SSD Comparison: Crucial M4 Vs Samsung 830

Just for anyone choosing an SSD i thought i would do a bit of a comparison.

My choice after owning the M4 was to sell it and get a Samsung 830

Crucial M4

• Included nothing with the SSD
• Packaging was plain
• Build quality was average
• Unstable with some chipsets (Google it)
• Very fast

Now the Samsung

• Included brackets and cables and software
• Awesome packaging, it felt like it was an early christmas
• build quality was the best of any SSD i have seen
• 7mm thin, comes with bracket to make it 9mm too!
• Stable with anything
• Has software that lets you update firmware and clone drives and stuff
• free norton ghost
• lower specs, but did not notice any perf drops

Why do poeple rave of the crucial when its clearly not as good as the Samsung?

Price difference maybe? Not worth the extra's for some people

When alot of people are lookinmg to upgrade a certain component you have to take into consideration some people have a certain srt budget in mind for a certain part. It's about getting the best bang for buck as opposed the fastest part for the biggest amount of money. Not everyone has a bottomless pit of money.

Bet lets face it, if you are buying a 128GB SSD you have a bit of cash to space, so put a little bit more and get an SSD thats actually going to work (for a laptop that is)

its such a hassle getting an SSD and then it not working properly.

Even though i bought the cheaper ssd, i ended up losing money in the sale and then having to get the samsung anyway. So if you are looking for an SSD thats guaranteed to work, why even bother considering the M4?

It's all about value at the end of the day, I got very lucky with my SSD as it was int he Crucial Refurb sale. I ay not have a warranty etc but that's really not an issue, I'm trained in consumer law so I can wave that under their noses instead.

Even for a refurb it's still faster than using a normal mechanical drive.

It is always worth searching for the compatibility for a drive before you buy one.

Like the others have said, It depends what you want for your money. Personally, I don't care about packaging as it doesn't make the product itself work better! I don't care about accessories either, I have several big boxes of computer cables, Screws, Brackets etc.

I like Behemoth bought a Crucial C300 Refurb and it works for me. I feel I got value for money and an SSD that has a respectable performance.

Most computer literate people usually have their own backup and cloning software.

i had the c300 but now run two crucial m4 64gb's in raid other than a pretty slow installation for windows i have never had an issue with mine and they are crazy fast in raid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sputnik

It is always worth searching for the compatibility for a drive before you buy one.

Like the others have said, It depends what you want for your money. Personally, I don't care about packaging as it doesn't make the product itself work better! I don't care about accessories either, I have several big boxes of computer cables, Screws, Brackets etc.

I like Behemoth bought a Crucial C300 Refurb and it works for me. I feel I got value for money and an SSD that has a respectable performance.

Most computer literate people usually have their own backup and cloning software.

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You say that, but I know people that don't !

Pancake did the M4 have the firmware performance updates Crucial released at the end of 2011?

The Samsung 830 has only been released in the last few months with most reviews coming out from late September onwards. Availability was rather poor until relatively recently too. Even then the 64GB version is not available from many retailers still - it seems only Dabs,Novatech and CCL Computers stock them. The first two have it for around £90 to £100 and the latter for nearly £120.

The M4 has been out significantly longer and still has less issues than most drives so this is why it has been recommended. Now that the Samsung drive is now actually available in reasonable quantities in retail and people are know using retail samples,it is easier to get a general picture of its performance and reliability.

Edit!!

BTW,the Crucial M4 also comes in a 7MM thick version too and it looks like this has replaced the previous version.

Yeah the M4 was all up to date out the box, CAT-THE-FIFTH i got my 128GB for £168 from dabs

I can already vouch for muuuchhhh better reliability, the older 470 didnt have really any problems either. I even Have LPM on now, and thats meant to be "Not compatible with SSD's"

Also, there may be another reason behind this, but how come manu's only use Samsung and Intel drives? as far as i have seen anyway.

Obviously its been out less time, but as far as i can see its about 100000x more reliable so far

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pancake

Yeah the M4 was all up to date out the box, CAT-THE-FIFTH i got my 128GB for £168 from dabs

I can already vouch for muuuchhhh better reliability, the older 470 didnt have really any problems either. I even Have LPM on now, and thats meant to be "Not compatible with SSD's"

Also, there may be another reason behind this, but how come manu's only use Samsung and Intel drives? as far as i have seen anyway.

Obviously its been out less time, but as far as i can see its about 100000x more reliable so far

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When it comes to pre-built PCs,laptops and tablets SSDs from multiple companies are used,so if you are referring to consumer products it is not a correct assumption. It seems cost and availability are the deciding factors for OEMs.

I assume you are referring to server drives?? I hope you are not comparing server drives to consumer drives?? Have you seen how much they cost?? You do realise they tend to use different NAND and different firmware which is orientated towards long term use.

Also,you are getting mixed up between compatability and reliability. 171TB of data has been written to the M4 64GB during an extended drive test so it seems to be a reliable drive. Compatibility is more to do with the controller and its associated firmware and in the case of the M4 it is the same Marvel controller as the Intel 510 series. Even the 510 series has issues with some notebook motherboards.

Intel uses its own controllers on the 320 series which seemed to be derived from the one in the X25-M G2. The latter is a very reliable drive,but guess what?? A firmware bug affected early 320 drives which meant it wiped all data off the drives(the SSD registers only having 8MB capacity!).

However,compared to the SandForce controllers ATM the Marvel and Intel controllers are significantly more bug free.

I will definitely look at the Samsung 830 but ATM it seems the only places which stock the 64GB one at under £100 are Dabs and Novatech.

Fair point there, if you look on the Crucial forums there are also loads of people with problems also though.

I very much doubt the Samsung will see so many complaints

Out of interest do you still have the M4?? Perhaps you can post some benchmarks of both drives - it would be nice to see the difference between them.

Naa its gone im afraid, i think it is ever so slightly slower in some areas than the M4

Laptop is only SATAII (and a bit, i get 320mb/s) so i couldn't really bench it properly. And no more SATA's on desktop