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Crucial CT256M4SSD2 256GB M4 SATA III 6Gb/s MLC 2.5 Inch Internal SSD

by Crucial
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (423 customer reviews)


Price: £140.00 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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  • Improve boot up and application load times
  • Withstand extreme shock and vibration
  • SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III), backward compatible to SATA 3Gb/s (SATA II)
  • 3-year limited warranty
See more product details

Frequently Bought Together

Crucial CT256M4SSD2 256GB M4 SATA III 6Gb/s MLC 2.5 Inch Internal SSD + Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-2B 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch SATA HDD/SSD Converter - Black
Price For Both: £158.80

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Product Information

Technical Details
BrandCrucial
Item Weight77 g
Product Dimensions10.1 x 7 x 0.9 cm
Item model numberCT256M4SSD2
Screen Size2.5 inches
Wattage3 watts
  
Additional Information
ASINB004W2JL2A
Best Sellers Rank 443 in Computers & Accessories (See top 100)
Shipping Weight118 g
Date First Available11 April 2011
  
Warranty & Support
Warranty, Parts: Replacement parts covered under manufacturer's warranty terms for 12 months from date of purchase

Warranty, Labor: Labour cost covered under manufacturer's warranty terms for 12 months from date of purchase
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Product Description

Product Description

The Crucial m4 SSD

Award-winning quality. Award-winning performance.

The award-winning Crucial m4 SSD delivers powerful performance gains for SATA 6Gb/s systems. Designed to empower your system, the Crucial m4 SSD offers faster application load times, faster boot times, and increased durability compared to a traditional hard drive. The results speak for themselves: blazing-fast sequential read speeds of up to 500 MB/s for any file type.

Cutting-edge technology. Quality component testing.

Built with advanced controller technology, Micron proprietary firmware and high-speed synchronous MLC NAND, the Crucial m4 SSD is engineered to deliver consistent, blazing-fast SSD performance. From the extensive research and development that led to its ultimate design, to the hours of testing and validation spent on each NAND component, to rigorous compatibility testing in the Crucial Performance Labs to ensure component functionality, the Crucial m4 SSD is built to last.

Consistently fast speeds. No exceptions and no fine print.

There's a reason the Crucial m4 SSD has garnered numerous international awards since its launch it does what it's supposed to do. No matter what kind of files you are working with on a Crucial SSD, you'll experience high speeds with no drop in performance.

Unlike other SSDs on the market, Crucial SSDs treat all files the same, regardless of whether they are compressed or uncompressed. This is important because the files most people use everyday are videos, mp3s, advanced graphics files and zip files - are compressed files and thus unable to be compressed any further. While many SSDs on the market achieve faster speeds by using file compression, many of the most common file types can not be compressed, resulting in SSDs that often deliver drastically slower speeds than originally advertised. With the advanced technology of a Crucial SSD, however, you will never have this problem!

Crucial quality you can depend on.

Crucial is a trusted name when it comes to SSDs, and that's no coincidence. As a brand of Micron, one of the worlds leading manufacturers of SSDs, we work with our engineers to design, refine, and support our drives. With over 15 years of experience in the memory industry, NAND component testing, and the ongoing development of advanced technology, we continue to innovate without sacrificing what has made us great: high-quality upgrades and outstanding customer service.

Crucial SSDs. Performance you can trust.

More Crucial SSD options

The Crucial v4 SSD delivers substantial SSD performance gains for pre-2011 systems at an affordable price.

The Crucial Adrenaline Solid State Cache Solution

Crucial Adrenaline boosts performance of a Windows 7® PC by up to 8 times1

1 Performance scores after three runs allowing active data to be cached on solid state drive. Scores may vary depending upon benchmark used and system configuration. Test setup: Intel DP67BG motherboard, Seagate Barracuda 750GB hard drive using PCMark Vantage HDD test suite.

Comparison Chart

Product Details
Crucial m4 SSD
Product Details
Crucial v4 SSD
Product Details
Crucial Adrenaline
Interface SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III) SATA 3Gb/s (SATA III) SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Best for most systems bought in 2011 or later most systems bought in pre-2011 people who have lots of data on their hard drive
Platform PC & Mac PC & Mac Windows 7
Max sequential read/write 500MB/s / 260MB/s 230MB/s / 190MB/s 500MB/s / 95MB/s
4k random read/write 45k / 50k 10k / 4k 45k / 20k
Form Factor 2.5' 2.5' 2.5'
Capacity 64GB - 512GB 32GB - 256GB 2.5'
Faster start-up YES YES YES
Faster application loading YES YES YES
Faster data transfer YES YES YES
Increased ability to multitask YES YES YES
Three-year limited warranty YES YES YES
Increased Durability & reliability YES YES NO
Hard drive replacement & upgrade YES YES NO

Product Description

Technical Specifications: Format (inches): 2.5 " · Interfaces (type-maintain without number): SATA-III (600MB/s) · Transfer rate (reading): 500 MB/s · Transfer rate (writing): 260 MB/s · Type (manufacturer type): CT256M4SSD2

Description: CrucialSSD hard disk CT256M4SSD2 256 GB 2.5 " SATA-III (600MB/s



Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Works great with MacBook Pro. 6 Aug 2012
Style Name:64GB M4
This works very well with my MacBook Pro (15 inch early 2011). However it is necessary to install a firmware update (see instructions below) in order for the SSD to work. Once installed I noticed a dramatic speed improvement. Did a fresh install of Mountain Lion and it's like a new laptop!

Instructions for MacBook Pro (early 2011):

1) Backup your files to an external hard drive with Time Machine.

2) Go to the Crucial website and download the latest firmware (as of writing version 000F). This consists of a .iso and a .pdf guide.

3) Burn the iso to a black CD or DVD using Disk Utility. (The USB option did NOT work for me!). There's plenty of guides/videos on how to burn an .iso if you search the web.

4) Two options at this point: a) Create a bootable OS X install USB so that you can install an operating system on the SSD once it's installed or b) use your Time Machine backup to copy your files to your new SSD. I'll follow option a).

5) Insert the firmware DVD/CD into your Macbook and shut it down. Open it up and remove your current hard drive. Replace it with the SSD and screw everything back in place (again there's plenty of excellent videos online if you're unsure...)

6) Turn on your MacBook. I didn't have to press anything. After about 30 seconds the firmware updater presented itself. You'll be prompted for a 'yes' or 'no'. Type 'yes' and hit enter. After another minute or so the firmware will be updated.

7) Hold the power button to switch off your MacBook. Insert your OS X install USB stick. Power up your MacBook while holding the option key. Select the OS X installer.

8) Once you've booted into the USB installer you'll be presented with a menu. Select Disk Utility. If everything has gone according to plan you should see your new SSD drive in the menu. Reformat it to Mac OS (Journaled). Exit Disk Utility and from the menu you can now select Install OS X. Choose this and select your SSD for installation.

Additional options:

At this point you might want to invest in a special hard drive caddy that allows your to replace the internal DVD drive with a second hard drive. I bought the brainy deal version for about £12 on amazon. If you want to use this open up your MacBook again. Unscrew the DVD drive and replace it with your the hard drive caddy containing your original HD (again plenty of good guides online..). With this setup you have the speed of an SSD and the larger storage capacity of hard drive. Obviously install the system and apps on the SSD. Larger downloads, movies, or backups can be placed on your second hard drive.

Enjoy!
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159 of 166 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Really fast, pretty small 1 Jun 2011
By Christopher Burns VINE™ VOICE
Style Name:128GB M4
I picked up one of these a few days ago to complement a newer Sandy Bridge setup. For no reason I could ever figure out, my boot times were terrible with the motherboard (an Asus P8P67 Pro) using a conventional HD - on the order of 3 minutes from cold until the PC was responsive. Connected to a SATA-3 controller, this SSD reduced my boot time to around 35 seconds, and, once the desktop appears, the PC is fully responsive to whatever you want to do. It sounds obvious, but the main thing that differentiates SSDs from conventional HDs is this "snappiness" factor - seek times are completely flat, thus, the only delay is actually transferring data off the drive to RAM for CPU operations (and this drive is capable of >400 megabyte per second bursts). The drive is also completely silent, and it's slightly weird not to hear the usual HD ticking & clicking. You may also need a 3.5" drive bay adapter; physically, the drive is about 50% bigger than a credit card and very light - alternatively, I have seen these drives held in place by double-sided tape - with no moving parts, you can pretty much put them anywhere the data and power cables will stretch. Also, a side effect of the "solid state" part of the drive is that it is largely unaffected by any movements or accidental drops - anything that doesn't destroy the casing will leave the drive completely unaffected - the interior is largely the same as a USB flash drive, but with larger capacity chips and a small controller.

I initially had some trouble with the drive (some stuttering and pausing) after installing Windows7 then Intel's RST drivers (the drive is connected to an Intel ICH9 port), and decided that a re-format would be my best option to completely get rid of the Intel drivers. When installing Windows only takes 12 minutes - and at that, you're largely limited to your DVD drive's transfer rate more than anything else, it's no longer a chore, and using Win7's built-in ACHI drivers fixed the problem completely.

There's also a little more to installing one of these compared with a standard HD. You should connect it to a SATA-3 drive port to get best performance (although it will remain very fast if you're using a SATA-2 port on older motherboards). You also need to run the Windows Experience Index in Windows7 (and in fact, use Windows7 too, since it contains drive control commands optimised for SSDs not found in older versions of Windows). When Windows has run the Windows Experience Index, it will fully recognise the drive as an SSD and automatically disable some scheduled processes like defragmentation etc. Lastly you can check your speeds are what they should be with e.g. AS SSD Benchmark - sequential reads should be over 300 or 400 megabytes per second depending on the controller you're using, and if so, you're good to go.

Obviously, the downsides to this drive are the high cost and relatively small capacity; at 120GB after formatting, a default installation of Windows7 itself will immediately eat another 17GB or so, so you're basically looking at 100GB all told once you're set up. While smaller applications like web-browsers etc. load more or less instantly now, more extensive applications show less benefit - e.g. a modern multi-gigabyte game will only show speed differences of a couple of seconds. In all, it's a mixed bag, but, I could see myself abandoning conventional HDs in the future as prices come down over time. If you need very large quantities of storage space, you won't want to use these, but 100GB is minimally useful for a working system plus a few apps. And of course, you can continue to use any existing HDs you have for secondary storage.

EDIT : Been running this drive for slightly over a year now with no real ill effects, although I am finding the 128gb quite cramped now with the addition of a Dropbox account (weirdly, even though the Dropbox folder is on another, larger drive). A minor speed-bump was the firmware update Crucial sent out late last year where unless installed, the drive would reboot itself after (x) thousand hours of use. As a bonus, however, once you have the update installed, you get an extra 100mb/sec speed boost, so it's not all bad - although the bug would effectively prevent you from using your PC for more than an hour at a time.

Since I bought this, prices have roughly halved, and I'm strongly considering getting another one of these in the 256GB flavour to complement the existing one.
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87 of 93 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial M4 SSD Turbo-charged my PC 29 Dec 2011
By Mannu
Style Name:128GB M4
I use my PC mainly for gaming (racing/simulator), photo processing, video creation, working on documents, entertainment (music and videos) and internet browsing.
Before the Crucial M4, my PC configuration (based on a P55 chipset) looked something like this: Windows 7 64-bit, Processor: i5-760 (@ 2.8 Ghz), 8 GB RAM, 2xGTX 460 (in SLI), 1 TB HDD.

My choice for the HDD (spinning at 5400 rpm) wasn't the wisest and I could see how much it affected my system's overall performance. Adding a SSD-HDD was really the only way I could maximise the potential of my system.

I've been watching the evolution of the SSDs from the the past couple of years. Apart from the prices, (earlier) firmware issues kept me from investing in a SSD-HDD.
However, as the performance of the SSDs had started to become more stable (compared to earlier), I thought it was the right moment to start looking for something to upgrade my system with.

Since the SSD will be used as a system drive (OS+programs and the current game that I'm playing), a 120/128 GB SSD-HDD was my target.
My criteria for selection were:
1. Performance on SATA III (6 Gbps) - although my system supports only SATA II, I wanted something that was 'future-proof'
2. Performance on SATA II (3 Gbps) - this was a critical point for selection
3. Reliability - many 'performance oriented' SSDs have the reliability of a leaking boat. I wanted something that had a proven track-record for reliability
4. Performance per $
5. Cost per GB

It took me almost two weeks to gather enough information about all the SSDs in the market and check if they met my criteria.
Many SSDs failed to meet criterion #2, which shortened my list to about 5 names.

The controller on the SSDs impacts the performance and also the reliability of a SSD. Sandforce controller based SSDs show better performance, but reliability differs from SSD manufacturer to manufacturer.

I was left with 2 names in the end: Mushkin Chronos Deluxe and Crucial M4.

The ultimate winner for me was the Crucial M4 for the following reasons:
1. Performance on SATAIII may not be the best, but with the 0009 firmware update, performance levels are right amongst the top Sandforce controller based SSDs.
2. Crucial M4 SSD drives have shown the least percentage performance drop when operating on SATAII. The Sandforce controller based drives, except the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe, are hit badly.
3. In terms of reliability, only Intel, Mushkin and Crucial have shown sustained stable results.
4. Crucial M4 ranks amongst the top SSDs for performance per $. It is only bettered by its older sibling the C300.
5. Crucial's SSDs have by far the best (or almost the best) cost per GB over the entire range of SSDs offered by any manufacturer.
6. Availability of Crucial M4 drives is better than Mushkin Chronos Deluxe.

Migrating my system drive (C:) from my old HDD to the Crucial M4 with a $19.95 software made a big mess. After migration, the SSD drive was not configured for optimum performance and after 3 re-boots, my geniune Windows 7 got invalidated. This forced me to take the much preferred route of a fresh install.
Doing a fresh install (or reinstall) in the past was always a daunting task taking me sometimes up to 2 days to set up my PC right - with all required programs, settings etc. This incredible drive shrunk that time to 4 hours!!!
The performance after the fresh install also improved significantly. The AS-SSD score went from 365 (post-migration) to 515 (fresh-install) - not bad for a SATAII.

To summarise, metaphorically, the addition of the Crucial M4 128 GB to my system is like the BMW M5. It is one of the best 'track-day' weapons, and it also seats 5 persons!
Kudos to Crucial for a great product!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Great SSD
Fitted this straight into my desktop PC to replace an older Corsair 60Gb and works fine, especially with the clean Win 7 install. Read more
Published 2 days ago by Mr. C. A. Wood
4.0 out of 5 stars Speeded up my system no end
Bought these for an Industrial PC to speed up the compile time of Siemens PCS7 which they had duly done. Read more
Published 3 days ago by John Downing
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning
This upgrade will without question be money well spent .Quality drive and outstanding performance.
Great Value and it`s one of the best drives on the market at this present... Read more
Published 6 days ago by kevin
4.0 out of 5 stars Works for Me!
Reading the data sheet this SSD appeared to be the best price/performance ratio at the time I bought my first one.
This is my third. You get just it it says. The drive. Read more
Published 12 days ago by NeddySeagoon
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
I am using it on my iMac 27' late 2009 without any problems. A friend of mine bought one for his MacBook Pro and it works fine as well. Read more
Published 13 days ago by M. Tsoukalos
5.0 out of 5 stars I love it
The best upgrade for a PC or laptop. The best upgrade for a PC or laptop. The best upgrade for a PC or laptop.
Published 16 days ago by Stanimir
5.0 out of 5 stars like a new macbook
installed this together with 8gb of kingston ram in my 2008 macbook - it runs like a new machine now! the difference in speed these SSDs make is unreal
Published 18 days ago by MR P A BAKER
4.0 out of 5 stars Crucial Solid State Drive
Great drive for fast boot up times and installation speed. This has to be one of the better drives on the market for reliability. Read more
Published 18 days ago by Mr. N. Wittmann
5.0 out of 5 stars Good value SSD
Easy upgrade for MacBook Pro late 2008.
Make sure you upgrade the firmware to get the best transfer speed.
Definitely worth in terms of speed of opening programmes etc.
Published 18 days ago by David MJ Mills
5.0 out of 5 stars It made my macbook white brand new
Althought my macbook white (5 year old) came along with SATA I, even then this ssd made my mac fly. I cannot compare it with other products since I've trusted the reviews and... Read more
Published 20 days ago by Theodor Georgomanolis
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