People choose a Solid State Drive because they are faster than either classical Hard Disk Drive models, or Solid State Hybrid Devices. Unfortunately, while they are indeed incredibly fast, in years past they were also incredibly small and rather expensive. Basically if you wanted a solid state drive you had to be willing to give up a lot of capacity if you did not want to bust your budget.
Crucial’s MX series was designed to change that ‘rule of thumb’ as they offered great performance, but at a price that was a lot more palatable. This is why the original MX100 became a favorite of system builders and knowledgeable consumes alike; however since it was the first ever drive to make use of Micron’s cutting edge 16nm NAND ICs Crucial was unable to wring every ounce of performance out of their MX100 series. This is why the MX100 was the more entry level orientated drive and the M550 was the more mainstream option. The MX200 on the other hand was designed to not only stay true to the design philosophy of being the best bang for the buck possible, but also set out to eliminate the largest complaint leveled against the MX100: its only middle of the road performance.
To do precisely this Crucial did not radically change the design of the MX100. Instead the MX200 is best described as a 2nd generation drive. Much like Intel, the 2nd generation model is always the more refined and stable version and the MX200 is no exception. It is not only faster than the MX100 it also boasts over 3 times the durability of the MX200 with a class leading 320TB of writes.
On its own this one-two combination of enhanced durability with enhanced performance makes the MX200 very special and worthy of being our first Solid State Drive to be reviewed; however Crucial was not just satisfied with offering the best mainstream drive, instead they also wanted their MX200 to be the best value imaginable. The end result is a price so low that it belies its mainstream performance offering, and instead is damn impressive for a low performance budget drive!
With an asking price of only 34 cents per Gigabyte ($340), consumers can finally afford massive – for a solid state drive – 1 Terabyte Solid State Drive that is not ‘entry level’. This does obviously beg the question on how much room is enough; and at what point do consumers really have to think long and hard about buying two solid state drives instead of the customary one SSD for the OS and a HDD or SSHD for the application and game drive. To this end we will not only be showing what one MX200 1TB can do, but two of them.
Crucial MX200 – Specs and Features
When the Crucial® MX100 was released, it set a new standard for SSDs that the Crucial MX200 pushes even further. Leveraging leading specs on all fronts, along with new Dynamic Write Acceleration technology, the Crucial MX200 is loaded with innovative features and immediately increases your system’s performance.
 Do more. Faster. Longer.The Crucial MX200 delivers 555 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data, and outperforms a typical hard drive by 400 MB/s.1 Even better, the performance doesn’t let up, as the Crucial MX200 posts an endurance rating that’s up to 5 times greater than a typical client SSD.2 |  Transfer and save large files in a matter of seconds.Competing SSDs typically rely on a fixed cache of multi-level cell flash memory, which allows you to write sequential data at published specs, but only for so long. Our industry-leading Dynamic Write Acceleration technology solves this problem by using an adaptable pool of high speed, single-level cell flash memory for consistently fast performance that doesn’t let up. |
 Max out performance and increase reliability.Our engineers created RAIN technology to protect your data at the component level, similar to how RAID is used with multiple hard drives. This technology increases the security and protection of your data to a level that’s rarely seen in consumer-class SSDs. |  Encrypt and protect your data at the highest possible level.Keep personal files and sensitive information secure from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit encryption – the same grade used by banks and hospitals. The Crucial MX200 meets or exceeds all industry encryption standards, including Microsoft® eDrive, IEEE-1667, and TCG Opal 2.0. |
