Introduction
Over the last couple of years or so we’ve looked at many Solid State Drives that feature various technologies in the attempt to boost speed and performance, but we’ll admit that it has been quite some time since a SATA II 3G drive came across our desk. Speed is King in the modern computing realm, but we know that bleeding edge tech also come with a steep price tag more often than not. For consumers who may not be as fortunate to keep up with the latest tech, there are still options for boosting performance of older systems, and that’s where the Crucial v4 SSD comes into play.

It’s not always the enthusiasts (and well-heeled) that want blistering speeds, and certainly not just in the SSD arena. Anyone with an SSD can benefit from massive performance gains over a hard drive, from the most diehard to the budget-oriented consumer. So the Crucial v4 targets the latter, offering an SSD that’s very accessible to users on a modest budget. Specifically, the v4 is limited to the SATA II 3G interface, so we’re not expecting record-breaking performance results today.
However, at a current price of about $189 in the 256GB capacity, that’s only $0.73 per GB and a very attractive deal. But how does the performance of the Crucial v4 measure up? Is it worth the investment? Let’s just say that Crucial’s stated specifications for this drive turned out to be very conservative, and we were pleasantly surprised by the performance offered by the v4.
Let’s dive in and see how the Crucial v4 256GB fares.