I went to Best Buy in Poughkeepsie and immediately sought out a Geek Squad Tech to pick his brain about SSD's because I know nothing, period, about computer hardware. I told him I wanted to replace my 5yr old spinning HDD before it decides to go haywire on me. He explained that I would need to match the size (one terabyte). He showed me one brand and said that it was known to be unreliable and pointed me in the direction of the Samsung end cap display with Evo's and Pro's. I gulped at the $299.99 price tag, but he explained that the 860 EVO comes with reliable software. So, I bought it and an Insignia SSD mount #NS-PCSSDM7 which was an additional $9.99. Mind you, I am an uninitiated computer newbie as far as upgrading, but I am not stupid. I can do this without the Geek Squad. My Asus Essentio has been a great computer for five years. I have upgraded from Win7 to Win 10, upgraded the ram to 16 gigabytes from 8 and now the it is time for an SSD. When I get home all excited to get started on the project, I realize that there is no PCI-Express to USB 3.0 adapter wire included in the 860 EVO box. I had to order one from Vea Yook on Amazon because Best Buy does not sell them. For $9.99 , it arrived in two days and did the job perfectly. Next issue: The directions that came in the Samsung SSD box were so small (microfiche small) that I could not read them at all. Then, after I borrowed my neighbor's magnifying glass, I realize that these are not really directions but they are basically hints. It says after you open the box, that the USB cable is only in the retail package. What did I buy? And, it says you must use Samsung Software. The next page shows pictures (a wordless workshop) that shows you how to plug in a USB cable. Wow. Big help. Next Issue: Included in the SSD package is another tiny piece of paper suggesting that I download Samsung Magician. I do that, and assume (wrongly) that if I download Magician Software version 5.2, the installation guide and the open source announcement that It should do the whole job. Guess what. Nope. Next Issue: After scratching my head and wondering how and where the Data gets migrated, I realize that there was no Data Migration Software in those three downloads. It turns out, that there is a separate Samsung website to download the Data Migration Software, at Samsung.com. Next issue: The advertised price of the SSD is $299.99, plus over $24 tax so I used my Best Buy credit card on Sunday May 6, 2018. On Wednesday I was showing my lunchtime friends the item on my IPhone Best Buy App and it says there is a price drop to $269.99. I marched right back to the store to the Customer Service counter and they gave back the $30 to my card. The store display still shows $299.99. Next issue: The Data Migration Software shows that that there were errors. The software does not explain what the errors are, does not say how to fix them or prevent them. I am unaffected by whatever errors occurred. I am very pleased with the performance of the SSD. It is eye-blink fast at every turn. I would recommend that anyone should do a hard drive defragmentation before beginning this venture, something that occurred to me after I finished the migration.

I bought the standard iMac a few months ago from BB, 1TB HDD and 8GB memory was annoyingly slow, which I figured, but not this slow! I had to do something! This Samsung 860 EVO, 1 TB SSD solved that problem, now the slow iMac is running on rocket fuel, no more waiting and waiting... The Samsung 860 was easy to format, APFS is the formatting, it is no longer Mac journaled. I used a Sabrent ec-sshd USB 3.0 to SSD adapter to format the Samsung SSD. I tried using Disk Utility to clone the HDD to SSD, it did not work, sadly. So, I used Carbon Copy Clone to transfer all of the data off of my internal HDD to the Samsung SSD before tearing apart the iMac. I also tested the Samsung to make sure it was working correctly by designating it as the start up drive using the adapter cable. It worked, the iMac fired right up and worked. Time to start the surgical procedure. The install instructions are all over YouTube, it was not that bad, OWC had the best instructions. You will need the adhesive tape to reattach the screen, a T5, T8, T10 and a very small Philips 000 if you upgrade the memory too, if just the SSD install, a T8 and T10 will suffice. I bought the adhesive tape with the disc on a handle tool from Amazon, it worked perfectly after releasing a corner with a utility knife. No need to heat the glass. And, I figured if I am going to be in there, may as well upgrade the memory! The adhesive tape for the 2012 and newer iMac will work on the 2017 model and all in between, so don't worry if you cannot find year specific adhesive tape kits, the 2012 will work just fine, get the kit with the pizza cutter tool, around $10. Memory, I bought the Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2400mhz 160 pin 2x8GB for 16GB of memory, here is the model number, BB sells it, CMSX16GX4M2A2400C16. The iMac uses memory in pairs, remember that. One stick will not work. And, there are only two slots for memory in the 2017 21.5" iMac. I believe the largest you can install is two 16GB sticks for a total of 32GB of memory. To me, 16GB is plenty for everyday use and basic photo and video editing as a novice. Here is the kicker, and why I went this route by purchasing the baseline 21.5" iMac. To match this configuration in this particular iMac, if bought through Apple, would have cost $2,000! And you would not get a real SSD drive, you can only get a 1TB Fusion drive, which is like a hybrid HDD and SDD, not as fast as a straight SSD. I saved a chunk of change going this route, the parts and pieces worked out to roughly $270 + $40 for the cloning software and my time. I just finished the install and am typing this review on my now rocket fueled iMac! The new memory and Samsung 860 EVO SSD are working flawlessly! Very Happy! The Samsung 860 made all of the difference, much more so than the memory. My local BB had them in stock. I hope my long winded review helps my fellow iMac users that want to upgrade and are on the fence... It is not that bad, if you do do it, just take your time, follow the instructions and all should go well. ;-)

This past month I started with one Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD as a best bang for the buck upgrade experiment for my main rig. Being that it is a nearly $9,000 system I was not expecting much, but then again for the sale price of $159.99 what did I have to lose. The system is a server class work station that I mainly use for video editing, browsing and general use, NOT a big gamer, although it will destroy performance highs in most games. With a mid-level 6-core 12 thread Intel Core i7 processor, 64 GB of quad channel RAM, dual RX-480 8GB GPUs in Crossfire, a Corsair 1500 Watt power supply and no less than 60 Terabytes of internal storage space it was no surprise when I didn’t notice a huge performance increase, sure there was a bit of a gain, 8% to 10% at best, but this gave me inspiration to try out this upgrade on some of my other machines. I was already running a 500GB Samsung SSD in my main laptop, with is going on 10 years old, Intel i7, 32GB RAM, nVidia 660GTX 2GB GPU and a 17.3” screen makes this a tough laptop to give up and even though the swap was from a 500GB Samsung SSD to a 1TB Samsung SSD the performance was similar to my workstation but allowed me to get creative and swap my 2nd 1TB SSHD to a larger 4TB HDD (granted that took some power tools and skills) I now have a 10 year old laptop that still beats 90% of brand new laptops so I am happy with the 860 EVO. NOW for the big surprise, I have a 3 year old Toshiba laptop with a Intel i7, 12GB RAM, 17.3” touchscreen and onboard graphics, For the better part of the last 3 years this backup laptop has been a paper weight 90% of the time, with the other 10% for skype calls when I am on the go and need both laptops, otherwise I was very disappointed in that $2,400 investment and I had always thought that the main hang up was the lack of a dedicated graphics card as video editing and even Windows 10 is very graphic intensive, I had thought many times of selling it and was constantly offered a fair price for it but secretly I wanted to troubleshoot some more and find out if it really was that much of a difference, on chip Intel graphics verses AMD or nVidia dedicated graphics, well I can honestly say that the results are in and the culprit of the 2 minute boot times, slow reactions to clicks, and poor browser performance was in fact due to Toshiba cheaping out on the 1TB hard drive they installed in this near flagship system. With the Samsung 1TB 860 EVO the Toshiba has become quick, useful and dare I say enjoyable, I genuinely would have banged my head against a door had I sold it for the $800 to $1,000 I was constantly offered for it. With that I also decided to even out Toshibas odd one 8GB & one 4GB RAM modules and purchased a 2nd 8GB module bringing the laptop to 16GB (still half of what is in my main laptop) but none the less it made a additional improvement. With this happy increase I decided to get my parents a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO for Christmas and upgrade their aging Dell which took around 4 minutes to boot, and browsing the web was worse than waiting for water to boil, it took forever and they were considering getting a new computer, but the struggle of learning a new OS (they are still on Windows 7) and other features was not something they were looking forward to, so I got them one of these drives and cloned their boot drive, making it a simple swap and their performance is up 400%, yes it was that dramatic of a difference, & thus I also upgraded their RAM from 4GB to 8GB and now with the exception of their aging GPU in that system, they are extremely happy with the new life that it has gained. And finally I purchased a 5th 1TB 860 EVO to upgrade one of my other PCs from a tiny 128GB SSD and to my surprise it was also a dramatic improvement of at least 200% so with all this real comparison data, I can whole heartedly tell you as a IT & hardware expert of 28+ years that if you want to breathe some more life into pretty much any computer or device you own or are planning to own then the SINGLE MORE IPRESSIVE ITEM YOU CAN GET TO DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE PERFORMANCE IS A SAMSUNG SSD. Keep an eye on Intel & Samsung to bring new 3D & V-NAND drives to mass market this year, but as for best single item for under $200 to improve performance across the board, get a Samsung SSD.

My 2012 Mac Mini is part of my entertainment center, streaming video and iTunes content to my big screen TV and AV receiver. The HDD was on life support, stuck on the Apple boot logo at startup. After doing extensive online research and reading the positive Mac user BB reviews for the Terabyte version of the Samsung SSD, I took the plunge and the drive is fully compatible with this Mac mini! Boots fast, runs smooth & robust! I found reliable installation videos on YouTube to install the drive, however I highly recommend backing up your original HDD and formatting the SSD using an enclosure (run Disk Utility to format the drive, Mojave users format using APFS) before you take the mini apart and install. If you wish to do a clean install of your OS, make a bootable OS disk using a thumb drive or SD card (plenty of online instructions available & very easy!). If you made a backup of your original drive, an alternative would be Carbon Copy Cloner so you can have the Mac mini’s drive ready for use on your SSD before you install. The key is patience as I impulsively took the mini apart and installed the drive without formatting. Although I had a bootable SD card with the OS, the Mac mini didn’t recognized the unformatted SSD. I can’t over-empathize enough the need for patience and taking all the steps necessary to format and install this drive. Once this is done, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the SSD’s speed & efficiency. This Samsung Terabyte SSD has extended the life of my 2012 Mac Mini, playing content directly as well as streaming to the 3 Apple TV connections on my network. It’s an essential part of my entertainment center and thankful to Samsung for providing an affordable solution to my older Apple tech!

I bought this SATA SSD drive for my parents old laptop. It had gotten so slow that some days, they couldn't even use it. It would take over 15 minutes to turn on. Add another 10 to log on. They know that I like reading about technology, so they came to me to ask for help. When I told them that I could find a solution for them that would almost immediately fix the worst of their problems, they were thrilled. The Geek Squad desk replaced the old HDD (the old standard: Hard Disk Drive) with this new SSD (Solid State Drive). They also transferred over all the data that was on the old hard drive. After doing this, their laptop can now turn on and log on in under a minute and a half. Obviously, results may vary, for some people, it might be under a minute, for others it'll be under two, but this is the single most important upgrade that you can do to keep your older laptop up-to-date. (Even better than adding more RAM.) My parents say that it's like having a new laptop. It will make it much faster when turning on, logging on, and opening files. Your laptop may even make less noise because SSDs have no moving parts, no spinning disk, like the old HDDs. Even gamers can benefit from this increase in speed. After having done research, I am convinced that either this or the Crucial MX500 are the absolute best value, and apart from that, the best SATA Solid State Drives. (In case you are wondering, yes, there are faster solid-state drives, such as the Samsung 970 EVO, but these use a different connection method, and, are more expensive. This is the fastest of its type. Especially if you have an older laptop, or are on a tight budget, I strongly recommend this product.)

I purchased two Samsung 860 EVO SSDs, one for each of my two computers. The SSD has reduced the boot-up time in both computers by about 2/3. Well worth the price. It is easy to clone your old hard drive to the 860 EVO using free Samsung data migration software. Buyers should be aware that if you plan to operate the 860 EVO externally using a SATA-USB connector cable, your computer and the cable must support USB 3.0 or higher. USB 2.0 produces only 500 mA of power which is not enough to operate the SSD. USB 3.0 provides 900mA or more. I found this out after about 4 hours of frustration trying to figure out why Windows 10 would not recognize my new SSD using a SATA-USB 3.0 cable. As soon as I connected the SSD to a USB 3.0 port (on another computer), bingo, all was then OK. Since my laptop only has USB 2.0, I devised a work-around. I removed the internal hard drive from my laptop, and installed that drive internally in my desktop computer (which has USB 3.0 ports) as drive “C:”. Then I connected the new SSD externally to the desktop computer USB 3.0 port using a SATA-USB 3.0 cable and cloned the SSD using Samsung data migration software. To my knowledge Samsung’s data migration software will only clone a “C:” drive. Then I removed the old laptop hard drive from my desktop computer, returned the desktop to its original configuration, and installed the newly cloned SSD internally in my laptop. A little awkward perhaps, but it worked just fine.

Having used a few solid-state drives within past few years since it came out, I have never had one as large as 500 gigabytes. When this 1 terabyte model went on sale, I thought I would give it a try just for the sake of having extra space. It was typically easy to install it just like other similar hard drives out there. You would actually have to know what you are doing a bit to do this because the drive doesn't come with any software to transfer what you had on your drive C to this particular drive (unless you want to install a new copy of Windows on this drive and go through the hassle of installing everything else on it later.) There was a web address that took me to Samsung website, and it provided me with a very efficient and free software to "move" the operating system/data to this new drive. It took only about half an hour to transfer my 240 gigabytes hard drive to this one terabyte and it has been working fine ever since. The price has gone down even more and I am thinking about upgrading my other desktop and laptop with this model or a similar one. I know M.2 drives are a lot faster, but they are not still not cheap at this time (2018) - at least not for this size. Thank you Best Buy for discounting this particular piece of hardware to an affordable price for many of us.

If you are looking to upgrade your computer to something that will boot Windows faster, speed up your day to day processing tasks, extend battery life of a laptop and not have to worry about any moving disk platters (VERY quiet) – this is a worthy product and I would recommend it. But be aware if you have an older computer, check to see if it has a SATA II or III connection. SATA II is the older interface and while your computer will still be faster, etc. it wont be nearly as fast as if you have SATA III. I purchased one of these drives almost a year ago for my desktop and it is fantastically fast - but it was almost twice the cost of this one - and its the same drive! Just shows how fast ramped up production and competition have driven down prices.... I wasnt thrilled with the migration software Samsung provided. I use either EaseUS or MiniTool partition - free versions of both. Just select copy dive (and select optimize for SSD) and let it rip. But do yourself a favor and really consider purchasing a 2.5 inch hard drive case so you can drop this drive and and connect using USB cable to copy. If you search internet for "USB 3.0 to SATA 3.0 2.5 inch" External Hard Drive Disk Enclosure Box USB 3.0 High-Speed Case for 2.5 inch HDD SSD Case Support UASP protocol SATA III Tool Free" you will find options.