Crucial MX300 750GB Limited Edition SSD Review

Simon Crisp June 14, 2016 Featured Tech Reviews, SSD Drives

The front of the Crucial MX300 750GB Limited Edition box is dominated by an image of the drive alongside its capacity and format.

The rear of the box lists what's inside and some marketing information.

Apart from the drive, the box contains just a 7mm to 9mm spacer which allows the drive to be fitted to deeper notebooks and a software key for the bundled Acronis True Image HD data migration software.

The drive is built on a standard 2.5in 7mm format measuring 100 x 70 x 7mm.

The drive enclosure is of the clipped together type, so to peek inside it you need to need to delicately prise the two halves of the enclosure apart with the weapon of your choice.

The MX300 750GB capacity is made up of eight Micron 3D TLC NAND packages coded 6FB22. Using Micron's part number decoder reveals it as MT29F768G08EEHBBJ4-3R:B. Each package has two 48GB (384Gb) dies giving the drive a raw capacity of 768GB. The part number also reveals that the NAND uses FortisFlash technology which enables higher endurance than standard TLC NAND.

Four of these packages are on the front of the PCB, the remaining four are housed on the back of the board along with the controller and a single cache IC. The controller is a Marvell 88SS1074-BSW2 four channel IC built on a 28nm process supporting TLC/MLC/SLC and 3D NAND. It also supports DEVSLP (Device Sleep), ONFI 3/Toggle 2 at 400MT/s and 256 AES encryption. The cache is a 512MB of LPDDR3.

The drive is supported by Crucial's Storage Executive. This software package lets you see how much of the drives capacity is being used, monitor its temperature and the overall health and update to the latest firmware version. It also allows you to reset the drive's encryption password as well as adjusting how much Over Provisioning space the drive uses.