Almost 2 weeks ago now Lexar Media announced their next generation Crucial Solid-State Drives, which would be available in three capacities being 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB. Crucial, who call themselves the memory experts, were yet to release a 2.5” SSD worth buying, so it was going to be interesting to learn what this next generation had to offer.

Although no real technical specifications were revealed, the press release did claim transfer speeds of 250MB/s read and 190MB/s write. Furthermore, the new Crucial M225 SSDs were based on Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash memory, and given the claimed performance, the Samsung PB22-J or Indilinx Barefoot controller seemed like the most likely options.

Whichever controller Crucial had used for their new M225 series one thing was clear, they already had a great deal of competition. The Samsung PB22-J and Indilinx Barefoot controllers for example, are already being used by at least five other manufacturers. Having received our review sample of the M225 128GB we quickly cracked it open to find that Crucial had in fact gone with the Indilinx Barefoot controller.

It has now been roughly 8 months since we stumbled upon the first SSD that used the Indilinx Barefoot controller, so the Crucial M225 has quite a bit of catching up to do. What will help Crucial quickly make up for lost time is pricing, and this is something they are being very competitive with. Despite just being released, the 128GB version can be had for just $330 US, making it considerably cheaper than much of the competition.

Right now the OCZ Vertex is the cream of the crop when it comes to MLC Indilinx Barefoot based SSDs, with the exception of the overclocked Vertex Turbo. Therefore we will be comparing the new Crucial M225 to the OCZ Vertex as well as the new Corsair P Series which features the Samsung PB22-J controller. Also thrown in for comparison purposes is the original Intel X25-M, as this really set the benchmark for all SSDs.

The Indilinx (IDX110) Barefoot SSD controller chip is supported by a 64MB cache designed to improve small write performance and eliminate any 'stuttering' issues. The Crucial specifications for the M225 128GB drive claims a read performance of 250MB/s and a write speed of 190MB/s. The claimed write performance is actually higher than that of the OCZ Vertex, and this is certainly something we will be looking into once we begin benchmarking.

Crucial also claims that the M225 has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 1 million hours. This is a more conservative estimation than what most manufacturers claim. However with a 5 year warranty to back it up, Crucial covers the consumer for a much longer time period than most. Additionally, Crucial claims that the drive will withstand 1500G shock resistance which is the industry standard.

The M225 SSDs measure 100.20 x 69.85 x 9.50mm and weigh just 70 grams (90 grams for the 256GB version), thanks to their slim 2.5" design, making them ideal for both desktop and laptop computers. Crucial has used the same enclosure design as Super Talent did with their UltraDrive series. The case is a combination of plastic and aluminum which looks quite good and appears to be very durable.

In fact, something we noticed about the Crucial M225 is that internally it is the same design as the Super Talent UltraDrive ME. Both drives are identical in every way and are likely manufactured side by side, so perhaps the M225 is nothing new after all. In any case, let’s move on to see how it compares to the OCZ Vertex…

Hardware - Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (LGA1366) - OCZ Reaper HPC PC3-12800 (6GB) - Crucial M225 128GB - Corsair P Series 128GB - OCZ Vertex 120GB - Intel X25-M 80GB - ASUS GeForce GTX 285 (1GB) - Asus P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Intel System Driver 8.4.0.1016 - Nvidia Forceware 185.85 WHQL

For this first test we take a single 6GB file and duplicate it on the same drive. As you can see the Intel X25-M averaged 71.2MB/s, which was slow when compared to the 92.4MB/s achieved by the Crucial M225. In fact, the Crucial M225 was 5MB/s faster than the mighty OCZ Vertex, making it one of the fastest Indilinx Barefoot SSDs we have seen in this test.

The PCmark Vantage tests strongly favor the Corsair P Series which is based on the new Samsung controller. The Crucial M225 delivered roughly the same performance as the OCZ Vertex, which made it slightly slower than the Intel X25-M.

The first batch of CrystalDiskMark results looks at the sequential performance. Here the Crucial M225 again delivers similar performance to that of the OCZ Vertex. Interestingly, while the Crucial M225 and OCZ Vertex produced slightly better read performance when compared to the Corsair P Series, they got smashed when measuring the write performance.

The random 512KB test also favors the Samsung based Corsair P Series SSD, this time both the read and write performance is greater. The Crucial M225 was able to match the write performance of the OCZ Vertex, while its read performance was a little lacking.

The Corsair P Series falls in a bit of a heap when working with small 4KB data, and this appears to be a real weakness of the Samsung controller. Although the Indilinx Barefoot controller is not nearly as efficient as the Intel X25-M’s controller, the results are still quite impressive. Again the Crucial M225 was able to match the OCZ Vertex with a read throughput of 26MB/s and a write speed of 17MB/s.

AS SSD Benchmark is similar to CrystalDiskMark, though it has been designed specifically to measure the performance of SSDs. The first lot of results looks at sequential performance, and again you will see that the Samsung based Corsair P Series does rather well. The Crucial M225 does show strong read performance, while the write throughput was twice as great as that of the Intel X25-M.

The next test measures 4K read and write performance. Again you will notice that the Corsair P Series is hopeless here, producing a write result of just 4MB/s. The Indilinx Barefoot SSDs, which includes the Crucial M225, were nearly three times faster producing 11MB/s.

The 4K-64 Thread test puts the Indilinx Barefoot SSDs at an even greater advantage over the Samsung based Corsair P Series SSD. While the Corsair SSD managed to produced a write throughput of 2.3MB/s, the Crucial M225 achieved a much more impressive 12.6MB/s.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark has been used to measure the performance when using sample data ranging in size from 4KB through to 1024KB. The Intel X25-M is the most efficient SSD when measuring read performance, as it is considerably faster than the Crucial M225 when working with files smaller than 16KB. The Crucial M225 does recover once the file sizes reach 64KB, though it was still a bit slower than the OCZ Vertex.

When measuring the write performance the Intel X25-M is not nearly as impressive as the competition. The Crucial M225 manages to shadow the OCZ Vertex very well in this test, and both Indilinx Barefoot SSDs were much faster than the Corsair P Series.

HD Tune Pro measures random performance, and first up we are going to check out the read results. The Intel X25-M looks impressive here, winning every test with the exception of the 4KB. The Crucial M225 was slightly slower than the OCZ Vertex, while the Corsair P Series also delivered very similar results.

Now when measuring the write performance, the Samsung based Corsair P Series drops right off the pace, falling way behind the Indilinx Barefoot SSDs. The Crucial M225 was actually faster than the Vertex for the most part, which was surprising to see. Again the Intel X25-M was quite consistent, topping out at 80MB/s.

Here we are going to see just how much performance you can expect to lose from each SSD over time. First we test the SSD’s in their clean unused state, and then we run the HD Tach full benchmark several times, which fills the entire drive. This simulates heavy usage and gives us a clear indication of how the performance will be affected once the SSD is in use.

As you can see, little changed when measuring the sequential performance of each SSD. However the Corsair P Series did drop quite a lot of performance when measuring write performance. It was the 4KB testing where we saw the biggest drop offs. The Intel X25-M took a massive performance hit, while the Indilinx Barefoot SSDs dropped around 5MB/s.

When compared to drives such as the new Corsair P Series, which is based on the new Samsung controller, the Crucial M225 looks even better. Although the top end performance may be a little lower, there is very little in it, and when it comes to small file writes the Crucial M225 was far superior to the Corsair P Series.

The Crucial M225 also compared very well to the OCZ Vertex, which is based on the same hardware. The internal board design of the M225 and Vertex is slightly different, as the M225 is based on the Super Talent UltraDriveME. This is interesting, as you can expect the performance of all Indilinx Barefoot SSDs to be roughly the same, assuming you are comparing models of the same capacity.

The reason why we find this interesting is because while the M225 and UltraDriveME are virtually the same thing, Super Talent are asking for roughly $350 US for their version, while Crucial want just $330 US. When it comes to pricing Crucial are playing it quite aggressively, undercutting not only Super Talent, but also OCZ and Patriot.

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Reviewed By Steven Walton