Samsung – 9100 PRO 2TB Internal SSD PCIe Gen 5x4 NVMe, Speeds Up to 14700 MB/s

Customer Images

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• See
  More

The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  The King of Speed Returns

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 50 Contributor

  One of the most prominent players in the consumer solid state disk (SSD) space has been Samsung. Since 2006, Samsung has regularly offered among the highest-performing SSDs on the market, delivering performance and reliability that other manufacturers have struggled to match. As the computing industry moves to the latest PCIe 5.0 interface, so too have SSD manufacturers begun offering new drives to take advantage of the increased speeds. Samsung’s 9100 Pro SSD is the company’s first offering optimized for the new interface, promising top-tier performance for the latest desktops, laptops, and game systems designed to harness every fragment of speed on offer. Though a little behind its competition using similar hardware and priced at a premium, Samsung’s reputation for performance and quality shines through on this new offering. Note that this drive is sold barebone - there are no adapters or cables included to transfer your data from existing disks to the 9100 Pro, and thus this product is not intended for novice users. If you are not familiar with moving or reinstalling your operating system (e.g. Windows, MacOS), speak with a Geek Squad associate for recommended services prior to purchasing. - Unboxing & Installation With little more than the disk itself and an installation guide with warranty information booklet in the box, the 9100 Pro has more packaging than product. The NVMe M.2 disk is the standard 2280 (22mm x 80mm) size, about as large as a stick of gum, and has a sticker covering the NAND with all the usual branding. This SSD is single-sided (no chips on the backside) so it should fit in nearly every device supporting 2280 size disks without issue, including game consoles and handhelds. Installing the 9100 Pro is as simple as installing any other M.2 SSD. Once recognized by the system, the disk will need to be initialized then formatted by the operating system prior to use (this typically occurs during an OS installation). Samsung uses the 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes metric to market the drive; thus, formatted capacity is 1863 GB. There is in fact a full two terabytes of NAND memory onboard but the remainder is used as over-provisioning space, which helps to extend the life of the drive by spreading data writes to the least-used memory cells before rewriting existing ones. A five-year, 1200 terabytes written warranty should cover most use cases as only power users will see that much data written within five years, much less ten. - Performance There’s no other way to put it - the 9100 Pro is blisteringly fast. Installed in my custom desktop with a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, benchmarking the disk shows performance within margin of error of the box’s 14,700 MB/s claims for sequential reads. As to be expected, random small reads and writes drop below 1GB/s, but the IOPs (input-output operations per second) ratings are still off the charts, pushing nearly 200,000 read and 170,000 write in my testing. In more laymans’ terms, this disk performs like DDR3 RAM when reading or writing sequentially, and performs like first-generation DDR RAM when reading or writing randomly. Considering I was around when DDR was first introduced, seeing a storage device perform like system RAM feels borderline whimsical. Part of what helps the 9100 Pro achieve these speeds is the welcome inclusion of a DRAM cache. The SSD has 2GB of high-speed LPDDR4X memory that the storage controller uses to queue up data before it’s written to the NAND flash, allowing the 9100 Pro to effectively tell the host computer or game console that it is ready to receive more operations while the memory controller works in the background to write the data to the NAND. The result is that for all but large, continuous writes (such as transferring multiple 4K movies in a single go), performance remains stellar. This is a fantastic disk for high-disk-demand work like video editing and large database management - lower-tier SSDs will forego the DRAM cache and lean entirely on the NAND, resulting in a significant drop in performance (and higher wear on the disk) that power users will notice. My only concern with the 9100 Pro’s performance is that it can get fairly warm when you ask a lot of it, and it does not come with a heatsink. I saw temperatures peak at nearly 70C even when utilizing the heatsink and thermal pads my motherboard provided, while the NVMe 4.0 disk I had installed previously (a Samsung 980 Pro 1TB) rarely hit 60C. These temperatures aren’t as concerning as they would be for traditional hard disks, but in any case I would recommend utilizing a heat spreader of some kind if you are able. This is a high-performance disk pushing the envelope of what modern devices can support, after all. - Samsung Magician One of the included perks of Samsung SSDs is access to the Samsung Magician software, a complete diagnostic and device management package available for Windows, MacOS, and Android that offers many handy functions including firmware update and drive health statistics. If you have a spare M.2 slot or a USB M.2 adapter, the best feature of the software is arguably the Data Migration functionality. With just a few clicks, Samsung Magician will automatically clone your existing hard drive or SSD to the 9100 Pro (or any other Samsung SSD), given the new disk is large enough to support the transfer. Crucially, the software clones the entire disk including the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Guided Partition Table (GPT), which means after data migration you can simply swap your old disk for the newly-migrated disk and be up and running again. After years of doing this process manually or with the help of paid third-party applications every time I changed SSDs and didn’t want to reinstall my operating system, Samsung Magician worked quickly and flawlessly - the entire operation took about 20 minutes to copy a half-terabyte installation to the new disk (your speeds will vary depending on what hardware you use - USB will almost always be slower than an NVMe slot), and after swapping my old SSD to the 9100 Pro the system booted using the new hardware without any further configuration. Great stuff! - Bottom Line Samsung SSDs almost always hit their performance expectations, and the 9100 Pro is no exception. Their first PCIe 5.0 outing delivers right in line with their advertised speeds, and assuming you have a device that can harness the full potential of the latest PCIe version, you’ll be treated to an experience that’s really only limited by the rest of your hardware. To move beyond the 9100 Pro’s performance you’re spending quite a bit more money on purpose-built, datacenter optimized hardware. The Samsung Magician software is the icing on the cake that consumers and prosumers alike can utilize for a pain-free migration experience. All told, the 9100 Pro comes highly recommended!

  ...See More
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

  Posted 1 month ago by Turbolence

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Game-changing drive when used appropriately....

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  I build my own computers, and my current setup is: Mobo - Asus ROG Strix Z790-E CPU - Intel i913900K Memory - 32g GSkill Trident z5 DDR5 Graphics - Nvidia RTX 4070 Case - Coolermaster H500M OS - Windows 11 Pro This most recent build had depleted me of most of my cash with many of the components being bought at the same time, and as such I carried into the build a frankenstein collection of HDDs for various purposes. I have a 6TB platter for media storage, a recently acquired Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVME drive for game storage, and a much older Samsung 970 Pro 512GB that I adopted for my operating system (OS) drive. It made the most sense to me because it was just my OS, the least important drive for my day to day computing. Or so I thought. Along comes the Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB NVME drive, and along with it the opportunity to use the previously dormant 5th gen M.2 slot in my motherboard that I had ignored when I initially put this build together. I hadn't really given the OS drive much consideration, and thought myself in good shape simply because I had a Samsung NVME drive already. I was completely unaware of how much of an improvement this would end up being. I am a huge Samsung acolyte- beyond the 970 pro and 990 Pro I have a media server running off of a 980 EVO, and a couple of older generation Samsung SSD's. They have been a trusted brand for me for almost a decade, and this new drive was a no brainer based on the consistent quality and value I had seen with them so far. As I had no desire at this time to do a fresh install, and for the cleanest and quickest swap, I bought an external enclosure for it with USB-C connectivity, and using cloning software the original drive was copied in about 10-15 minutes. I had it swapped in to the case a few minutes after that. Easy first boot, right to the Windows login, and zero issues with drivers or BIOS recognizing the new drive. After running it for a few days through some of the benchmarking paces and daily-driver activity, these were my main takeaways: Speed - this is Samsung's hallmark, and there were no missed expectations here. A few interesting observations worth noting: from startup - the timing from hitting the power button to Windows login did not really vary from my old gen 4 drive to the 9100. I was around 22 seconds on both, I thought it may show some improvement here. While it was harder to time in a practical manner, once logged into Windows, you absolutely could see Windows 'settle in' more quickly than before. Desktop and startup apps felt immediately engaged with little to no load lag. Another less-scientific but practical test was loading up games. I primarily game on the computer, and while my games normally load from the 990 Pro drive, I moved the gaming directory to the 9100 and tested it against the timing from the other drive. Using same games, I did notice a difference in game load time from hitting the load icon to the in-game start menu, and I definitely noticed an ascertainable difference in loading into the game from there, as well as loading into saved games. That was a faster and more streamlined experience. Other programs that I would typically keep on my OS drive, like Chrome/web browsing, Office and Adobe Suite products also loaded very quickly from launch. It is worth mentioning these real-time day-to-day examples of speedier transactions because that is where it feels the highest amount of value is with this drive. I benchmarked it and ran Crystaldisk as many others have, and have hit similar read (~14300) and write (~13400) marks - which were both enormously higher than the ~2700 read mark I was eking out of the 970 Pro - but I don't feel those data figures tell the story of what makes the drive so attractive. I also know that my benchmark scores likely have a higher ceiling than I received, but my cloning of the old drive and keeping the patchwork of different NVME and platter drives in my build likely handicapped those outcomes. If you are building new with a fresh OS install, and stay lean with internal NVME drives utilizing lanes on the motherboard, it will allow you to hit closer to that top-end capacity that is advertised. I just felt that it was incredibly cool that the whole operation of installing a new cloned version of my existing OS to me was less than a 20 minute exercise, and it picked up right where I left off, with the same docs, pics, files and settings that I didn't have to copy manually. The all-in experience of getting in and out of programs and software is the real noticable selling aspect to me, and was the real-life applications of the game-changing speed that I was anticipating when I got the drive Heat - this drive is known to run hot the more you stress it, but I don't think that will be a factor for most uers. I mentioned my case model above because while a little older, it is a roomy midsized case with two enormous 200mm intake fans, another 140mm intake on the rear, and three 120mm exhaust on the top pushing through a 360mm radiator for a Corsair iCue h150 AIO CPU cooler. This is a very cool box, in the literal sense. Utilizing the Samsung 9100 as an OS drive that I can also push gaming off of, it hasn't broken 42 degrees Celsius yet, and generally sits at 32 degrees C for daily driving. It did eclipse 60 degress during benchmarking, but I am not doing anything day-to-day that will exert it that hard, so this really isn't a terribly important factor to me. Your case/build and intended use may drive differernt results, but the 9100 Pro is a fairly cool customer for my use and needs. Use - this is a tough one, as it is a bit of a criticism, but I think a fair one. I really see this drive most optimally being used as an OS drive, and not much else. I really can't see any real advantage for use that makes sense, considering the premium you are paying for it. It makes a sincere difference in the actual day-to-day aspect of my computing, from loading in to loading anything launched directly from it. At 2TB I can easily dedicate a large portion to my favorite games, and still run a host of software, web browsers and general media with immediate and recognizable benefit, but if you were considering buying this for just a gaming drive, your money would be better spent on a Samsung 990 Pro, effectively doubling your storage at the same relative cost and still getting pretty great speed on loads and saves. I see folks mentioning using it in non-5th gen machines, external drives or even in Playstations...don't waste your time or money in these applications.....it is backwards compatible for gen 4 machines, but performs no better than a 4th gen drive and you gain none of the benefits this new drive architecture offers. I've been a longtime user of Samsung drives, and this first experience with their fifth generation product was absurdly beneficial for me. The 9100 Pro is a blazingly fast storage device, effectively quadrupling the speed from my old 970 Pro. I would highly recommend the 9100 Pro as the heart of your new build. There are many other Samsung drive products that I think make more financial sense as you expand your storage needs/capacity, but the 9100 Pro is a great investment as the foundational OS backbone drive.

  ...See More
  • 

  Posted 1 month ago by jestro88

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Fastest SSD I have ever owned

  • Top 500 Contributor
  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • My Best Buy Premier Silver Review

  Package Contents The package came with the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD itself, an instruction pamphlet and a link to download Samsung Magician software. Installation Installation is fairly easy if you have previous experience with installing or upgrading an NVMe SSD in your computer. For my situation, I used an external JMS583 based USB to NVMe adapter to help with my installation. My plan was to clone the contents of my existing SSD into the new Samsung 9100 Pro and then physically swap in the new SSD. Using an external USB to NVMe adapter would help with minimizing the amount of physical swapping of drives that I would need otherwise. This can be tricky because some adapter chipsets don’t work well with certain SSD controllers and vice versa so there’s a little bit of luck involved in hoping the USB to NVMe adapter you have is compatible with your new SSD. I plugged the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD into the adapter and opened up Samsung Magician. At first, Samsung Magician didn’t seem to “see” the Samsung 9100 Pro but I quickly updated my computer’s drivers and bios to the newest version and replugged the USB adapter directly to one of the motherboard’s USB ports in the back panel (I previously had it plugged into a USB port on my computer case) and it detected the Samsung 9100 Pro. I went to the Data Migration tab in Samsung Magician and selected the source (my computer’s previous main SSD) and destination (the new Samsung Pro 9100) and proceeded to clone my old SSD to the new one. The cloning process went fairly quickly (I didn’t have a lot of data in my old SSD) and I thought Samsung Magician did a really good job and was fairly easy and straightforward to use. I then turned off my computer to physically swap in the new Samsung 9100 Pro and the computer booted up with the new drive. The boot up process was super quick and did seem to go somewhat faster than before but that might be my imagination or wishful thinking. Performance The Samsung 9100 Pro SSD is my first experience with using a Gen 5 NVMe SSD and I have it installed in my Asus TUF Gaming X870-PLUS WIFI motherboard in an M.2 slot that supports Gen 5 NVMe SSDs. For cooling, I am using the stock motherboard M.2 heatsink. The Samsung 9100 Pro is replacing a Gen 4 NVMe SSD from another manufacturer. The performance benchmarks from Samsung Magician reports a sequential read speed of 14,154 MB/s and sequential write speed of 13,316 MB/s. This verifies that the Samsung 9100 Pro is working correctly in Gen 5 mode on my Asus motherboard. The benchmark results far surpasses anything I’ve seen from my previous NVMe SSDs. Additionally, the Samsung 9100 Pro has been rock solid in my computer. I haven’t noticed any glitches, instability or thermal throttling during my normal workflow. Temperatures have also been reasonable as the Samsung 9100 Pro averages around 55 C using the stock motherboard heatsink during my time with it. A fresh installation of Visual Studio 2022 took only 10 minutes and according to Samsung Magician, the temperature never went above 55 C during the installation. However, I’m not sure if Samsung Magician was actively updating the temperature measurement on the Performance Benchmark screen I was looking at. I noticed that it was still displaying a temperature of 55 C the following day and didn’t change until I switched to the Dashboard view. Once I switched, it updated the temperature to 54 C. Using Visual Studio 2022 to clone a repository, edit source code, and compile and build my projects was extremely zippy and responsive. Browsing the internet and consuming media was also super responsive. Playing games has also been fantastic. Black Myth Wukong ran very smoothly and I never noticed any stuttering when arriving at a new location (which could indicate loading of new game resources from the SSD). Also, I took a break from playing this game and there was an update available for it when I loaded it up again. The update was very quick. Also, when I upgraded the drivers of my graphics card to the newest version, it caused the game to recompile shaders and this seemed to occur much faster than before. Summary The Samsung 9100 Pro is an excellent Gen 5 NVMe SSD. It’s the fastest SSD I have ever used, has been rock solid and super stable, and I never noticed any thermal throttling. The temperature seemed to average around 55 C using the stock motherboard SSD heatsink which I consider to be cool running. My computer feels super responsive and zippy in my normal workflows. While artificial benchmarks show spectacular improvements, the improvements experienced during normal workflow activities is probably a little bit more subtle. My computer was already pretty fast and responsive using my Gen 4 SSD. It now feels a little bit more zippy with the Samsung 9100 Pro but this might be due to a placebo effect. Overall, I can easily recommend the Samsung 9100 Pro if you want the best and you have a motherboard that has a Gen 5 M.2 slot to take advantage of it.

  ...See More
  • 
  • 
  • 

  Posted 1 month ago by DoctorHoo