The Plextor M5M is a high-performance mSATA 6 Gb/s SSD specifically engineered to give ultrabook, tablet PC, and other JEDEC MO-300 form factor users the speed and low power consumption benefits of the newest generation SSD technology.

The combination of the latest Marvell 88SS9187 controller and True Speed technology create s M5M the enhanced performance and reliability. The True Speed high-performance technology delivers real world benefits and prevents SSD speed drop, automatically returning performance to like-new speeds.

• Latest server-grade Marvell® 88SS9187 controller ensures fast and reliable operation for all applications.
• Sequential mode performance of up to 540MB/s read and up to 430MB/s write, boosts the responsiveness of ultrathin laptop and tablet PCs.
• Random read speeds of up to 80K IOPS and write speeds up to 77K IOPS at 4K file size, give maximum real-world performance benefits.
• Advanced True Speed technology provides long-term sustained performance for all data types and prevents speed drop.

Plextor SSD has a unique True Protect protection system to protect the integrity of your data. To confirm that each piece of data is correctly stored with one hundred percent accuracy the newest 128-bit error correction code is used. For data confidentiality, the drive uses hardware in the US Government AES-validated Marvell controller to provide secure 256-bit full-drive encryption.

DATA INTEGRITY

The combination of the latest Marvell® 88SS9187 6Gb/s SATA controller¡¯s powerful 128 Random Bit/2K BCH ECC (Error-Correction Codes), and the exclusive Plextor firmware based Robust Data Hold-out Algorithm gives the M5M unequaled data integrity.

ASE DATA ENCRYPTION

AES, the U.S. government standard encryption technology, is divided into three levels 128, 192, 256. The Plextor M5M uses the highest level of encryption - 256 bits. This level of SSD encryption is highly secure compared to BIOS or software based encryption and offers strong protection if the computer is stolen.

• Supports the SATA Device Sleep standard incorporating the new DEVSLP state allowing the SSD to communicate in sleep mode.
• With the DEVSLP mode, the M5M can reduce the power consumption to only 1 mW, and resumes from DEVSLP mode only in 100ms.
• In order to meet the needs of consumers, the M5M delivers an effective operating and long battery life of the mobile device.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plextor¡¯s state-of-the-art testing facilities

Plextor SSDs are required to pass some of the toughest tests in the industry before we even start production. Parallel tests involving 400 SSDs tested for 500 hours and the use of top grade FLEXSTAR® testing equipment to simulate extreme operating environments ensure that the M5M is built and tested for the highest level of stability in any working condition.

• Extensively tested during development using the latest test equipment and a rigorous multistage testing procedure.
• Passed Plextor¡¯s enterprise-grade Zero Error standard of 500 hours of testing of 400 drives without errors.
• Calculated mean time between failures (MTBF) is an impressive 2.4 million hours, showing the M5M¡¯s reliability.

48hr Sustained Read and Write Test 
Two days continuous 4K file read / write test, zero error pass requirement.

4000 Times Idle Test¨CSleep and Hibernation Test
After 24 hrs read & write SSD enters sleep (S3) mode and is woken after 5 minutes, repeated for hibernation (S4) mode, zero error pass requirement.

250 Times Power Cycle¨CCold and Warm Boot Tests
Continuous cold boot and warm boot cycles 250 times, zero error pass requirement.

With its ultra mini size, light weight and low power consumption, the M5M is especially suitable for ultra portable on-the-go computing device.

Compact size

• No outer case.
• Designed for the limited space in ultra portable devices.
• Highly compact JEDEC MO-300 form factor incorporating an mSATA 6GB/s connection.
• Light weight (9g max.) and mini size (50.8 x 29.8 x 3.6 mm), only an eighth of the size of the standard 2.5 inch SSD drive.

Low power consumption

• The low power design can consume less power and provide extended battery life.

PLEXTOR M5M MSATA SSD REVIEW (256GB) ¨C THE M5M DISPLAYS INCREDIBLE PCMARK PERFORMANCE

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2013

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

This year is supposed to see the overall acceptance of the M.2, or NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor), to provide for a uniform and general adaption of ¡®mSATA type¡¯ SSDs as a whole. Right now we have the older mini-PCIe SSD, mSATA SSD, two different but similar sizes of blade SSDs, a larger blade SSD used in the MacBook Pro and, while we are onto Apple products, different configured Mac blade SSDs for different years of product. Apparently, Apple believed they could curb third party manufacture/sales and have the consumer pay upwards in the area of $1000 for a simple upgrade where the original SSD wasn¡¯t even returned.

Luckily, our SSD needs remain constrained to our present hardware and retail mSATA sales are still geared to upgrading the consumer into the world of SSDs. The Plextor M5M SSD is a perfect candidate for that and one of the best mSATA SSDs we have tested to date. With incompressible data transfer performance of 534MB/s read and 436MB/s write, along with the added support of read and write IOPS over the 65,000 mark, topping the charts in Vantage HDD testing seems natural.

Plextor¡¯s solid reputation, standard warranty of three years, availability and price point make the M5M a ¡®must have¡¯ for those that have to have one of the best SSDs on the market for the best price. The Plextor M5m 6Gbps mSATA SSD is awarded with our Editors Choice Award.

PLEXTOR M5M MSATA SSD REVIEW (256GB) – THE M5M DISPLAYS INCREDIBLE PCMARK PERFORMANCE

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2013

At under 7grams, a third the size of a business card and performance equal to that of any 2.5″ notebook SSD, there was little doubt of the success that the mSATA SSD would achieve.

Lenovo was the first to introduce the mSATA SSD to the consumer and today, there doesn’t seem to be an ultra available that doesn’t have a mSATA SSD installed in some way.

Yesterdays trend was to have the mSATA SSD installed as a 3Gbps secondary device whereas, today’s flavor of the day seem to be using small capacity mSATA drives as caching SSDs, mainly through limitations of the mobile chip set configurations. Considering this, does it really make sense to market a product using the SATA 3 port for the hard drive and leaving that of the mSATA to bottleneck at SATA 2 speeds?

PLEXTOR M5M 256GB MSATA SSD

We got our first look at the Plextor M5M mSATA SSD at CES Las Vegas 2013 and have been hoping to get one in our hands for some time, considering our wealth of past mSATA SSD reviews. The M5M was pretty much the only we hadn’t seen. Plextor has cemented their reputation on being able to fine tune their firmware through a solid relationship with Marvell (and only Marvell) along with the use of the finest Toshiba toggle mode memory.

The M5M is a retail SSD, available in capacities of 64, 128 and 256GB and it is a SATA 3 mSATA SSD, fully backward compatible with SATA 2. Performance is variable, dependent on capacity, and all sizes are listed at 540MB/s read with graduating write performance of 160MB/s (64GB), 320MB/s (128GB) and 430MB/s(256GB). Random 4k IOPS are listed up to 80,000 IOPS read and 77,000 IOPS write with Plextor True Speed technology ensuring long term sustained performance.

The M5M has AES 256-Bit encryption, a three year standard warranty and something that many don’t know is that each drive is subject to rigorous testing and burn-in, as well as accelerated usage simulations for ultra-stability. A quick check of Amazon shows the M5M priced at $74 for the 64GB, $114 for the 128GB and $219 for the 256GB capacity, bringing the M5M below the $1/GB mark for the two higher capacities.

M5M COMPONENTS

Plextor relies on Marvell and Marvell only for their SSDs. They believe that this consistency enables their engineering team to create  the best possible product that they can. The 256GB version of the M5M utilizes the Marvell 88SS9187 controller along with four pieces of Toshiba 19nm toggle mode mlc NAND flash memory and a Micron 512MB DDR3 DRAM cache chip

Although the total RAW memory totals 256GB, and this is the advertised capacity, formatting of the M5M does leave the user with a total of 238GB of available storage space. For our purposes today, we will be using a mSATA to SATA 3 adapter to ensure that our testing methodology remains consistent.

TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

Our analysis today will be conducted with our Asus Z77 Premium Test Bench. Clicking on any pictures or benchmarks will bring up a more easily viewable high resolution image.

In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide. Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 ‘safe mode’ to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.

In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.

We would like to thank ASUS (P8Z77-V Premium), Intel (Core i7-3770K), Crucial (Ballistix), Corsair (H100) and Be Quiet (PSU/Fans) for supporting the build of our Z77 Premium Test Bench. In addition, we would also like to thank HighPoint for their contribution of the RocketStor 5322
, RocketRAID 2711 and their External Mini-SAS to Esata cabling. Through this configuration we are able to benchmark all notebook and mSATA SSDs, whereby achieving identical performance as a direct system connection, yet we simply hot swap from the external storage dock.

MARVELL SS9187 CONTROLLER

The Marvell SS9187-BLD2 controller is a 6Gbps eight channel controller, capable of up to 200MB/s transfer speed per channel. It is termed as a ‘Monet’ controller and has a dual core architecture.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark Vantage. We rely on these as they each have a way of supporting one another yet, at the same time, adding a new performance benchmark to the total picture. Much of the software is free and can be downloaded simply by clicking on the linked title.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER 5.5.0

Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, ‘power on’ information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the SSD is capable of TRIM as it is not greyed out as with AAM and APM.

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

Specifications listed 540MB/s read and 430MB/s write transfer performance and ATTO is very close to that. ATTO represents the easiest in data transfer as it uses highly compressible data and testing with highly incompressible data will paint a better picture.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill/compressible) or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. In the Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD, performance results are very similar whether we test with compressible or incompressible data and, for this reason, results are displayed utilizing incompressible data.

Typical of Crystal Diskmark, performance drops just a bit, however, we need to consider that we are testing with random, or highly incompressible, data samples. This is an excellent result even with the low 4k random write result a bit lower than normal.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.6

Up until recently, AS SSD was the only benchmark create d specifically for SSD testing and it uses incompressible data. AS SSD, for the most part, gives us the ‘worst case scenario’ in SSD transfer speeds because of its use of incompressible data and many enthusiasts like to AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

We always hope to see the AS SSD Total Score above 1000, however, our first look at read and write 4k-64Thrd IOPS results is very encouraging. With IOPS like this, we might see some excellent PCMark Vantage transfer speeds.

The AS SSD Copy Benchmark create s 3 files that we might see on a normal basis (ISO/Program/Game) and transfers them from one spot on the SSD to another, keeping track of the maximum transfer speeds reached and the time it took to transfer the files. This result shows excellent SATA 3 results when moving the ISO and Game but the Program transfer left something to be desired. We repeated the test three times to ensure the first test result wasn’t a fluke. All were consistent.

 

You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

ASU transfer speeds are a bit lower than expected but IOPS remained very impressive. The overall score of 3815 isn’t bad considering our test data is comprised of 100% incompressible files.

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create  testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

PLEXTOR M5M 256GB MSATA SSD PCMARK VANTAGE RESULTS

The Plextor M5M sailed through Vantage HDD Suite testing with a high score of 73181 points and a high transfer speed of 437MB/s while ‘Importing Pictures to Windows Gallery’. This score is the highest we have had from a mSATA SSD to date and six of the eight tests resulted in high SATA 3 transfer speeds above 300MB/s.

The Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD is the top SSD result to date when testing in PCMark Vantage and, in fact, is the fifth highest SATA 3 SSD that we have tested overall. Although these results reflect ONLY Vantage Total Point scoring, we find that these results mimic most others typically:

 

 

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

This year is supposed to see the overall acceptance of the M.2, or NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor), to provide for a uniform and general adaption of ‘mSATA type’ SSDs as a whole. Right now we have the older mini-PCIe SSD, mSATA SSD, two different but similar sizes of blade SSDs, a larger blade SSD used in the MacBook Pro and, while we are onto Apple products, different configured Mac blade SSDs for different years of product. Apparently, Apple believed they could curb third party manufacture/sales and have the consumer pay upwards in the area of $1000 for a simple upgrade where the original SSD wasn’t even returned.

Luckily, our SSD needs remain constrained to our present hardware and retail mSATA sales are still geared to upgrading the consumer into the world of SSDs. The Plextor M5M SSD is a perfect candidate for that and one of the best mSATA SSDs we have tested to date. With incompressible data transfer performance of 534MB/s read and 436MB/s write, along with the added support of read and write IOPS over the 65,000 mark, topping the charts in Vantage HDD testing seems natural.

Plextor’s solid reputation, standard warranty of three years, availability and price point make the M5M a ‘must have’ for those that have to have one of the best SSDs on the market for the best price. The Plextor M5m 6Gbps mSATA SSD is awarded with our Editors Choice Award.