With such low prices, great performance, and Crucial’s focus on quality and reliability, it was a big win for both the end user and Crucial. They stripped away the enterprise features of the MX100, utilized a cheaper controller from Silicon Motion, but kept their quality NAND in this new series. The BX100 was Crucial’s first product series denoting an entry-level product that was aimed to replace HDDs. Today, Crucial SSDs are still some of the best value drives on the market. Back when I bought my Crucial M4 it was the best value at the time. The times are moving and boy are they moving fast, and Crucial is making times faster with their latest SSD, the BX300. SATA 6Gb/s is now standard, M.2 NVMe devices are nearly everywhere and more are yet to come, and USB 3.1 now has a Type-C connector that allows you to plug in a corresponding device on the first try! No more flipping the cable upside down three times to get it in once! My how things have changed. Since then, the computer market has evolved quite a bit. USB3.0 was just emerging in the market and M.2 NVMe devices were just a dream by those laying the groundwork for them. While my X58 motherboard had the latest SATA 6GB/s ports provided by Marvell chipset, those in the know always opted for the Intel SATA 3GB/s ports for the reliability. They are essentially the same program.It seems like it was just yesterday that I was holding the Crucial M4 in my hands and I was ready to upgrade my first gen i7 system with my first SSD ever, let alone with the first SATA 6Gb/s SSD ever. One such product is Storage Executive, with both Micron and Crucial’s version able to work with the other. Crucial is a subsidiary of Micron, and they often simply rebrand Micron products with the Crucial name. NOTE: If you have an older Velocity Micro system you may have a Micron SSD rather than a Crucial. If you want to monitor the health of a RAID setup, then you will need to use the Intel Rapid Storage Technology. If you have two Crucial drives in RAID 0, both Windows and Crucial Storage Executive will see it as a single “Intel RAID Volume” and will not be able to update the firmware of either drive. One thing to note, however, is if you have two or more SSD’s in any kind of RAID setup, then none of these utilities will see the individual drives. Intel also has their utility, called the Intel SSD Toolbox, which has a very similar layout to Crucial Storage Executive. One key difference in Crucial’s utility is the option to perform a live firmware update, or updating the firmware of the drive without immediately needing to reboot. analysis, firmware updates, as well as sanitizing the drive. In the case of Crucial Storage Executive, there are more shortcuts to the left for drive details, S.M.A.R.T. NOTE: Most of these utilities will monitor the health and status of other drives present in the system such as mechanical storage, but they will not be able to do much more than monitor the health or perform a S.M.A.R.T. If you are using Crucial Storage Executive, it will show you the health and usage of all drives connected to your system, not just the SSD. For Samsung Magician, the first screen will be an overview of the Samsung drive in your system, with available firmware updates (if any), drive health, TBW, and some other links in the bottom. Simply launch the program through the Start Menu. Your Velocity Micro system should come preinstalled with the utility for your particular drive (Samsung Magician for Samsung, Crucial Storage Executive for Crucial, etc.). Checking for new firmware is highly recommended, as newer firmware can extend the life of the drive. Most SSD manufacturers have a utility available for their SSD’s that allows you to monitor the drive’s health, TBW, as well as check for firmware updates. An SSD’s life span is measured in terabytes written (TBW), or how many terabytes of data can be written to the drive before serious cell degradation occurs. Just like mechanical drives, though, SSD’s don’t last forever. The advantages of solid state storage are lower power consumption, no spool up time, less heat output, and greater resistance to physical damage since there are no moving parts. Instead, they use memory cells (called NAND cells) that use flash storage, similar to USB flash drives, to store their data. Unlike conventional mechanical hard drives, Solid State Drives (SSD’s) do not use platters and write heads to store data. Estimated difficulty and completion time: 15 minutes, low difficulty.
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