I'm not sure I can concur with the M4 being notoriously problematic as SSDs go. I tend to see far more issues with the Sandforce based SSDs. When I cruise the net I tend to see the M4 being noted as a tad slower than the new second gen Sandforce based SSDs, but not the most problematic. The most stable SSDs are Intel, but they were too slow on the draw ironing out their second gen SSD with Sandforce issues. I chose the M4 after having bad experiences with both the OCZ and Corsair Sandforce based units.

Anyway, not to sound overly simplistic, but the native Intel ports have always been better with SSDs and your best shot is to put your SSD there. The only thing on my Asmedia controller on my RIVE are mechanical or Optical drives. That's all I will put on an add-on controller. It's kind of par for the course....albeit it shouldn't be.

Please see Anand's review about the Crucial M4 drives:

This is about the firmware update: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4712/the-crucial-m4-ssd-update-faster-with-fw0009

Also, you can see various threads about the Crucial drives and grab the latest firmware here: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/bd-p/ssd

Good luck.

Hey Venom you all right mate?

I love the Crucial M4 drives, solid performance and they do not give the problems of the nature that Sandforce controllers are giving. In other words they last longer. And yeah that is based on my own experiences within the enterprise type storage solutions I work with. You would think that folks in that kind of industry (Financial houses and such) would learn but boys will be boys and they all believe the hype of having supposedly an extra 50MBz read and write speed. Not in the real world you don't and I want a SSD that is going to be working everyday and not mess with my data and go tits up on me. So I have walked away from Sandforce controllers for now. Samsung, Crucial and of course Intel get my business. Enough about where I spend my money.

There are a couple of factors that will influence what your benchmarked speed is, not least which port you use. I honestly have no idea why Marvell ports are even included, there has to be a very good reason because pretty much all manufactures still include one or two. The only things I will stick into a Marvel port are optical drives and bulk storage that gets accessed occasionally. Intel ports for the win.

How long are your SATA cables? What quality of cable are you using? How full is your SSD? I am guessing that it is empty. Any how if possible move the SSD to an Intel port, check the length of your cable, shorter is better and also the quality of your cable. The difference in cable performance will be slight between well shielded and so called SATA 6GBs cables and the SATA 2 versions. Jury is still out on this one, as I am still waiting for some special cables to be delivered. Doing a little experiment with cables and how they impact of write/read speeds.



That is about it I think. I know if I have missed a question you will remind me and speak soon yeah.

Cheers