The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTPerformance Over Time and TRIM
When Plextor sent the drive in for review, they emphazised one thing: a technology they call "True Speed". Supposedly, its job is to guarantee a high performance experience throughout the lifetime of the drive, and even when the drive is at a dirty state. As this technology is firmware related, we don't know how it differs from what others (e.g. Intel and Crucial) have done.
First, lets get the base performance by running HD Tach on a clean drive:
In a clean state, we get 383MB/s read speeds and 329MB/s write speeds. Next we ran the drive through our torture test, which consists of 20 minutes of 4KB random writes (QD=32, 100% LBA space) run on a full drive:
The M3 is still able to manage an average write speed of ~163MB/s. However, the write speed drops to as low as 50MB/s for the first LBAs, while the peak performance is still easily over 300MB/s. Plextor does noticeably better than Crucial in this regard as the performance of the m4 dropped to an average of 35MB/s. However, it should also be noted that the M3 had a higher write speed to begin with.
I wasn't ready to let Plextor go this easily. To see how the "True Speed" technology really works, I secure erased the drive, filled it with sequential data and then tripled the amount of 4KB random writes to 60 minutes:
The amplitude of the graph is a lot smaller now and there are only two small peaks, compared to the previous graph with dozens of peaks. The performance drop is significant as we are looking at 50MB/s on average regardless of the LBA. At the lowest, the performance is 35-40MB/s. That's still better than the Crucial m4, however, even with three times the random data thrown at the M4.
Next I secure erased the drive, reran our 20 minute torture test and let the drive idle for 40 minutes:
It does recover pretty well and we are looking at almost as new performance. There are a few negative peaks where the write speed drops to ~130MB/s, but on average the performance is only 25MB/s short of clean performance.
Finally I formatted the drive to see how it responds to the ATA TRIM command:
And the performance is back to brand new.
These graphs show us that if you are running an operating system with TRIM support (e.g. Windows 7), then there is absolutely no problem with the Plextor M3. If you are running an OS with no official TRIM support for the SSD (e.g. Mac OS X), then a SandForce based SSD will still be a better choice in this regard. However, what I would like to note is that our torture test reflects an extreme usage case.
Even if you are an enthusiast or professional, it's unlikely that your usage model will put the drive in a similar state as our torture test. Our torture test is continuously writing 4KB random data across the drive; in the real world there is almost always some sequential data and idle time in between. As shown in the garbage collection graph, the M3 does not need hours of idle time to restore its performance, so it should maintain its performance pretty well even under an OS with no TRIM.
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Tor-ErikL - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
In europe plextor is one of the pioneers in the IT industry. They where one of the first to enter the cd-burner market way back in the days. They are generally known in europe to produce some of the finest quality products when in comes to cd-burners and back in the days it was the only burner to own ;)Tor-ErikL - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I'm not surprised that they come up with another good quality product here, they have always been more expensive than others but you always get a good quality product from them.Fujikoma - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
The last Plextor optical drive I had broke within months. It was very flimsy and the shipping to have it fixed was more than buying a replacment from another vendor that had the same build quality. Plextor's quality isn't any different than other cheap drive manufacturers even though their price is.Maiyr - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I am still using a PleXCombo 20/10/40-12A. My experience in no way mirrors yours. I got this thing and another drive in 2002/2003 and both are still going strong. No problems.Maiyr
hansmuff - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Those were different times.I have two plextor drives:
SCSI UltraPlex 40MAX, the best CD reader ever built.
ATAPI 8/4/32 CD burner. Also a really excellent drive.
Those were "expensive" back then. The ultraplex was $140, the 8/4/32 was ~$90.
After those, drive prices tumbled and Plextor used cheapo OEM drives like everyone else and rebadged them.
Both you and Fukikoma are correct.
vol7ron - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Was going to say something similar.It's like how Seagate has had good drives, but they do have bad batches, especially as they're refining their process.
Quality should not be solely determined on the product. How a company responds to a defective, or poorly made product should extend into the definition of quality. It might not be product quality, but quality of the experience is more important.
Like, I might get a bad part off Newegg, but they have great customer service that make it easy to ship it back and receive a replacement or a refund. I know they're only a middle man in the process, but the tradeoff is having a good product with good customer service, that reduces customer hassle.
Sabresiberian - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
The thing that makes me wonder what's going on with your post is the way you describe Plextor's quality as not being better than "any other cheap drive". The fact is, there are near a dozen DVD burner brands that cost less than $25 that are reliable pieces of hardware. They are inexpensive, but they aren't cheap.I'm another person with a Plextor drive that's been around for a couple of builds, and will soon go in a third. Do I think it will outlast my LG drive I bought a couple of years later? No, but Plextor help set reliability and top-notch performance standards that are the reasons we have inexpensive and reliable burners now.
;)
andylawcc - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
ditto: Plextor made one of the best CD-Burner back then (talking only about, just late 1990).note to Mr. Vatto: you could have skipped that the line, we wouldn't know. ;p
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Note to our readers: Kristian is 17. When optical drives mattered (in terms of benchmarks), he would have been about 10.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I'm 18 now and have been for a few months ;-)