Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB 2.5 inch Solid State Drive

I've been using SSDs for years now and once you've used one you can never go back to having a hard drive as your boot drive. I paid £160 for my first SSD which was a 128GB Crucial M4 in October 2011 and since then I've used lots of other SSDs in personal and client builds from SanDisk, OCZ and Samsung mainly. I bought the M4 because at the time it was one of the fastest drives available and crucially it had one of the most stable SATA controllers, which was important at the time because a lot of drives had fairly unstable controllers and often caused a lot of problems such as blue screens of death and system crashes. A few years later and after having used SanDisk and OCZ SSDs, the Samsung SSDs had become extremely popular especially when the 840 was launched in 2013 or 2014. I bought my first Samsung SSD in July 2014 to replace the SSHD that I bought for my ThinkPad which was an 840 EVO 250GB and since then I have only bought and recommended Samsung SSDs. After that I bought an 850 Pro 256GB for a build I did in November 2014, then an 850 EVO 250GB in March 2015 to replace the 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 in my desktop and recently this 850 EVO 500GB to replace that 840 I had in there previously. I used to be very active on an online forum and I've recommended these 850 drives to hundreds of people and I've never had anybody come back and say the drive failed or that they were disappointed with it. The 850 is a truly stellar drive - well-priced, fast and easy to setup. The chances are that you'll buy one Samsung SSD and then only buy them without looking at the other brands. The speed is great. This is probably the fastest SATA SSD on the market, when used on a SATA 6GBps connection you're pretty much guaranteed to get at least 500 MB/s read and write speeds with this drive. These drives were and still are exceptionally popular with members on the forum I used to post on and most people on there were able to get between 500 and 550 MB/s read and writes with these. For comparison's sake, the Crucial M4 I bought in 2011 achieved around 400 MB/s read and write and the OCZ Vertex 4 I purchased in February 2013 when it was the fastest drive available could achieve around 450 MB/s read and write, so for those upgrading from an older SSD this is a little bit faster. Most desktop boards manufactured since 2012 will have SATA 6GBps and most laptops made since 2012 or 13 will also have SATA 6GBps, but even on the older SATA 3GBps connection you're likely to achieve around 250-300 MB/s read and writes which is reasonable. Those upgrading from hard drives will notice a huge difference. A 5400 RPM disk usually found in laptops typically reads and writes between 90 and 110 MB/s and a good 7200 RPM disk typically reads and writes between 120 and 150 MB/s. An SSD like this is the best single upgrade you can do to increase general performance of your system and it's fantastic that these days it can be done quite cheaply - certainly a lot cheaper than it was in 2011 when I first bought an SSD. If you plan to stripe two of these in a RAID-0 configuration you're likely to get around 1GB/s read and write with these drives. Several users on the forum had these in RAID-0 and got these kind of speeds. I've presently got the 250GB 840 EVO and 250GB 850 EVO in a RAID-0 stripe set in my desktop and I get something like 1GB/s read and 990 MB/s write. The 840 and 850 are so similar that you can quite happily stripe them and the two drives typically get 500 MB/s read and write speeds in single drive configurations so you won't be losing performance by doing so. The speed is of course phenomenal but for day-to-day use I can't really see the difference between one and two of these drives, but for things like writing Adobe Media Cache and copying files there is a benefit to using RAID-0 on these drives. Of course, the benefits of this SSD are the same as using any other SSD. Compared to a hard drive everything is instantaneous, everything loads faster and the speed of your OS in general just improves dramatically. You'll never go back! You actually won't be able to, the speed of an HDD will drive you mad if you go back to having an OS installed on your HDD. In a laptop it can improve the battery life too, but I didn't really notice this when I replaced the SSHD in my ThinkPad with the 840. Speaking of SSHDs, if you're thinking about an SSHD instead of a large SSD like this because it's cheaper then think again. I had a 1TB SSHD, of which only 8GB was solid state storage for operating system cache, which meant that the OS would cache files to the 8GB solid state storage so it would boot and shut down quickly. but programs were ran from what was essentially a 5400 RPM HDD and the OS ran as if it were on a 5400 RPM HDD, so the benefits of the SSHD were minimal and it died on me after only a few months, luckily by which point I had replaced it with an SSD. When I bought my 128GB Crucial M4 a 500GB drive like this was way out of most people's reach - it would probably have cost close to £1,000. Even a 256GB SSD was out of most people's price brackets, but now with a 500GB drive costing around £140 and a 250GB drive costing about half that, there's no reason to buy an SSHD really especially if you own a desktop computer and can have a large hard drive to store data on. Even if this is your only drive, 500GB is probably big enough for you. Who really has more than 500GB of data? So, you'll never go back to having a hard drive as your boot drive and you'll also only buy Samsung SSDs after you've bought one.

Being the kind of person that spends a ridiculous amount of time researching tech before parting with my money, I am very happy with this drive. When you purchase a SSD, you need to keep a few things in mind. If you need to store around 200gb, then a 250gb drive will not do and you will need 500gb. Always aim to have double the space required. These are not like traditional hard drives. The fuller the drive, the more of a performance hit you get. Don't get me wrong, even with the performance hit, it will still make your old HDD feel like a waste of space, but if you are shelling out the money, then why not get the benefits. Once the drive is installed and configured correctly (using the Samsung Magician tool), you will end up with a usable partition of around 420gb. This is down to a couple of things. The first is your OS. Windows will kindly snatch around 33gb for things like FAT tables, hidden partitions and the obligatory space conversion (you know, the one where a gigabyte is not actually a gigabyte - this is the same on all drives, HDD and SSD). Samsung will then recommend a 10% buffer to help maximise life and performance. This is obviously optional and the percentage can be configured. At this point you may be thinking "what a rip off". It's just the way it is unfortunately. The thing you have to remember is that you may still be able to use your old HDD to store files. The benefits of SSD are mostly felt when booting and loading applications (unless you are loading large files - say 50gb+, in which case storing these on there would be good as well), so using your SSD to contain your OS and frequently used applications is where you will really see the difference. All your files (photos, music, etc..) can sit on your old drive. If you are installing into a PC then keeping both drives should be easy. If you are installing into a laptop, then some laptops will allow 2 drives and the ones that don't, you could see if there is a optical drive bay replacement. This is basically an adapter that you can use to hold a 2.5" drive where the CD/DVD drive goes (lets face it, those CD/DVD drives are being used less and less). Alternatively, you could buy an external drive bay and stick your old drive in that (this is available for both PC and Laptop). Things to note: If you are installing into a PC, you will probably need a 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket (unless your chassis has an area for mounting 2.5" drives). If you are planning to keep your old drive, then you will need to purchase an additional SATA3 cable for your new SSD. This drive only comes with the drive and software. You do not get screws, USB adapter (used to migrate data in accordance with the instructions) or fancy stickers. The instructions state to use the USB adapter if you are using the partition migration software (supplied), but this is not the only way to do this (unless you are looking to migrate your partition on a laptop). I would always recommend installing your OS as a clean install in situations like this. To do this, install the SSD into your PC ensuring that you have connected it to the SATA-1 port and moved your old drive to the SATA-2 port (the number is just the port number and does not dictate the SATA version so don't just go and plug it into the SATA-3 port because the drive is SATA3). Leave your old drive in place but unplug the power cable (the larger of the two). Check to make sure your bios is set to the correct drive mode. Install your OS from either a bootable USB key or CD depending on what your have (if you are using Windows 10, then you can create a bootable USB key using the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool downloadable from Microsoft). Once your OS is installed, shut down and reconnect the power to your old drive and switch back on. You should now be able to move your old files to your SSD. Once you are happy that you have everything you need from your old drive, you can remove all the partitions off it (using EaseUS Parition Master Free Edition) and then create a new partition that will allow you to use the whole drive for storing your files and data. If you are really sure you want to just migrate the partition, then you can use the software provided. You will need to google any further information on how to accomplish this. I cannot state enough how important it is that you back up your files. This is not something that should be done just for this task, but should be done always. Cloud backup storage is ridiculously cheap now with services like Amazon S3 and software like CloudBerry Desktop Backup, so there is no excuse! Remember, you may be able to download all your music collection again, but you can't replace all those photos! Backing up 25gb will set you back about 20p per month for storage. That's probably less than the value of those copper coins you hate receiving so much.

Edito: tengo dos y siguen funcionando perfectamente desde hace 3 años! ------------------------ Lo uso en Mac, con una caja externa que he adquirido de Inatek (poned en el buscador B00DW374W4), la de plástico con el botón on/off. Además, lo hago a través de un Hub USB 3.0 de Aukey (en buscador B00KR2I35A) porque me quedo sin puertos en el Mac. Ideal si trabajas con vídeo y archivos muy pesados. Como podéis ver en la foto que he subido, la velocidad que alcanza en disco externo es fantástica (412 MB/s escritura y 429 MB/s lectura) y Samsung entrega en este modelo 5 años de garantía. Ahora mismo en relación calidad-precio diría que mejora al anterior 840 EVO (con 3 años garantía), ya que el 850 EVO garantiza una vida útil mayor, lo que a la larga es lo que importa sobre todo si le das mucho uso y no quieres irte a un modelo superior (850 PRO). Lo más de lo más ahora es el 960 PRO NVME: http://amzn.to/2DyIwr4

Se nota inmediatamente la diferencia de trabajar con uno de estos a trabajar con un viejo HDD. La computadora enciente y apaga más rápidamente, carga más rápidamente los programas y nunca sientes que se quede "pensando". Depende de lo que hagas obviamente, pero al menos para un desarrollador de software está perfecto.

Excelente producto, si nunca han tenido un SDD (Disco de estado sólido), verán una inmensa diferencia en la carga de programas, de juegos e inicio de Windows, en mi caso cargo Win7 en 12 segundos (desde que ves el logotipo de Windows hasta el Escritorio). El software propietario Magician te ayuda a configurar diferentes escenarios como rendimiento, seguridad, balance; también configura parámetros de Windows automáticamente para optimizar la relación RAM/Espacio de disco, reduce el tamaño de 'memoria virtual' (espacio de disco usado) cuando tienes 4-8 o más Gb en RAM y utiliza una porción de la RAM que no se usa como cache intermedio que acelera aún más las cargas de lectura/escritura. AVISO Se han reportado ALGUNOS casos en donde después de actualizar el FIRMWARE a través de Magician, el SDD presenta problemas o baja de rendimiento. Mi recomendación es que ignoren dicha actualización hasta tener una versión más estable, por lo demás el software funciona bastante bien.

Good upgrade for iMacs and Macbook Pro from HDD to SSD ... iMac mid 2011 reboots in less than 20 seconds with the SSD , against more than 75 seconds with HDD .

Delivery was good. Packaging was not so great but that's okay because i got my drive in a fine condition so. Well! This is one of the best silent and fast thing you can have ever (in 128gb). Using it, experiencing the ultimate performance. My i5 boots up in 6-7 seconds (Hibernation disabled). With hibernation enabled it boots up within 3 seconds but disable it anyway. I can open 15-20 programs right after start screen shows up & all do their thing withing 6 seconds. If you are using it make sure you enable AHCI mode in your bios. Disable things like indexing, Disable services like superfetch & windows search, Disable hibernation as well. Never defrag your ssd but optimize it. You can enable trim as well just google it. Last but not the least move your pagefile thing to some 2nd hard drive & if you are not having one then disable it. These tips can make your ssd faster and your system wont write too much data on your ssd. Try to not to make it full. Keep 40% of it free atleast.