Hey Guys,
Amazon has reduced the price of this SSD again.
256GB now $339 USD
If you missed out before, then you can grab a bargain now.
CamelCamelCamel.
Great Price
I take it all the issues about failure after 5200 hours has been fixed?
Yep, I have read that updated firmware can fixed the issue.
Good price for the 256G.
I'd say excellent. All time low.
http://camelcamelcamel.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT25…
The only question with these recent price drops .. is it a trend? will it continue? .. can I hold out?
I am in the same boat :p Is there anything else planned to come out? I think i might hold on a bit longer :|
Same boat as well, looking at building a comp in about 2 months. Not sure if I should wait…….,,
Well Yes the price will drop for sure but even then it's worth for the $ imo. I bought a OCZ Agility 120G for $230 about half a year ago, now the same drive only costs about $180. However I have been enjoying the amazing speed for windows/games/apps for the cost of $50 and I think it's well worth it.
They have announce a new drive series "COMING SOON! Crucial® Adrenaline Solid State Cache Solution" so I think it will drop more in the short terms - these price changes have happened since the announcement - but the new drives are not even out yet and when they do I would think they would get top tier pricing and the previous models will all take a further step down.
Try reading your own quotes Elijha. Its a "cache solution", not a standalone SSD. You are supposed to use it with a conventional Hard drive. it doesn't replace the M4, nor is it the same kind of product.
We'll have to wait to see. They havn't given out much info on it yet - admittedly I haven't dug too deep either.
The image looks like a newly branded drive. I'd suspect that yes the drives themselves will be very closely related to the M4 but they might have a new chip/firmware that will only be available to these newly branded drives - I have seen no mention the software will be available to the older drives. Thus the drives will be tied to the software and it would be a new drive range essentially the M4 with added benefits - hence earning a new branding 'Adrenaline' and drawing a higher price then the equivalent M4.
I could be wrong but that is what I have read into this.
Well if it is a standalone SSD like you say, why are they only making it in a 50gb format, when the M4 range goes from 64gb to 512gb? Every single press release associated with the Crucial Adrenaline has mentioned its a cache to boost your existing conventional hard drive.
You might want to read up on Smart Response Technology.
Its pretty much an ssd to add on to a drive. Same principle as the hybrid drives.
Indeed, and very tempting.
I have an 80GB Intel SSD and 500GB 7200RPM in my laptop and use the SSD for OS, main apps and current game that I'm playing but it's teetering on less than 7GB free lately.
Probably not worth going to the 128GB but I'll keep an eye on the 256GB price in the coming weeks. Thanks OP.
dammit shoudl i buy one >.<
If you can afford it, you should. M4s are reliable and SSDs offer incredible performance advantages.
How do you upgrade firmware for a mac? Any different to how you do it on a PC? Also, will these be shipped with the fixed firmware, or do they expect end users to do it themselves?
Dude, seriously. Who are you to judge someone based on their choice of hardware? PC, MAC, Android, iPhone, who the Mod: Removed cares what someone likes? It's their personal choice. It's no more futile than arguing about what someone does in their bedroom. Grow up man, seriously.
@schwinn
http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx <- Get the firmware from there.
http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/0309/ProductFlyer-letter… <— That's the guide on flashing the firmware. It should be the same steps for the MAC since the upgrade is done before boot.
Be advised though that the firmware needs to be installed using a bootable CD. Some users are reporting that using a bootable USB is not working properly (fails to update firmware) on MACs. I have used the bootable USB on my PC and had no problems but MAC users are apparently having issues. If your MAC doesn't have a drive, you may want to use an external drive or check online with other users if bootable USB method is working.
Excellent. Thanks Ragflan.
MAC users always have issues
But definitely less issues than the non-MAC users seem to have with MAC users.
Very easy. Crucial has a PDF with instructions, along with the firmware file. Just burn the ISO to CD, then boot your Mac and hold down option key. An option for 'Window' will appear, select that then the firmware install will start. Type 'yes' when asked and firmware upgrade will finalise. Took only a few minutes when I did mine.
what about warranty?send back to amazon?
I bought the M4 256GB for 400 bucks almost half a year ago. It's an incredible drive. I cannot recommend it enough. Not a SINGLE performance problem or crash with this drive on my N61JQ.
Nothing increases your computer's performance like an SSD can. It's a investment that's WELL worth it. The speed increase in boot times, application and game load times and how quickly everything works justifies the price many times over.
I went from a Core2Duo Windows laptop with 4GB of RAM to an i7 Quad-Core PC with 8GB of RAM and I remember the performance improvement between my old laptop and my new one. It was just worlds apart. Now with the same new laptop, I added the M4 and it's like I bought another new laptop which was again worlds faster.
I sincerely recommend anyone that can afford an SSD to consider it as the best upgrade option for your notebook/desktop from a performance standpoint.
yes that is becuase the RPM version HDD is the slowest component of the machine that drags everything down behind it.. the ssd brings all quality specs into line that reflects performance its been built for
Agreed. A CPU upgrade, RAM upgrade, GPU upgrade will be weighed down due to the bottleneck of HDD performance.
Disagree.
A HDD does not bottleneck a CPU or GPU. All a SSD hard drive offers over mechanical drives are faster read/write speeds for transferring data to/from RAM. It will not affect the performance of a CPU/GPU in 99.9% of circumstances.
Your just getting faster load times, game play speed itself will not change (excluding caching textures in real-time which most game engines do minimally if at all).
The fact that a SATA2 5400RPM/7200RPM drive read time (average 30MB/S to 60MB/S) to a SSD of between 175 to 550MB/S means that your able to boot to window quicker, start a game and get into game play quicker, but that is as far as it goes. It does not ramp up in-game speed at all.
Disagree.
Windows' service Superfetch preloads parts of HDD (it deems worth of prefetching) into free RAM. If you've got a lot of free RAM this will take a long time on a mechanical HDD (in my case, about 10 minutes, extending beyond "boot to window quicker, start a game and get into game play quicker") but almost no time (since it's sequential read) using SSD.
(Obviously, you can manually disable optimising routines like Superfetch, but that's not the point.)
Anyone getting the bracket as well? How is the shipping cost, and how long does it take to ship to Syd.
I bought 256G $379 a couple of weeks ago lol
unlucky man
but even then.. it seemed like a good deal at the time, right? =D
I bought a 256GB for $299 a couple of weeks ago, SATA2 though. Should have held out for this deal, haven't even installed the darn thing…
how is the warranty from Amazon?
i asked them.. and they said that it isn't covered if the product is shipped outside of the US?
Why would you think it was?
How does this drive compare to the OCZ brand?
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/oczssd2-1vtxpl120g-verte…
OCZ is terrible comparitively… nowhere near as reliable
it is "faster"… but no point being faster if you keep getting BSODs
Cheers, a mate of mine saw the OCZ one for $120 from new egg but it had a mail in cash back. Thought it was a good deal but no point in cheap if it doesnt work as u want it too.
The most recent OCZ firmware corrected all that BSOD and 30 sec freezes. I bought a vertex 3 in the first week they were available in Aus so have been using it for almost a year now.
Worth keeping in mind when you are weighing up performance/cost.
Expon the link you provided isn't for a Vertex 3. The specs aren't even close. So that particular model wouldn't be even a modest challenge to the M4.
The Agility 3 's seem to have the best speeds around of 450MB to 550MB /s read/write.
I cant seem to see specs on this brand, and the 120GB price here is more than an OCZ Agility 3 120GB.
The 256GB flavour is unique in its price range compared to other brands, but what speeds are we getting?
Fairly quick standard shipping as well. Bought one on the 6th Jan, received it on the 17th. I live in melbourne
I have this and it's awesome. Spent $230 on it a few months ago too. Great price atm! Buybuybuy!
Looking to finally take a plunge in the SSD world! Question though - I think this SSD is 2.5", so will a 3.5" -> 2.5" bracket come with this drive or will I be required to get one on my own? If the latter, what kind of bracket is recommended? Thanks
Use sticky tape
Or use Blu Tack to achieve a cleaner install :-)
LOL yea, blu tack user here.
Don't really need one right now but very tempted!
SSD is definitely on the new PC build list, but has been holding off the build because current PC is still adequate, price of Sandy Bridge hasn't improve for at least 3 months (in fact it went up), also Ivy Bridge is coming soon. All the reasons not to buy a PC now.
Ordered, can't resist. I figure I can always move it to the new PC whenever that happens.
How much was the 128GB that is now $180?
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT128M4SS…
Did you read? It was US$212.99.
For people asking about warranty, the drive comes with 3 year warranty. You need to send it back to US (costs about $20 registered), they will pay for return shipping.
given they retail for around $220 (128gb) and $420 (256gb) in oz.. you could rma it a couple of times and, at worse, be on par..
thanks about that
and yeah.. seems like it is still worth it =D
i have crumbled under the temptation
bought one and am now broke..
How are u guys getting the shipping cost removed? no matter what i do i still have a $7 shipping cost? whats the trick?
You cant remove shipping cost…
so this deal is false it says $180 delivered? delivered means it includes shopping costs!
free shipping may only for u.s. delivery address.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=mk_s…
If you actually read the title it says:
USD $186.69 (AUD $180.65)
So it is 180 AUD delivered.
Ordered! Damn Ozbargain!!!!
256GB just dropped to $341.99 - good reason for me to buy :)
Just received mine :)
I just bought two. Using my 28 Degrees credit card, the US Dollar option on the Amazon purchase and the current Mastercard International rate (1USD = .93184 AUD), I believe I'll receive mine for a total of $341 AUD… Not bad at $170 each! But I'll confirm this once I see the purhcase on the statement (*and receive my goods).
good price still