We didn’t adjust over-provisioning levels, and from each RAID group, we tested a 1TB footprint of storage. Manually over-provisioning the drives before going into their respective RAID configurations would yield higher and more consistent write performance, and help with endurance long term. While the focus of this isn’t saying that consumer SSDs will replace enterprise SSDs, it is showing that you can achieve some impressive results on a smaller budget. the 4TB model can handle up to 1000TB (TBW) which equals to about 520GB writes per day. Crucial MX500 Series Most SSDs utilize SLC Write Cache to boost write performance which is normally a fixed SLC cache size Solid-state drives can be a cost-effective alternative to replacing older servers. While going all Gen4 NVMe might drive some incredible performance, in many environments budgets just don’t exist for that kind of overhaul. While NVMe is taking over, SATA still can provide value. A typical 7200 RPM HDD can deliver read/write speeds of between 80 to 160MB/s compared to SATA SSDs delivering read/write speeds of 200 to 550MB/s. That is a massive performance boost for an aging system. Crucial MX500 4TB May Fit the Bill As you are now aware of the performance and durability of both SSDs, it is time to compare them in terms of their prices.

Typical I/O performance numbers as measured using IOMeter® with a queue depth of 32 and write cache enabled. Fresh out-of-the-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results.

Introduction

The AS-SSD software is a popular benchmarking software used to measure the performance of an SSD. In this test we are measuring the overall score. AS-SSD Sequential Benchmark The testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (21H1) with all the windows updates and latest drivers installed. Crucial's Data Write Acceleration (DWA) feature uses an SLC buffer to boost the performance of the TLC SSD. Most SDDs utilize some type of SLC buffer, which is a designated portion of the NAND that runs in SLC mode (one bit per cell) to increase performance. The secret sauce changes from one company to the next, but the underlying algorithms are closely guarded. Most SSDs have a fixed SLC capacity, but Crucial's dynamic buffer shrinks or grows depending on the condition of the drive and the amount of data stored on the flash.

Sequential read and write speeds are the same for all capacities, up to 560 MB/s read and up to 510 MB/s write, respectively.We topped 4.1GB/s in bandwidth with eight Crucial MX500 4TB SATA SSDs in RAID5. That’s pretty darn impressive all things considered. Benchmarks Observations: It is evident that the Samsung 870 QVO slightly edges out the Crucial MX500 in both sequential and random read/write performances. While the margin is not substantial, it nonetheless offers a superior performance profile compared to the MX500. Max latency stayed pretty calm across the board, with most figures staying under 200ms. Storage Spaces software RAID had the highest figures, with write latency coming in under 1000ms in RAID0 and peaking at almost 1400ms in RAID5. The Crucial MX500 will eventually come in four capacities and two form factors, but only the 1TB model will be available at launch. The 2TB model will only ship in the 2.5" form factor while the 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB models will come in both 2.5" and single-sided M.2 2280. Momentum Cache is not restricted by SATA bus throughput limitations but instead it uses additional DRAM bandwidth to achieve increased burst performance. Test Methodology Test Setup

StorageReview installed eight Crucial MX500 4TB SSDs in a Dell PowerEdge R740xd looking at RAID0 and RAID5 across the SSDs leveraging hardware RAID as well as Windows Storage Spaces.

Crucial MX500 4TB Specifications

When it comes to small business and home lab IT decisions, sometimes thinking outside the box helps to create cost-effective and high-performance solutions. Crucial just released the new 4TB capacity of the long-standing MX500 SATA SSD, which may just be a perfect price and performance mix for a low-cost all-flash storage setup. We installed eight of these SSDs in one of our Dell EMC R740xd servers and measured performance using hardware RAID and Windows Storage Spaces. Our Enterprise Synthetic Workload Analysis includes four profiles based on real-world tasks. These profiles have been developed to make it easier to compare to our past benchmarks as well as widely-published values such as max 4k read and write speed and 8k 70/30, which is commonly used for enterprise drives. Previously, the MX500 series maxed out at 2TB capacity but recently Crucial expanded its MX500 family of SSDs with a 4TB capacity which is awesome.

In this review we will be primarily comparing the Crucial MX500 SSDs to the Samsung 870 EVO SSDs to see which one offers the best price-to-performance ratio. The SSD industry has been in a race to the bottom of the barrel, but due to the NAND shortage, we've often been given the bottom without the price drops to match. Micron's new 64-layer NAND, which makes its way into the Crucial MX500, promises to tip the scales in the other direction with competitive performance and superior pricing.Random 4K write speeds for all capacities is rated for up to 90K IOPS and 95K IOPS for random 4K read speeds. Pricing & Endurance but the MX500 uses Dynamic Write Acceleration (DWA) which dynamically shrinks or grows the SLC cache size depending on the amount of data stored on the flash. Other than that, the MX500 4TB capacity is perfect for users who are looking for a large capacity SSD to store their data. Crucial presents an SSD with a lot of storage space with the MX500 4TB. It is by no means the first SATA SSD with this much storage, but it is an interesting alternative. Some of the storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. Not all capacities available at initial launch.