macbook pro unibody and the drive did install - but would hang, would not boot, and had serious corruption. I had a Samsung SSD in my PC laptop so on a lark, I swapped them. The Samsung 470 flies on a macbook pro. The M4 is even faster - but on a PC. I am giving it 3 stars because of the issues with Mac - but on a PC with a 6gb SATA interface the M4 is blazing fast
Reviewed by 40 customers
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Displaying reviews 1-20
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Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Mac Friendly
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
- Not that fast for 'write'
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Great drive. Installed it about 6 months ago in a 2011 Mac Mini using ifixit. com's "secodnary drive kit".While this isn't the fastest drive around for 'write' operations, it's most certainly plenty fast (524 MB/s secuential read, 232 MB/s secuantial write), specially compared to the stock 5400RPM drive and as far as I could tell, it's also the most compatible with Apple computers because of it's Marvell controller chip (instead of SandForce's, which is used by many other manufacturers).
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
- None
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Installed on my new 12 Core Mac Pro to add to my two other 1tb hard drives. Now I'm running my FCP X with great speed !
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
- Expensive
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
- Uncompressed Raw Video
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
The Solid State Drives by Crucial are everything the are advertised to be and more. easy to use, dependable and fast write, rewrite performance. I bought three of them to go with a field SSD digital recorder to record 10 bit video - FAST and DEPENDABLE memory required to pull it off. And the 256GB gave me enough space to get close to 25 min. Of raw QuickTime video at 4:2:2 quality. Not a single glitch, drop frame of corrupted file yet. I know prices for SSDs will come done as they continue to became a staple in the industry, espeacally for high end video recording.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Cruical M4 SSD "BSOD" FW update - Warrning
Love this SSD, and it was working for me ... BUT, you NEED to install this FW update ... Cruical M4 SSD 256gb and Adrenaline Cache SSD.
I feel obligated to WARN users to UPDATE to FW 0309 on the M4 256gb SSD ... no matter if you have the issue or not. It will happen on Hour 5184 (seriously)
http://www.crucial.com/...aspx?AID=10273954&PID=3332167&SID=u00000626
I got a "BSOD" ... Blue Screen Of Death ... in Win7 64-bit.
And because I have been running the SSD flawlessly for months , I did not suspect the Cruical M4 SSD.
The DATA does not seem to get effected ... but, I did not know that (at the time) ... so I partitioned and re-installed ... which is something I did not have to do.
•
What needs to be done is a FW update.
also a info link here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5424/crucial-provides-a-firmware-update-for-m4-to-fix-the-bsod-issue
When you get the "BSOD" you can shut down and reboot. But in an hour you will get it again. That's how you know, that it is this FW update you need.
My guess is that it also means ANY M4 SSD ... even the cache SSD.
Hope this helps someone,
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Gaming
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Good and fast SSD!
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I've installed this in an Asus N73Jq, a laptop with two drive bays. I'm using the SSD for my OS (including the page file), applications, and photographs to be processed.
Before switching to the SSD, PS CS5 was a little sluggish, sometimes pausing for a while during HDD access. Now everything I do is quick and smooth. Love it.
Despite endless discussions about how to clone the OS that was on my HDD, I decided to just do a fresh install. Look--Windows 7 and PS CS5 have their own RAM swap files, and, furthermore, Windows 7 does begin to accumulate problems over many months. So why, if you want the best possible performance, would you want to bring your old OS problems on to a brand new SSD? I didn't, and I love having the fresh install. This SSD makes installations much faster than on HDD's.
I mention this because I bought the SSD without a "data transfer kit," which is basically a stripped down version of Acronis and a not-very-useful cable. Just back up your data, install the new SSD, and do a clean install of your OS.
To get the most out of your drive, make sure you have the latest SATA drivers for your machine, and also be sure your BIOS supports and is set for AHCI.
Note that you will most likely not be able to use Windows 7 Backup and Restore to transfer the OS! I did try it, just to see if it would work, and no matter what order of this and that, what tricks, what voodoo dust I sprinkled, Restore kept saying it could not find a suitable media to work with. It could see my backup on a USB HDD, but it could not restore it.
Bottom line, a fantastic laptop upgrade, pretty much like getting a new, faster computer. I don't believe that the "migration management" stuff Intel includes with their SSD's is much more than marketing hype, but that is my personal opinion.
Cheers!
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I shopped around for this drive and found the best price from b and h. plus i can rely on their good reputation to back it up....this drive is fasssst.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
i use this as my windows 7 boot drive. windows boots BEFORE the 4 colour logo has a chance to finish which is amazing. the only thing i would have wished for is a bracket and some screws in the package to mount it in my system.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
- None
Best Uses
- Design
- DJing
- Photography
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
The fastest startup time I've ever seen 11 seconds flat. The best investment for your MacBook Pro. Get this before you get anything else for your laptop.
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Work really well on a Macbook Pro even making a copy of the harddrive works great.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I bought this to speed up my 2010 iMac. I picked Crucial because of their very high reputation for reliability. So far I've been extremely pleased with the result. With the M4 as the boot drive for my iMac, OS X boots in under 5 seconds (previously it was around 30 or so with the classic HD).
Note that I'm currently running the M4 in an external FireWire 800 enclosure (that has an internal eSata bridge). This is my first ever SSD, and I wanted to give it a "shakedown" before tearing apart my iMac and installing it internally. So far it's been absolutely great -- I expect I'll be tearing apart my iMac in another 2 or 3 weeks to do the final install:-)
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
This is the BEST speed increase of all the upgrades I have done to my i7 DELL 435MT. 24gb tri-chanel memory, Win7 PRO 64-bit.I installed clean from the Dell VISTA 64-bit Home install disk, then my Win7 64-bit Home upgrade , then finally Win7 64-bit Professional upgrade. Formated the SSD with no issues and Ended with TRIM installed in Win7 PRO 64-bit. This SSD supports both SATA II and SATA III.It's fast , runs cool, easy to install with Ver. 9 of the software. More info on my install is on my blog: http://tourist-of-light.blogspot.com/2012/02/crucial-m4-ssd-fw-ver0009-256gb-for.html
- Primary use:
- Business
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Fast Boot
- Fast program loads
- Gaming
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
Make sure you check the firmware and if needed, bring it up to 0309.
I already had the M4 128GB in my desktop and bought the 256Gb for my new laptop. There are a few drives that are slightly faster, but you would never notice the difference in real world usage. The best selling point of this drive is that it is probably the most reliable brand you can get right now.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
- Gaming
- High-End Multimedia
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
This drive is great...took Windows perfromance index from 5.9 to 7.3! Easy to install and no problems...highly recommend drive and B&H Photo...
- Primary use:
- Personal
Pros
- Easy To Install
- Fast
- Highly Compatible
- Quiet
- Reliable
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I purchased this specifically because of its high reliability relative to other SSDs out there. As for the speed, it is much faster than what I had before--a WD Velociraptor 300 GB, which failed after about 3 years of usage. If I had to mention a negative about this SSD it would be that it uncovered a new bottleneck in my system... The rest of my system.
I was able to use this with an ASUS P5K. My mobo supports only IDE mode, not AHCI. Although not a prerequisitve from what I understand, I did flash the BIOS with that of the P5KR to enable AHCI mode. That worked flawlessly. I also flashed the SSD to tha latest 0309 firmware. That went flawlessly as well. I just need to remember to back up, back up, back up.
- Primary use:
- Personal
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
very stable and super FAST!!
Pros
- Easy To Set Up
- Fast
- Quiet
Cons
- Small Capacity
Best Uses
- Games
- Heavy Programs
- OS booting
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I'm using this disk as my primary hdd in a gaming notebook backed up by a secondary standard hdd.
The boot speed of OS and the loading speed games are very fast if compared with standard hdds and worth every cent.
Of course the available space is a minor problem, but if you store only the Operational System and your main programs in this drive, letting static files for secondary hdd or external drive, you'll be OK.
- Primary use:
- Personal
- Computer Platform:
- PC
Pros
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
This is a great hard drive, installation was quick and painless on my MacBook Pro. That being said it should be noted that to get the full potential from the drive a system modification has to be performed. Primarily to enable TRIM support on this hard drive in Mac OS X. This can be performed by following the instructions at "http://gdgt.com/question/in-os-x-lion-how-do-you-enable-trim-support-for-ssds-f16/". I strongly recommend this drive, and B&H was extremely easy to deal with.
- Primary use:
- Business
- Computer Platform:
- Mac
Pros
- High Capacity
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I followed a video on how to do the install, which wasn't very hard if you have the right tools. It does take time to transfer files and I would recommend purchasing an external adapter to connect the new hard drive to your computer in advance of the replacement. The new hard drive has dramatically improved the performance and speed of my 2008 macbook pro, especially for Photoshop and Lightroom. Great purchase.
- Primary use:
- Personal
- Computer Platform:
- Mac
Pros
- Easy To Set Up
- Easy to use
- Quiet
Cons
Best Uses
- Software development
Comments about Crucial Technology 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" Solid State Internal Drive:
I've been dropping these into our software engineers' mobile workstations running linux, macOS and windows and they love them. I/O had been a bottleneck, but no longer with these drives. Cheers!
- Primary use:
- Business
- Computer Platform:
- Linux
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