Plextor 128GB M5M mSATA SSD Review

1. Introduction2. 128GB Plextor M5M mSATA SSD3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. PCMark 78. IOMeter9. Real World Testing10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

Solid State Drives have revolutionised the industry in recent years and are adopted now in a wide range of laptop and desktop computers.

With prices dropping in the last year there is very little reason not to upgrade a home system, especially as software such as Acronis Drive Image makes the mirroring process as simple as a couple of button clicks.

While 2.5 inch drives have been growing in popularity, many laptop and desktop motherboards are incorporating an mSATA slot for additional storage and compact boot options. Sadly many of these slots are still limited to SATA 3Gbps speeds meaning that a purchase of a premium SATA 6Gbps drive could be wasted money.

As we mentioned earlier in the review we test mSATA drives with an Aleratec MiniPCIe mSATA to SATA SSD Adapter so we can directly test the performance of the drive, rather than a potentially limited motherboard slot.

The results we have presented today are the maximum speeds of the Plextor 128GB M5M mSATA SSD, but it is worth looking into the technical details of the mSATA slot in your system as it might be sharing the mSATA slot with a SATA 2 rated port. If this is the case, you can expect speed limitations around the 280 MB/s mark.

The Plextor 128GB M5M mSATA SSD is actually extremely good value, retailing for only £93.74 inc vat in the UK today. We can see no reason not to recommend the drive especially as it delivers such balanced, high performance results with both compressible and incompressible data.

Pros:

• Good (128GB) size for a boot drive.
• excellent compressible and incompressible performance results.
• very competitive pricing.

Cons:

• Be aware of many mSATA slot limitations on current motherboards.

Kitguru says: A wicked fast mSATA drive suited for boot duties.

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