Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB (MZ-75E250BW)

One of the main challenges in choosing SSDs is the immense diversity in brands and the components which they choose in the design of the SSDs. Its no longer just about Seagate and WD as in HDDs.SSDs are very fast, yes- but their performance and reliability is dependent on the controllers and the memory they use. There are just too many reviews of how SSD performances are inconsistent in the real world vis-a-vis the bench tests; and of performance degradation over time.The 850 EVO series has very good reviews, and has now aged gracefully, unlike the 840 series which had speed issues.The package has the SSD, a pictorial installation guide; a warranty statement booklet; CD with Samsung's Magician and Data Migration software. No USB connectors though.PROs-1. High quality and reliability of Samsung (has its own controller and memory, which are more reliable and faster than the Sandforce/JMicron controllers).2. Very very fast- your system becomes like a rocket (see, however cons below)- in cases where you are not connected to any slower peripherals (like USB HDD, Pen Drive, etc).3. While test copy speeds are between 3-5 times as fast as HDDs (300-500 MBps for SSD vs 60-100 MBps for HDD), the SSD can move data within itself at astronomical speeds compared to an HDD. An HDD can move data within itself only around 20-30MBps, while the SSD can move it at 500 MBps. This is where you will really feel the difference.4. Sufficient space- has around 230GB, of which around 10% will be set aside as an unallocated buffer (if you choose), by Samsung's magician software. This leaves 217GB which is more than enough if you are not loading on multimedia content.5. Higher tolerances- operating temperature limits are 70 deg C, as compared to 60 deg C for HDDs. No moving parts.6. Actual temperatures are lower than HDDs. My Seagate thin (7mm thickness) would routinely strike 50 deg C when moving data. The 850 EVO touched 48 deg C under load.7. Much lower copy speeds when copying into the SSD- as it can easily write at 100 MBps, which is the limit for USB3 HDDs (from which you would be copying the data). See cons however.8. 5 Year warranty.CONs-1. Full speed cannot always be achieved due to CPU bottlenecks. It's not always about speeds when copying data; in 90% cases, your CPU also processes the program/ data. Laptop CPUs, which are around 1.9-2.7GHz top out much below the SSD capacities.2. When moving data between an SSD and other media, the speed is limited by the slower components, which are invariably the pen drives, other HDDs and the USB HDDs. Here, you would get speeds of anywhere between 30-100 MBps.3. Data migration software can be used only if you have a USB casing free for your laptop. In a desktop, this is not an issue.4. More expensive than other SSDs. But prices are much lower than they were for the 840 series.

This is the most cost effective upgrade to any computer and gives vast improvement in performance if installed correctly. (Fresh installation of OS, SSD in hard drive bay, HDD(if any) in optical drive bay). Laptop boots/shuts down in 5 seconds and applications load lightning fast.Although the benchmarks are somewhat a marketing ploy by Samsung to get more customers to buy (you wouldn't notice the difference in having a 20k or 90k IOPS benchmark in day to day usage), the improvement in speed and performance is incredibly huge over a HDD.Firstly I suggest a fresh install of OS onto the SSD and manually installing all applications on it instead of migrating the existing OS from HDD . Secondly, install the SSD on the hard drive slot and the existing HDD on the optical drive bay using a caddy. The above two factors are important to extract maximum effectiveness from this Samsung SSD as an upgrade to your system.Step 1. Download OS onto a USB/DVD boot diskStep 2. Remove HDD from hard drive slot, and replace with Samsung SSD.Step 3. Fresh installation of OS onto SSD through any method that you prefer (USB boot, DVD ISO boot etc)Step 4. Goto BIOS and choose boot from SSD, select AHCI mode (before installing OS), UEFI Secure boot modeStep 5. Install HDD on optical drive bay though caddy, backup the user files on the OS partition and format the partition to remove unnecessary and redundant files (and viruses if any)Step 6. Run Samsung Magician and optimize your SSD accordingly.Once again I suggest not to migrate your OS onto the SSD since it wont give the optimal performance that you would get on a fresh installation of OS on to the SSD. Also sometimes Windows won't boot from SSD if OS has been migrated onto it. I have tried both methods and I can vouch from experience.Good luck in installation and enjoy a speedy drive. Cheers.

I have a mid 2012 mac book pro and my hard disk drive gave up on me. I replaced it with this one. After much research I zeroed in on this one and ordered it through prime. Needed it fast and thanks to amazon's guaranteed next day delivery before 11am, I got it at lighting fast speed.in general this seems like a good ssd. My boot up time is much faster and general time to open files, copy and move files has become 2x the speed. It also comes with a 5 year warranty which is more than enough cause nobody uses a laptop for that long anymore. Combine this with a ram upgrade and you should have a brand new system that will take any task you throw at it without batting an eyelid. Although something I am still trying to figure is the pricing. When external 1tb hard drives are less than 4k these days, I can't fathom why these cost double for half the storage. I mean I would have gone for a 500gb one had the price been decent. Having said that, I checked thoroughly the market pricing for this one with a lot of local stores in bangalore and I can guarantee that Amazon has the best price by far. Go for it. If you found this useful, please up vote it. Thanks