SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256D/AM 2.5″ 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Desktop Upgrade Kit
$ 429.99
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SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Desktop Upgrade Kit MZ-7PC256D/AM
Move over Intel, here’s the new Speed Demon,
This drive is blazing fast. My computer didn’t have any Sata 3 connections on the motherboard, so I used an empty PCI-E x 1 slot to add a Sata 3 controller. Using that, I got a perfect 7.9 on the windows experience index score (7.9 is the best score possible currently). Using an Intel 320 series SSD, I had a 7.4, and using a Kingston SSDNOW V100+, I had a 7.0… so this Samsung is a step above and beyond other SSDs. Everything on my PC seems to happen instantly now.
From what I’ve read on the matter… Samsung SSDs have a very low failure rate, second only to Intel, but far better than other competitors. This is also faster than Intel’s current fastest SSD, and it’s much cheaper. Speed, price, and reliability… all that together is hard to beat. Add to that, it has none of the hassles that all of the SSDs with Sandforce controllers frequently have (Kingstons, OCZs, Corsairs, Patriots, etc.).
Buy this without the kit, if possible, or with the notebook kit if you want a USB to Sata adapter.
I found it to be almost worthless. The 2.5″ to 3.5″ bay adapter came in handy, but I’ve gotten better ones for a few bucks on Amazon (that could mount 2 drives instead of 1).
I had done a little reading about Norton Ghost a while back, and it looked like a nice program to have. At a $70 price tag, it should be. It makes it a difficult process to clone your old hard drive to your new Samsung, though. It is not capable of copying your recovery partition, either.
I ended up scrapping the idea of using Ghost to copy my drive, and pulled out my trusty bootable Acronis True Image CD (that came with my old Kingston SSD). It made quick work of cloning my drive, and didn’t require any software to be installed on my PC. Western Digital has a very useable version of their software available to download free on WD’s website (the Western Digital version is free and can be used on any drive; however, there must be a Western Digital drive, either internal or external, connected to your system to start the program).
So, I didn’t see much value in the desktop bundle, but I guess I can’t argue with a $70 program being included (although, I’ll be deleting it soon).
All in all, this is one of the best SSDs on the market currently, and at a very competitive price. The only shortcomings it has, are easily compensated for with free, or cheap, stuff. If I had another PC in need of a FAST SSD, I’d buy another of these in a snap!
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|Rock Solid and FAST!,
This is the single best upgrade I have ever had in 26 years of building systems. This thing just flat out screams and is rock solid to “boot”. No controller issues or firmware upgrades needed…ahhhh how nice – finally a killer SSD on the market. On a SATA III connection I’m reading 520 and writing at 399. I open Photoshop, iTunes and QuickBooks just for giggles now.
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|Got Sexy, Speed, and Stability?,
This was my first venture into SSD drives. I originally had considered going with a cheaper option, most notably Corsairs’ FORCE series or OCZ’s VERTEX/AGILITY. However, as I started to research those products more in-depth, I realize I would be playing russian roulette with my data as a result of the instability of the drives due to sandforce controller issues that, at the time of this writing, seem to be slightly resolved as a result of OCZ’s help. In the end, my search narrowed down to the leading maker of this field, Crucial, and Samsung. Why Samsung? Well, Samsung was a brand that I knew and was very reputable. Moreover, it’s flash ram was used by Apple prior to the android scuffle.
I ended up choosing Samsung’s drive over Crucial’s drive for the following reasons:
1. Success and Brand. Samsung desperately needed a success in the SSD field since it’s first attempt was met with a tepid reception. This subsequent attempt was very well put together in my mind. The drive utilized the latest in technology (i.e. SATA III). Furthermore, the drive is sleek, smooth, and sexy beast. Lastly, the pricing is a clear indicator that Samsung wants to be seen as a leading competitor in this field.
2. SSD Magician. Samsung’s accompanying program SSD Magician provides an array of well thought options with a very easy to use GUI. Moreover, with your permission, it highlights and then changes options that negatively affect the drive performance. Furthermore, the program allows you to schedule OS optimizations and garbage collection empties. finally, one of the most important selling points, was the ability to upgrade the drives firmware without having to jump through hoops similar to flashing the bios. With this drive, I could do it just from windows.
3. Speed. This drive is fast. Really, really, really fast. Benchmark-wise my sequential write speeds are just over 300 mb/s and my sequential read speeds sit around 520 mb/s. 7.9 on the Windows Experience Index (WEI). To put how fast this drive is in perspective: Windows 7 Professional was installed in under 10 minutes, windows updates take about half the time to install in comparison to my non-ssd computer, and boot takes about 11 seconds from the BIOS finishing posting (total: 36 seconds). More importantly, if I blink when launching Adobe Photoshop CS5.5, I miss its flash screen!
4. Cost benefits. Samsung was really thorough with their kits. For instance, it included a mounting bracket (~$10), really bloody good Ghost data migration tool ($70), and a free top-selling, highly rate videogame ($50). So, I gained about $130 of nice tools/assets. At the time I purchased this, crucial’s drive was $10 less than this drive. So, the $10 that I saved I would of had to reinvest to acquire a third party mounting bracket with no compatibility guarantees. However, I would have also lost out on the $120 worth of other goodies.
Positives (elaborated above):
Fast
Stylish
Reliability
Great Software Support
Negatives:
This drive does not play nice with Marvell controllers. But what SSD does?
SSD Magician does not recognize the drive in RAID setup.
The steps in the instruction manual detailing how to transfer an existing windows 7 install to the SSD are incomplete as a result of Windows 7 partition alignment. There are quite a few hoops that you have to jump through to get it working correctly that I’ll leave to a third-party technology site to detail. In reality though, it is far better to do a fresh install and I highly recommend it.
Mounting bracket does not have holes on the bottom to secure the drive to a case tray. Your case will need to allow you to mount the drive via the side. (a.k.a it isn’t quite a “universal” mounting bracket)
Price per gigabyte is a bit high as a result of the Crucial drive’s price dropping significantly (at the time of this writing).
Overall, this product deserves a solid five stars due to the positives overwhelmingly outweighing the negatives and the lack of trouble I’ve experienced so far with it. It has met all my expectations and even exceeded one or two!
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