Crucial RealSSD 64Gb – Testing Criteria

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As the Crucial C300 64Gb SSD was our first opportunity to test a SATA 3 SSD on our new on our new Bench computer we thoroughly enjoyed the tests. The system is described in detail with photographs on the site and comprises of the following hardware components:

SSDS/HDDS INCLUDED IN TESTING

• Crucial C300 64Gb SSD
• OWC Extreme Pro 120Gb SSD
• Intel X25m 160Gb SSD
• Samsung Spinpoint F2 1.5Tb HDD

Software utilized for the review included Crystal Disk Mark, HDTune Pro, ATTO Benchmark, HDTach, AS SSD, Boot Timer, Win7 WEI along with FutureMark PCMark Vantage. Although The SSD Review utilizes AS SSD in the testing of the C300, we will not run comparisons as significantly different and questionable results can be seen between compressed and non-compressed solid state drives. All SSDs are tested within the same system and both installations are exact copies of one another, given exception to boot testing which is conducted on our Acer 1810T-6188 laptop which seems to shine in these tests. All tests are conducted in Windows 7 safe mode, wherever possible, as this gives the truest result for evaluation purposes; the sole exception being PCMark Vantage which would not function in safe mode.

As most readers do not have systems capable of utilizing SATA3 just yet, we thought it best to test the Crucial C300 64Gb SSD in both SATA 2 and SATA 3 modes in all evaluations given exception to Windows Startup Time Testing.

WINDOWS 7 STARTUP TIME

Windows 7 startup time is determined by a program called Boot Timer which accounts for the startup time from system post until the desktop is active with background activities loaded. To a certain extent, the time it takes your system to start and load applications can be one of many indicators of your systems health. On installation, many applications install components and update programs that load when the computer starts regardless of whether the individual application that installed it will be used or not. For the purposes of this review, the system start time will be determined with all system services and start up programs disabled to determine the absolute quickest boot possible with the SSD. This measurement can be duplicated by each and every reader whereas the inclusion of services and start up applications could not result in a comparable equal.

We would also like to congratulate the C300 on posting the top SSD boot time yet throughout our testing with this result:

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Our comparison times belong to the OWC Extreme Pro 120Gb SSD (8.221s), the OWC Extreme Pro RE 100Gb SSD (9.406s) and the Intel X25m 160Gb SSD (11.512s).

FILE COPY TESTS

File copy testing comprises of a 20Gb folder which consists of files of all sizes to includes software, music, movies, photographs and documents simply being copied from one area of the drive to another. The results are below and surprisingly, the Intel held its ground here: