Samsung MZ-V6E500BW 960 EVO M.2-2280 500GB PCI Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive

Well, it's a lot faster than a SATA SSD.Do you notice the difference? That sort of depends whether you have Superfetch and Prefetch disabled in Windows. They're Windows applications that speed up disk access by a sort of intelligent cache system. If you disable them there is a noticeable difference between a SATA SSD and a PCIe SSD. If you don't have them disabled then there is less of a difference. Superfetch and Prefatch use your CPU and RAM, so there is some real incentive to having them disabled.Is the difference worth the money? Again the answer depends. At the moment the price difference between SATA and PCIe is almost 100% so it's pretty difficult to justify. I certainly would not throw your old SATA SSD out yet. Only if you are building a new PC or your existing SATA is coming to end of life and needs replacement would I consider a PCIe. And if you are looking for a new drive it comes down to "can you afford PCIe? If you can, then get one. If necessary then get a small one for you operating system and a larger SATA for everything else.When extremely busy these things can run pretty hot for a few seconds so coolers are popular for them. Some motherboards have sockets directly under the graphics card and this is a really bad place to fit them, considering they already have minor heat issues. Look for a socket that is well away from the graphics card. A cheap cooler is more than enough and I like the Gelid Solutions Sub-Zero. It's simple, cheap, easy to fit, and works as well as anything else.I bought one of these for my new PC to serve as a boot disk. They are so good, I'm going to buy another to use for data and games.

Easily the fastest drive I have ever had. M.2 Rocks! Identifies itself as follows:hdparm -I /dev/sda/dev/sda:ATA device, with non-removable mediaModel Number: SanDisk SDSSDHII960GSerial Number: 152618401415Firmware Revision: X31200RLMedia Serial Num:Media Manufacturer:Transport: Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0Standards:Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x0110)Supported: 9 8 7 6 5Likely used: 9Configuration:Logical max currentcylinders 16383 16383heads 16 16sectors/track 63 63--CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455LBA48 user addressable sectors: 1875385008Logical Sector size: 512 bytesPhysical Sector size: 512 bytesLogical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytesdevice size with M = 1024*1024: 915715 MBytesdevice size with M = 1000*1000: 960197 MBytes (960 GB)cache/buffer size = unknownForm Factor: 2.5 inchNominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State DeviceCapabilities:LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)Queue depth: 32Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimumR/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 1 Current = 1Advanced power management level: 254DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120nsPIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120nsCommands/features:Enabled Supported:* SMART feature setSecurity Mode feature set* Power Management feature set* Write cache* Look-ahead* Host Protected Area feature set* WRITE_BUFFER command* READ_BUFFER command* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE* Advanced Power Management feature setSET_MAX security extension* 48-bit Address feature set* Device Configuration Overlay feature set* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT* SMART error logging* SMART self-test* General Purpose Logging feature set* WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT* 64-bit World wide name* WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command* {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands* Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)* Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)* Native Command Queueing (NCQ)* Host-initiated interface power management* Phy event counters* READ_LOG_DMA_EXT equivalent to READ_LOG_EXT* DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimizationDevice-initiated interface power management* Software settings preservationDevice Sleep (DEVSLP)* SANITIZE feature set* OVERWRITE_EXT command* BLOCK_ERASE_EXT command* Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 16 blocks)* Deterministic read ZEROs after TRIMSecurity:Master password revision code = 65534supportednot enablednot lockednot frozennot expired: security countsupported: enhanced erase2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 40min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 5001b44e9458fa87NAA : 5IEEE OUI : 001b44Unique ID : e9458fa87Device Sleep:DEVSLP Exit Timeout (DETO): 30 ms (drive)Minimum DEVSLP Assertion Time (MDAT): 30 ms (drive)Checksum: correctAnd supports all the features you expect a modern SSD to do.

When a lot of money is spent on a product, I expect screws (in this case one screw) to be provided.I will update this review once I have the necessary screw to install it.Thanks, Samsung. /sEdit:I got the necessary screw and it fits fine.Pretty sure my motherboard should have come with a crew and standoff, but I didn't have that so just screwed the SSD in with it at a slight angle to the motherboardAfter cloning the old small SSD to the new SSD with CloneZilla, I attempted to boot into the new drive but it booted into the old one (even though I copied the MBR to the new drive), hmm okay?I disconnected the old drive so it could only boot from the new drive and received a blue screen telling me it can't boot needs a repair blagh blagh... $*!£%"Okay, I tried loading the old drive and using Samsung's software to copy to the new drive. It didn't even recognise it as an option.Okay, okay I try again with CloneZilla, at this point having to reinstall it on my USB since I'd just tried repairing windows boot on the new drive with the USB acting as a recovery drive (it didn't work, even from the command line).I could see all the files in Windows and it looked the same as the drive I copied from, so I tried cloning the old drive with CloneZilla again to the new one. I then also cleared the secure boot keys or whatever they are in my BIOS and tried booting again, this time disconnecting the old drive before the initial boot and... it worked!Windows loaded up and I was logged in.Took a lot of time and messing about, but that wasn't really the drives fault.Booting into Windows is faster now, even though I replaced an old SanDisk SSD drive for the 960 Pro. Since it's big I can also store games and programs!I'm quite happy with my purchase, but I just wish I did a bit more research into the formfactor of NVMe drives beforehand!