Crucial set to launch C300: "world's fastest SSD drive"

Crucial is a brand well known amongst Mac aficionados. Typically the Crucial online store is the first place many people look to when upgrading their memory in their Macs.

But Crucial has been branching out lately. Following its purchase by Micron, Crucial has been developing new technology beyond RAM.

The fruits of that development are about to pay off as Crucial gears up to launch the C300 SSD drive on 22 Feb 2010.

We caught up with Jim Jardine, Senior Product Manager at Crucial to go over the new hard drive. He doesn't mince his words" "It's the fastest hard drive in the world" says Jardine.

With a a 6GB/s SATA interface and a read speed of 355MB/s the C300 should offer a substantial boost over the typical MacBook Pro hard drive. "It's like having a computer upgrade" says Jardine. "It's noticeably faster".

"We have our own NAND firmware team" says Jardine. Crucial has used a combination of Micron MLC NAND and a Marvell controller inside and Jardine claims "we influenced it so far along" that it is effectively a custom build.

It's not small either. With up to 256GB of capacity it's clear that SSD drives are no longer the smaller cousins of hard drives. Although there is also a smaller 128GB version if you're looking for a slightly cheaper option. This has a slightly slower read speed (although the write speed remains the same - full specs are below).

Both the 128GB and 256GB hard drives come in a 2.5in and 1.8in form factor. The 2.5in unit will fit into MacBook and MacBook Pro models (and an Xserve with SSD). However, Jardine couldn't confirm if the 1.8in model will work with a MacBook Air (which uses a 1.8in slot –we are awaiting a test unit).

The lifespan of SSD drives is something of a concern for many potential owners (early models had short lifespans of up to 10,000 reads). Crucial is quoting a 1,000,000 hour MTBF (mean time between failure) rate. Which effectively means it should last longer than the laptop itself. "The message we're trying to get across is that you can use this for an ungodly number of hours" says Jardine "and it should outlast a physical drive with a spindle. And even if it does break you'll still be able to read the data from it, unlike physical media".

Crucial is also selling a Data Transfer Kit alongside the C300. This consists of a Cable and Apricorn cloning software. The idea is that you connect the C300 to your Mac's USB drive and launch the Apricorn software. This clones your current hard drive to the new C300 SSD drive so your Mac will be up and running as soon as you start up.

The only sticking point is the price. At 499 (inc VAT) for the 256GB C300 SSD, the unit isn't exactly a cheap upgrade. But then if it offers the kind of performance upgrade Crucial is boasting, it could be worth it for power users. The smaller 128GB model offers better value.

256GB SATA 6Gb/s• Sequential READ: up to 355MB/s • Sequential WRITE: up to 215MB/s • Random 4k READ: 60K IOPS

256GB SATA 3Gb/s• Sequential READ: up to 265MB/s • Sequential WRITE: up to 215MB/s • Random 4k READ: 50K IOPS

128GB SATA 6Gb/s• Sequential READ: up to 355MB/s • Sequential WRITE: up to 140MB/s • Random 4k READ: 60K IOPS

128GB SATA 3Gb/s• Sequential READ: up to 265MB/s • Sequential WRITE: up to 140MB/s • Random 4k READ: 50K IOPS

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