since all of the other reviews read as if they were advertisements, and this is a relatively new item, I decided to write a review for you guys.
Just a heads up, I didn't know this when buying, but yeah, i ordered the single unit which only includes the drive. luckily for me, i had an extra sata cable laying around so no biggie.
Installed windows 7 ultimate fresh on this drive and was fairly impressed at the bootup time, but also satisfied at the overall performance of applications and programs being executed right after starting the computer.
I was worried about the lifespan of SSD's as this is the first one i've ever bought. I looked up a couple benchmarks and found this relatively comprehensive test which concluded that the drive could last around 23 years: [...] . Which is a massive improvement from the western digital hard drive that lasted me 4 years. They mentioned that although the results are synthetic, the results probably don't range far from real world examples. As other reviews stated, this hard drive was a breeze to install, as are every other standard hard drive.
One important thing to mention is that the single unit does not come with the 2.5-3.5 inch adapter, so if you are planning on putting this inside a desktop, make sure you buy an adapter so it can fit in the hard drive bay.
This drive really does live up to its expectations and the numbers that it puts up. One important thing to mention is the devices/softwares RAPID mode. which is a really interesting technology that takes up to a gig of your system memory, and turns it into cache for the drive. After a little bit of research, i found a lot of articles that have mixed reviews on the technology: [...]
I personally keep RAPID mode off, as it seems only to improve the numbers synthetically and looks like it has no reflection in real world situations.
One thing that was cool was the magician software is really usable and simplistic. If you want to enable RAPID mode, then you can click a button, if not, then click it again. you can also use the magician software to update firmware for your SSD. It gives you the option to use TRIM commands easily and simply. One thing i didn't like about the software was that the OS optimization tab. I accidentally clicked maximum performance and didn't realize the difference, i later found out that my processor was constantly running at the maximum 125 watts. Which is weird because it should be able to step down when in idle. I checked my Windows plan settings and found out that Samsung had added its own power setting which put the minimum processor state at 100 percent, which should have been at 1 percent. other than that though, it's a good little piece of software.
There are already a lot of reviews out there on this drive, as this is the budget SSD that really can do it all. [...]
as you can tell, the drive is incredibly high up there, for a very decent price. This may very well be the best bang for your buck drive out on the market today.
one other thing i thought was cool: when you search in the start menu any application you're looking for, the result is INSTANT.
Anyways, tl;dr: This is an amazing drive.
i like: that it lives up to the numbers that samsung has given us, and its supposed life span
dislike: nothing, it's a standard drive that does its job.
| Standing screen display size | 2.5 Inches |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 120 GB Solid State Drive |
