Samsung 850 PRO 512 GB 2.5 inch SATA III Solid State Drive - Black

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.

🔥 The Samsung 850 EVO: A Game-Changing Solid-State DriveAs a tech enthusiast who's constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest storage solutions, the Samsung 850 EVO SSD has caught my attention. After thoroughly testing and evaluating this impressive solid-state drive, I'm excited to share my in-depth review.The first thing that stood out to me about the 850 EVO is its cutting-edge 3D V-NAND technology. This innovative flash memory architecture not only boosts performance but also enhances reliability and energy efficiency, making it a true standout in the SSD market. 🧠In terms of raw performance, the 850 EVO delivers exceptional results. With sequential read and write speeds of up to 540MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively, this SSD provides a transformative experience for everyday computing tasks. The enhanced RAPID mode, which leverages unused system memory as a high-speed cache, further amplifies the drive's responsiveness, resulting in up to 2x faster performance compared to the same drive without RAPID enabled. 💨Reliability and endurance are also key strengths of the 850 EVO. Boasting double the endurance and 30% longer lifespan than the previous generation 840 EVO, this SSD is built to withstand the demands of heavy usage. The integrated hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption and dynamic thermal guard protection provide an added layer of data security and safeguard the drive's integrity.One of the most impressive aspects of the 850 EVO is its end-to-end integration solution. As the only brand that designs and manufactures all its own components in-house, Samsung has been able to optimize the drive's performance and efficiency, resulting in a truly seamless and reliable storage solution. 🏭Turning to customer feedback, the overwhelming consensus is that the Samsung 850 EVO is an exceptional SSD. Users consistently praise its blazing-fast speeds, rock-solid reliability, and excellent value proposition. The ease of installation and integration with existing systems is also frequently cited as a major selling point.In conclusion, the Samsung 850 EVO is a game-changing solid-state drive that sets a new standard for performance, reliability, and efficiency in the consumer storage market. Whether you're looking to breathe new life into an aging system or build a high-performance rig from the ground up, this SSD is a must-have upgrade that I can wholeheartedly recommend. 🌟