So glad we finally have 2TB SSD available! I'd built a work around that I've used most of this year utilizing 2x1TB Samsung 840 mSATA SSDs in RAID 0 on a dual mSATA to 2.5" board (both reviewed separately here on Amazon), and it worked well, but, ran hot, and reduced battery life moderately on my Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga S1. And then there was the issue of not being able to manage the SSDs directly in this RAID 0 setup, which meant good but not great performance.
Enter the EVO 850 2TB drive. Turned off my ATA password, then did a direct connected drive clone using Acronis True Image 2015, leaving the current RAID drive in the laptop and connecting the new 2TB Evo via USB3 and a IcyDock USB3 to SATA adapter. Worked great and was up and running. Tested performance without any SSD optimization and then after turning on Rapid Mode via Magician software. Incredible results! While the benchmarks below are synthetic, the real world performance with Rapid Mode turned on is VERY good, and noticeably faster than both the 850 stock and the previous 2x1TB 840 R0 setup. I also used Magician to set my OS, Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit, to optimize reliability of the SSD, so the faster benchmark includes both enabling Rapid Mode and the reliability settings in the OS.
Notes and Recommendations:
*Optimizing SSD for your needs. Definitely use Samsung Magician to both enable Rapid Mode and to optimize your OS settings for the type of SSD performance you want to emphasize. Note, however, that Rapid mode does not yet work with Windows 10 and I've heard mixed results on Windows 8.1. For me, however, rooted here in Win7, Rapid Mode seems to work perfectly, and I feel like I'm getting every drop of performance possible from the drive in my context with the help of Magician. The Crystal DiskMark results posted below support this.
*Drive Cloning. Acronis TrueImage 2015 worked to clone current drive to the 850 Evo via USB3. However, I could NOT restore previous Acronis drive images to the new drive successfully, though this has worked for me in the past. I strongly suspect this an TrueImage 2015/USB3 interaction, nothing to do with the Evo 850, but sharing in case it saves someone some time.
* Secure Erase the old drive. Using Magician, secure erase only works under Windows 7 (not 8.1 or 10) + requires SATA connected drives, at least as of this posting with the latest Magician software. So, I used the method others recommend on the web of deleting the partition on the old drive and creating a new partition, all with the drive connected to a Windows 7 machine. Then, TRIM supposedly re-zero's all the data on the drive when the new partition is created, providing a kind of secure erase. Had no way to test the efficacy of this, but did it anyway as an additional security measure on the old drive. Here's hoping Magician gets updates such that these workarounds are not necessary.
DiskMark results follow, in reverse chronological order:
ThinkPad S1 Yoga
C Drive, 1x2TB Samsung 850 Evo with Rapid Mode turned on and optimized via Magician for reliability
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 2081.885 MB/s
Sequential Write : 1062.522 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 3233.240 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1227.072 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 327.188 MB/s [ 79879.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 176.897 MB/s [ 43187.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 405.226 MB/s [ 98932.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 236.319 MB/s [ 57694.9 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [C: 53.8% (1001.5/1862.7 GB)] (x3)
Date : 2015/08/25 3:04:47
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
C Drive, 1x2TB Samsung 850 Evo
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 512.000 MB/s
Sequential Write : 408.695 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 471.074 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 369.942 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 37.702 MB/s [ 9204.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 87.897 MB/s [ 21459.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 308.968 MB/s [ 75431.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 179.177 MB/s [ 43744.3 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [C: 54.3% (1012.0/1862.7 GB)] (x3)
Date : 2015/08/21 0:15:49
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
C Drive, 2X1TB Samsung EVO 840 in RAID 0 on
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 489.531 MB/s
Sequential Write : 355.169 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 399.607 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 331.641 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 30.740 MB/s [ 7505.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 87.171 MB/s [ 21282.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 53.773 MB/s [ 13128.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 184.967 MB/s [ 45157.9 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [C: 38.3% (713.7/1862.7 GB)] (x3)
Date : 2015/04/25 0:44:06
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
| Hard Drive | 2 TB |
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