Samsung - 850 PRO 256GB Internal SATA III Solid State Drive for Laptops

Upon me attempting to upgrade to a SSD in my new computer, I was most surprised to find that most solid state drives are made with a metal housing, this makes no sense to me. Basically every HDD ever made is made from a hardened chunk of quality aluminum as the housing, so for most solid state drives to be made of a metal housing, when the lesser technology HDD's are all made of aluminum, this seems illogical. This is one of the few SSD's made with an aluminum housing, so the fact that it costs a bit more than some other SSD's, this is why, better build quality. I installed this Samsung SSD in my new Asus desktop, by the following process. Step 1: I first downloaded the Samsung data migration software from the Samsung website using my older computer while hooked up to the internet, then I saved the software to a USB storage drive. The same Samsung software is included on the CD with this SSD package, but downloading it beforehand made my process accomplishable. Step 2: I opened my Asus desktop and unplugged the SATA and power cables from the internal DVD drive and used them to hook up this Samsung SSD. Step 3: I hooked up the power cable, HDMI cable, keyboard and mouse cables, then I turned on the new Asus computer and then I installed the Samsung data migration software that I had saved onto the USB storage drive. Step 4: I ran the Samsung data migration software and cloned Windows 8.1 onto this Samsung SSD, the process of cloning Windows is simple using the Samsung software. Step 5: I turned off the Asus computer and opened it back up and removed the cables from the SSD and re-plugged them into the DVD drive, then I unplugged the internal HDD and used those cables to plug in this Samsung SSD. (I did not prefer to have the internal HDD plugged in and running, adding heat to the inside of this computer, so I decided I would use only the SSD inside and use an external hard drive plugged in by way of USB for any bulk storage needs) Step 6: Upon startup I pressed the f2 button to enter bios to make sure the Samsung SSD was first on the boot up list. (Newer computers might have a more advanced bios that will automatically recognize the boot up drive, and so it might not be necessary to do this for newer computers. The button necessary to enter bios varies from computer to computer and the computer startup process has a flash screen saying which button to press) Step 7: I hooked up the Asus desktop cables again and started the computer. Task accomplished The only unexpected event upon cloning the software is the following: Once I had the SSD installed and the computer turned on, I noticed the Samsung SSD did not show up in the my computer section of Windows, yet once I opened the Samsung data migration software, the Samsung SSD was viewable as the available drive to clone Windows onto. I guess the cloning process formats the SSD first before the cloning begins, and most likely storage drives that are not formatted will not show up in the my computer section of Windows.

I purchased this SSD after researching the specs. Mainly appealed to the read/write speeds for HD video editing. I only installed the windows OS on the drive and all other files were stored on separate HDD or SSDs as part of the system. Needless to say, I've had 2 crashes from bad sectors and had to completely wipe and re-install. I have ran about 12TB of data across (according to the Samsung Magic software) this device but I would hardly say that should be overkill for a 2 year period. So anyway, Samsung Magic software says drive is in good health but I'm back to boot with blue screens and repair again. I'm very technical and customize my 4k video edit machines so I'm not a novice here in performance and setup. My expectations for a "PRO" version are a lot higher and so I would not recommend this SSD.

This is my second SSD installed as a secondary drive on my laptop to complement my 512GB SSD same model line. Increased my overall performance of my laptop as I no longer have any spinning drives to access. The drive comes with cloning software if you require an exact copy of an existing drive. The software is fairly straight forward and easy to use. Note, that you will need a SATA cable with power, not included in order to accomplish this. You won't be disappointed with performance and make sure to install Samsung's Disk Management software included in order to monitor and optimize your drive. This was very helpful in helping me optimize my two drives (the reason why I stayed with the same manufacturer) based on my usage, requirements and OS settings. You can also encrypt the drive using the same software. Overall, I would highly recommend this drive or even the 512GB model. I have been running the 512GB model for over a year now so I don't suspect any issues with the 256GB model either.

I currently have two of the PRO 256 GB and one of the 128 GB and I can say that I advocate getting any of the PRO or EVO series of SSDs. The read/write speeds are very good and the product is overall well designed. One 256 GB goes to the desktop computer I built which made the boot time drop to less than 10 seconds and the other went to my xbox one which drastically dropped the load times for most games (unfortunately at this time xbox doesn't allow you to replace the internal HDD but it worked very well as an external because I just used a 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure and plugged into the usb 3.0 and the speeds were still terrific). The 128 GB drive went to my girlfriend's mac and it dropped the boot time from 2 minutes to 17 seconds -in this case installing a fresh OS also helps with macs because updating iOS repeatedly slows down the mac OS as opposed to installing a fresh copy and she had updated the OS many times. TL;DR: This is a great product and will no doubt be beneficial in anything that you want to decrease load times on as indicated by the wide variety I have used them

This is one of best SSDs out there, Samsung really nailed it on this one.. rather this one was the best of SSDs in its class and fastest in this class of SSDs. There are new productions 951 and 950 pros which NVMe based products and expected to be 3 times faster than this one, but given this is Sata III based product it gets the best throughput and exceptional quality. There are very few reports of failures of this drive and its always recommended to leave 5% of disk at the end of the disk unused i.e. unallocated for any partition if you are planning to use this drive for more than 6-7 yrs. I am using it from almost 18months now and its has no sign of any issues. So really exceptional product. My next jump will be definitely 950pro NVMe in m.2 form factor... Looking forward for the prices on that to come down :)

I purchased (after much research) this SSD to replace my system drive for a Windows 10 clean install. Installation of the product on my desktop was painless and quick, as well as with the operating system. Immediately noticed a fairly large response time improvement for my computing environment. Selected the Samsung 850 based upon positive reviews,queries to other owners, and assurances the SDD would help out in my Sata II environment. It did - allaying my initial Sata II fears. While my 7 year old system still performs well, the added zip enhances my video/ photo editing tasks, as well as every day browsing activities.

My laptop was working fine until last week and then i started hearing clinking sound from hard disk. Then i realize i need new HDD for it. I went through some reviews on SSD and came to know that Samsung 850 evo Pro is really a Pro. I used the Data migration software which came with it but i was getting error for fragmentation issue. Not sure if that is because of my bad HDD or software issue. So i used my Recovery disk to reinstall windows and I'm really happy with perfomance. It boot pretty fast. My last Hard disk was hybrid and it was fast too but this one is real deal. You need just 10 sec and you are on IE or in your any application. I'm also using other application like light-room and Photoshop. It is pretty fast.

This solid-state drive is the best option on the market currently however I would like to see you in a little bit cheaper but the speed cannot be matched and if you combine it with an external enclosure it needs to have the new spec of using the UASP protocol. This is important to get the full speed of the 3.0 USB it has to have this specific spec not all of them do and so you don't get the full capability and benefit of having this Samsung solid-state drive.