Plextor M6M mSATA SSD (256GB) Review – Reliable Storage In A Small Package

TECHNOLOGY X TESTING PROTOCOL

At Technology X, we test our SSD’s slightly different depending upon the drive’s marketed purpose, that of a consumer or an enterprise focused SSD.  For a consumer SSD, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however, CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Benchmarks for our consumer tests are that of fresh drives, so that we can verify that the manufacturer’s specifications match the SSD. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your SSD is top-notch.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchases; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software used for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Info, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark Vantage.  In consumer reports, we prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO 6.1.8

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, to the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

Using Crystal Disk Info, we can see that the Plextor M6M mSATA SSD features the S.M.A.R.T. attribute, which allows for us to monitor the health of the SSD over its lifespean, as well as TRIM and DevSleep. DevSleep allows for the drive to utilize very little power when the SSD is not in use, which is a great feature to have to help prolong the battery life of your ultra book. One thing to note though is that the M6M reached us with 33 GB of total NAND writes, which we expect with Plextor’s extensive testing facility.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.47

ATTO Disk Benchmark is a relatively easy-to-use benchmark tool, which happens to be the benchmark of choice for many manufacturers. ATTO uses compressible data rather than random data, which results in higher performance and thus, higher benchmark scores. In our testing, we have selected the transfer size to range from 0.5KB to 8192KB, and have set the total length of the test to be 256MB.

To refresh ourselves, with the 256GB M6M we are expecting to see read speeds of up to 520MB/s and write speeds of up to 440MB/s. Our first benchmark shows that the M6M almost performs exactly as Plextor has listed it, with read speeds that reach 518 MB/s and write speeds of 451 MB/s.