Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD

[Steve A.]

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7TE120BW)

I had always assumed that SSDs (solid state drives) for home PCs were outrageously expensive but like most electronic devices they get more powerful and less expensive from year to year. (The exceptions usually have their prices kept high by greedy and very exclusive companies!)

So when I learned that you could get a highly rated 250GB SSD drive for $109 I decided that it was time to rethink the whole equation. One of the biggest drawbacks of a typical home PC is that the hard drive boot disk will eventually wear out and fail, and if not backed up on a regular schedule that event could be catastrophic. And of course the speed of a mechanical hard drive cannot compare to that of a solid state drive.

I do need to figure out what size SSD boot drives are required for the various OSs I might use: Win XP Pro 64 bit, Windows 7 and Ubuntu. (BTW the 500GB drive is under $200 and the 1TB drive is under $400.)

Here are some links for more information and reviews on these devices.

250GB 2.5-inch SATA III Internal SSD Single Unit MZ-7TE250BW | Samsung 840 EVO

UserBenchmark: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB MZ-7TE250BW

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-250GB-.../dp/B00E3W1726

SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

Own a Samsung 840 EVO? Download this fix for slow read speeds - PC Gamer

Samsung SSD Downloads | Samsung SSD

[Mick Bailey]

Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but I've just fitted an SSD to an old 2006 Toshiba A-100 Pro (Sandisk though - the Samsung is still too expensive here in the UK). I got four of these machines for free, all working but no HDD.

Have to say with the SSD those machines FLY. A real eye-opener that such an old machine can work so well. With Photoshop and InDesign there's no lag or delay whatsoever. Really impressed.

The price isn't really dropping too much right now, though capacity is increasing for a given price point.

[The Dude]

If you don't mind:

What model(s) did you get and what kind of price? I've been stewing/procrastinating on this for a while now.

[Steve A.]

The price isn't really dropping too much right now, though capacity is increasing for a given price point.

Reminds me of color TV pricing for many many years- you never could find a color TV for much less than $500 although the screens kept getting bigger. Inflation didn't really factor in- if you wanted a color TV you had to have at least 5 Benjamins.

With the smaller capacity drives you didn't have much room for anything besides your OS. As they got bigger you could also install your programs to them and now you can even use them for your data files.

While most of the focus has been on CPU speed for many operations it was the disc speed that was the real bottleneck.

Steve A.

[Mick Bailey]

I got a Sandisk X110 128Gb for £40. Didn't want to spend much - just get one of these machines working. But I'm really happy with the results. The Samsung would have been 1st choice though. 128Gb seems a little low on capacity, but I don't need much for web access and a few apps. It makes you think a little more about housekeeping.

One other point - the fast access improves the memory paging if you're a little low on memory or have the restriction of a 32 bit machine. A whole new lease of life.

Like buying your wife a baby-doll night dress.

Or her buying you one. Or whatever.