It was in the most recent solid state drive review at Bigbruin.com [link] where it was suggested that drives with SandForce controllers were the hot products on the market. While the optimized SandForce SF-1200 series does offer extremely fast read and write speeds, there is another SSD to consider in the quest for maximum speed.

Crucial's RealSSD C300 series now offers drives with capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, and each boasts a maximum read speed of 355MB/s. The way that Crucial is able to offer such a high speed product is by being one of the few drive manufacturers to take advantage of SATA 6Gbps technology.



In this review we will be taking a closer look at the 128GB model, which in addition to the 355MB/s maximum read speed, also offers a 140MB/s maximum write speed.

Before we check out the 128GB RealSSD C300 drive provided for review, let's look at some of the features and specifications taken from the official product page on the Crucial website.

Features:

» Brand: Crucial
» Series: RealSSD C300
» Model: CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1
» Form Factor: 2.5"
» Capacity: 128GB
» Micron MLC NAND Flash
» Marvell Controller
» SATA 6 Gb/s interface
» RAID Support
» ATA-8 w/ TRIM
» Self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology (SMART) command set
» Built-in EDC/ECC
» 3-year limited manufacturer's warranty on parts and labor

Specifications:

» Max Shock Resistance: 1500G / 1.0ms
» Max Vibration Resistance: 2-500Hz at 3.1G
» Power Consumption (Active): 1.7W READ, 3.1W WRITE
» Power Consumption (Idle): 0.092W
» Sequential Access - Read: 355MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s) / 265MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)
» Sequential Access - Write: 140MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s) / 140MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)
» MTBF: 1,200,000 hours
» Random 4k READ: 50,000 IOPS
» Random 4k WRITE: 30,000 IOPS

The specifications detail the usual information, but of interest may be that the read and write speeds are detailed for SATA 6Gbps operation, as well as SATA 3Gbps operation. While SATA 6Gbps is the way to go for the fastest data transfers, not everyone has such a controller in their system yet. It is good to see that even when operating on a more common SATA 3Gbps controller, the drive can still put up respectable speeds of 265MB/s (read) and 140MB/s (write).