Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series Review

I have three Macbooks Pro. All of them came with a tradditional HDD. They were performing unbearably slowly - applications switching and loading, booting, and even shutting down frequently took minutes. Scrolling in any application, for example: browsers or office applications were often very laggy. This was true even when I had large amounts of free memory. It was very frustrating, and I was almost ready to buy a new laptop.

However, I could see very high disk activity in the Activity Monitor during the slow periods and figured the bottleneck was probably my hard drive... so I went to Amazon bought the Samsung 840 Evo (#1 Best Seller). As a first step, I bought only one SSD for testing purposes before deciding to buy three. Best computer decision of my life, the performance problems evaporated when I put in the Evo. Apps launch in seconds, no laggy scrolling, and I haven't hit the limit in terms of the numbers of things I can have open at once.

The SSD does not require an adapter in these MacBooks and can be directly swapped with the original HDD. Instead of using the bundled software during installation, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone.

After installing the SSDs I did some speed tests on all my Macbooks. The reads, writes increased at incredible speeds, enhancing boot-up speed, application loading and multi-tasking performance. The following speed tests were done using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test from the Mac App Store:

	13" Macbook Pro (early 2011)	13" White Macbook (late 2009)	13" White Macbook (mid 2007)
SATA III controller	6 Gbit/s max	3 Gbit/s max	1.5 Gbit/s max
Speed of original 5400 RPM HDD	~80 MB/sec (read and write)	unknown (didn't test)	~30 MB/sec (write) and ~40 MB/sec (read)
Speed of new Samsung 840 EVO	488 MB/sec (write) and 506 MB/sec (read)	204 MB/sec (write) and 268 MB/sec (read)	118 MB/sec (write) and 130 MB/sec (read)

As you can see from the speed tests, the speed of the Samsung 840 EVO is different in all three MacBooks due to the different SATA controllers. My newest Macbook Pro (early 2011) benefited the most from the new SSD. Nevertheless, the new SSD makes a huge difference in "everyday speed" in all three MacBooks and I am VERY, VERY happy with the results! I highly recommend this drive for MacBooks!

Customer reviews on Amazon
By K. Bramwell (Florida)

I installed my 250GB 840 EVO in my Macbook Pro. I replaced the Superdrive with a hardrive caddy and moved the original 500GB SATA there. My battery life has increased by about 45 min.

By Vlad the Bad (Moscow, Russia)

Speed difference between the 840 and the 840 EVO shocked me. I thought it would be "a little" faster but...WOW. The WD Black 7200 Rpm is just for reference of a standard HDD.

By Juan L. Deaza "juanldeaza"

New 250GB Samsung Evo. Rapid Mode enabled, Sata III. Gigabyte UD3 Z77. 8Gb Ram core i5 3450. Coping 20Gb file speed: 250-402Mb/s from sandisk extreme to evo.

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Crucial MX100 SSD Review

PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS

The choice between speed and capacity is over. Choose both.
Traditionally, SSDs have offered powerful speeds and extra features, but at a high cost per gigabyte. Enter the Crucial MX100 SSD. Leveraging years of R&D and the latest NAND technology, the Crucial MX100 offers a low cost per GB, combined with unrelenting performance and one of the most complete feature sets available.
Micron quality - a higher level of reliability.
As a brand of Micron, one of the largest flash storage manufacturers in the world, the Crucial MX100 is backed by the same quality and innovation that has produced some of the world's most advanced memory and storage technologies. With over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of SSD qualification tests, the Crucial MX100 has been thoroughly tried, tested, and proven. Make the switch to the Crucial MX100 SSD and start outlasting and outperforming your hard drive.
Feature-packed capacity. Proven reliability.
The Crucial MX100 provides plenty of cost-effective storage for your photos, music, videos, and documents - all while backing your data with a higher level of reliability than a hard drive or competing SSD. Note:1 GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual usable capacity may vary.
Run your system longer than ever before - using less power.
With Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the Crucial MX100 is up to 89% more energy efficient than a typical hard drive. * * Hard drive active average power use based on published specs of 1TB Western Digital Blue WD10JPVX internal hard drive. According to NPD data published February 2014, this was one of the most popular hard drives available and an accurate reflection of a common internal hard drive.
Keep your memories, photos, and files safe.
When a photo or file gets corrupted, it often becomes unusable. Prevent this from happening in the first place with the Crucial MX100 SSD, which arms every storage component with four layers of Exclusive Data Defense to guard against corrupt files.
Do more - faster.
Get true 550 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data - and leave your old 177 MB/s hard drive in the dust. ** **Performance level based on comparative AS SSD benchmark ratings of 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD and 1TB Western Digital Blue 7200 RPM hard drive (WD10EZEX-00U). Actual performance levels may vary based on benchmark used and individual system configuration. Test setup: Intel DZ87KLT-75K motherboard, Intel i7-4770K 3.50GHz processor, BIOS Rev. 0446, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit operating system using AS SSD test suite.
Attain consistently fast speeds without compromising the reliability of your data.
Our engineers created RAIN technology to protect your data at the component level, similar to how RAID is used with multiple hard drives. This enterprise-class technology increases the security and protection of your data to a level that's rarely available in consumer-class SSDs.
Push your drive to the limit and avoid overheating.
Adaptive Thermal Protection technology enables the Crucial MX100 to dynamically adjust storage component activity based on how you're using the drive, allowing your system to stay cool and react to changes in use.
Save and transfer files in seconds rather than minutes.
Our exclusive Native Write Acceleration technology spreads the drive's workload across several elements, enabling you to write data in seconds rather than minutes.

PNY XLR8 SATA Review

I am going to prepare for the VCAP-DCA exam, the first step for the exam coming is to build a computer for lab. I decided to use my old Thinkpad T410 with some upgrades.

My laptop already have an Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge, 16GB of RAM. The most weak point is the Thinkpad was come with a traditional HDD. I went to amazon and search for a suitable SSD to replace my ole HDD. Yes, i am a fan of Amazon. My expectation is a new SDD with high performance, capacity and low cost. After days of searching, I picked PNY XLR8 SDD up with 240GB of capacity. This SSD offers high speed data transfer of up to 500MB/s read, 475MB/s write; random IOPS up to 60,000. Another really cool thing is PNY offers a five-years warranty. In overall, I am really happy with it, high performance, enough capacity and low cost also.

Specifications

• Made in USA or Imported
• Best Value: Premium grade flash to handle a wide variety of workloads
• XLR8: Sequential Read/Write speeds: 400 MB/s Random IOPS : Up to 70,000
• Capacities: 240GB
• Controller: SandForce 2281
• 3 year warranty plus an additional 2 years when registered with PNY