SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256D/AM 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Desktop Upgrade Kit SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256D/AM 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Desktop Upgrade Kit

Pros: Worked great for a while

Cons: Died after 6 months

Pros: I have my Windows system running off of this SSD. It was plug and play. Loads the OS lightning fast.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Not that it matters for performance, but the SSD looks really pretty. And came in a well designed box. Shows that the manufacturer cares.

Pros: The Drive Works, I am not going to post benchmarks others have and there are tons out their

Cons: After Installing Norton Ghost 15 it asked me for the product key. Looked on the back of the envelop and saw the key. It failed. Repeated. Failed. No dice. Was not going to go buy a copy so I said use demo. Went to follow the instructions for disk copy and was told you need a licensed copy to use that feature. Totally worthless.

After my completely fresh new install with partition issues, I went to install Samsung SSD Magician. It seemed to have some cool features. Well would not install on Windows 8. Went to www.samsung.com/ssd and that led me no where. Search of the knowledge base did not help either. Downloaded a program that I thought was the one and it was a Norton driver update pay Norton no thanks. Just wanted SSD magician.

So on the software only I am dinging it 2 eggs. I could have bought a non upgrade kit and mounting plate and probably saved myself a full day of frustration.

Other Thoughts: This was purchased as a Desktop HDD replacement kit as such the process of replacing was really me taking the old HDD out and re-installing windows. As noted in the CON section, the idea behind it did not work. I also had to reformat the drive as it had some sort of formatting on it. When attempting to do a clean install I got the message:

Windows Cannot be Installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style. I had issues with my other Samsung 840 PRO as well. See my review on that for more information.

Needless to say a copy partition

Pros: Once you go SSD, you'll never go back.

By significantly speeding up the slowest "cog" in most people's computer, you'll notice the difference right away.

I'd suggest gamers spring for a 512 GB model (the 840 pro if they can afford it). Games fill this thing up fast.

Cons: Though they are slowly coming down in price, the "OS and programs" sized SSDs are still prohibitively expensive.

Other Thoughts: I'd suggest either getting a small caching drive (64-128GB) or going all out and getting a 512GB OS and programs drive. Current generation SSDs and caching software are to the point that you can spend $50-$75 for a caching drive and still maintain performance within 2-10% of a SSD only solution a lot of the time. I'm guessing if you play lots of different games, that there may be an exception.

Thus, if you're a gamer, go big... if you're an "average" user or very casual gamer, stick with a 128GB or less and use it as a caching drive.

Very satisfied with the product thus far.

Pros: Super Fast.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I upgraded the boot drive in an older dual-core Intel system maxed out at 4GB of RAM. This is the best return on investment to add to useful life without the investment of buying a new desktop.

What a difference it made in boot time and shutdown. Wow!

Pros: Once you buy an SSD you will wonder how you ever tolerated a HDD. I timed how long it took me to restart my PC and open a web browser. From the time I hit start till the time I saw my homepage only took 27 seconds. Everything seems to run faster. I'm never looking back.

Cons: none

Pros: Thing hasn't skipped a beat. I love this SSD because its about the same speed as my Agility III, but its much more reliable. A3 had a couple blue screens on first start up, and they kind of disappeared after a little while.....??? What was all that about? I don't know, but that's what happened. Also also the 830 is not glitchy in that there is ghosting of images on the screen; saw that all the time on the A3.

With this Samsung 830 SSD there is no ghosting of past images and it has never skipped a beat. Never crashed, never had any performance problems, and the software Magician is really kool!

I picked mine up on sale for $189. :) Want to get one for my lappy now.

Cons: Non so far...prices don't go down fast enough?

Pros: My pros from my first two reviews still stand. I am now using Win 8 x64 and this SSD has had a lot of installs and reinstalls of Win7, Win8 CP, Win8 RTM, and now the real deal. It has help up, without complaint, and still maintains 500/400 on read/write sequential. IOPS are typically 70-80 on read and typically 26 to 30 on write. This SSD also has NO ISSUES AT ALL RESUMING FROM SLEEP. Many SandForce drives have resume from sleep issues and I have run into it myself on builds where someone bought a SandForce drive against my recommendation and then had me build it for them and wondered why they could not use sleep mode. Some people don't listen. These days I recommend Samsung and Plextor (Plextor M3, M3Pro, M5Pro, and of course the 830 and 840 from Samsung).

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: MSI Z77A-GD65, BIOS 10.7
Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3-1866 9-9-9-27, 8 GB, 1.5V
i7-2700K, default clocks
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Samsung 830 SSD, 256GB
EVGA FTW nVidia GTX 670 video card
Seagate 7200.12 1TB as mass storage
ASUS DVD/RW
ASUS PCI-E x1 N53 Dual Band WiFi adapter
Seasonic X-Series 650W, Gold Certified modular PSU
Logitech G400
iOne X-Armor Cherry MX Brown mechanical keyboard
Klipsch Promedia 2.1 system and Razor ORCA cans
Windows 8 64bit OEM
Dell IPS LED backlit 23" display U2312HM

Pros: Startup time is speedy

Cons: Non yet

Pros: This is the first SSD drive I have tried and I researched it before I bought. Samsung seem to be tops for speed and reliability from reviews - and IT IS based on the one I got.

Amazingly fast. My rig boots up in less than 10 seconds with the I7-3770k cpu. Transfer and read/write speeds as advertised. And the other reviews were right - the Windows Experience Index comes in at a perfect 7.9 on this drive. Highly recommend. AND - got a "free" Full Version copy of Norton's Ghost with the kit - really love that too.

Cons: NONE

Other Thoughts: My build:
--ASUS P8Z77-V PRO
--Intel Core I7-3770k cpu
--COOLER MASTER Hyper TX3 RR-910 cpu cooler w/92mm fan
--16GB (4 x 4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) memory
--Samsung 830 2.5" 256GB SATAIII SSD
--ASUS GTX660 GeForce 2GB PCIe 3 video card
--ASUS CD/DVD/Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST
--ASUS VS238H-P 23" 2ms HDMI LCD monitor
--COOLER MASTER Storm Enforcer SGC-1000-KWN1 mid tower case
--Corsair Pro HX650 650w Gold Modular psu
--Win 7 Ultra 64-bit