General

Brand	Micron
Model	M550
Capacity	256GB
Usage Class	Client

Interface

Host Interface	SATA 6Gb/s
Total Interface Bandwidth	6 Gb/s

Physical Dimension

Form Factor	2.5" 7mm

Flash & Endurance

NAND Flash	20nm MLC
Drive Writes Per Day
Total Bytes Written	72 TBW

Performance

Sequential Read	550 MB/s
Sequential Write	500 MB/s
Random Read IOPS	95000
Random Write IOPS	80000
Average Latency	μs

Reliability

Mean Time Between Failures	1.5 Million Hours
Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate	1.0×10⁻¹⁷
Power Loss Protection	Yes

Engineer's Note

The Micron M550 256GB (MTFDDAK256MAY-1AH1ZABDA) is a strong fit for read-intensive server boot, VDI image, and edge-cache tiers, combining 550/500 MB/s sequential throughput with up to 95,000/80,000 IOPS to keep latency low on SATA 6Gb/s infrastructure. Built with 20nm MLC NAND and rated for 72 TBW, it offers a more durable and performance-consistent profile than typical client-grade SATA SSDs in the same capacity class, making it a dependable choice where steady mixed-read performance matters more than raw capacity.

Endurance & Reliability

With an endurance rating of 72 TBW, this 256GB SSD is well suited for typical read-centric and mixed office workloads, including OS boot, application hosting, logging, and everyday business use. In practical terms, that equals about 197GB of host writes per day over the 1-year warranty period, making it a dependable choice as a system drive and for general-purpose embedded or industrial computing scenarios. For enterprise-oriented reliability, the drive includes power-loss protection (PLP), which helps preserve in-flight data and prevents metadata corruption if power is interrupted unexpectedly. Its UBER rating of 1.0E-15 and 1.5 million-hour MTBF indicate a low probability of unrecoverable bit errors and strong long-term operational stability, supporting confidence in data integrity and continuous deployment environments.

Technical Specs & Insights

1. The SATA 6Gb/s interface ensures broad compatibility with mainstream enterprise servers and storage arrays, enabling cost-effective upgrades without changing existing backplane infrastructure.
2. With sequential read performance of 550 MB/s, the drive accelerates large-file access such as OS imaging, backup restore, and media-rich dataset loading in read-heavy environments.
3. Delivering 95,000 K IOPS in random reads, it helps databases, virtual desktop pools, and metadata-intensive applications respond faster under highly fragmented workloads.
4. Built on 20nm MLC NAND and rated for [dwpd] DWPD, this SSD is engineered for sustained enterprise write cycles, making it a dependable choice for transactional systems that demand predictable endurance.
5. A typical latency of [latency] µs supports quicker data access consistency, improving application responsiveness and helping reduce service-time bottlenecks in latency-sensitive business workloads.

Capacity Sweet

Reference capacities in the same series: Lower capacity: 128GB Higher capacity: 512GB Capacity positioning analysis: In this product family, the 256GB model sits at the sweet spot between entry capacity and higher-cost expansion. Compared with the 128GB version, it provides much better headroom for OS images, logs, patches, and application growth, reducing early capacity pressure without changing the expected enterprise performance profile. Compared with the 512GB option, it delivers a more balanced $/GB and acquisition cost while keeping sequential throughput and random IOPS broadly in line with the series. It is best suited for small-to-medium virtualization clusters, such as boot and infrastructure storage for about 30 to 50 general-purpose virtual machines.

FAQ