SSD's

Alison556 · 1 Aug 2015

Still haven't got round to getting a solid state drive and the Samsung Evo 840 came highly recommended - but anyone any ideas what the difference is between the 840 and 850?

Both have decent reviews - just dont know which is better.

Strangely, according to Which? the Samsung had the highest number of reported drive fails - but that doesn't correspond with reviews on it.

empip · 1 Aug 2015

Have an Sam' 840 Pro 250GB on me desk mulling over where to use. Fitted an 840 to an old Dell inspiron desktop and at same time a home build MC with a Sandisk SDSSDX240GG25 fitted - near 2 yrs down the line - Still going fine.
Buy the best / latest you can reasonably afford.

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anomaly · 1 Aug 2015

I had a 512GB 840 Pro in my MacBook Pro and recently upgraded to x2 850 EVO 1TB drives to give me 2TB in total. There's not much of a speed difference with real-world use (although both are leagues away from rotational hard disks).

The main difference is in the type of NAND memory used, the 840 EVO being a TLC (triple layer cell) Toggle type and the 850 using a newer, innovative 3D V-NAND, whereby cells are stacked vertically as opposed to horizontally, enabling more capacity for cheaper and on a regular 2.5" form factor.

I honestly can't recommend the 850 EVO enough, and if your budget is up for it, go for the 850 PRO. One thing to research and ensure you have enabled with any SSD is TRIM.

Also have a look at this report on SSD endurance:
http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes

empip · 2 Aug 2015

With the home built rig I use the SSD as pure system disk, a 2 TB HDD as data etc, with a 1TB HDD as back up.
----------------------------------------- Using Macrium Reflect (freeby) to create a system disc image :-

Image Completed Successfully in 00:10:08
I/O Performance: Read 2.1 Gb/s - Write 1.1 Gb/s

Total Selected: 95.83 GB New File: 61 GB Using medium compression, intelligent copy (not backing up empty disc space).

That is a good result for me.

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Alison556 · 2 Aug 2015

Cheers all. Must admit, the technicalities of it all goes right over my head. This is one of these instances where I need told what to buy! LOL

Would using an SSD for data as well as OS shorten it's life? It's for my lappy and don't really want two separate drives.

anomaly · 2 Aug 2015

In that case just go for the 850 EVO.

Using an SSD for both OS and data is absolutely fine, you honestly won't shorten its life doing that. And tbh you may only have room for one drive in your laptop anyway (most do) so that makes your mind up for you!

Amazon will probably have them for a good price, and the price per GB is always getting lower.

Alison556 · 2 Aug 2015

Just been reading that there might be a compatibility problem with the E series Dells and almost any SSD - it was an old post so don't know if whatever the problem was has been resolved or not.

Alison556 · 4 Aug 2015

Having been advised there might be compatibility issues with Dell Latitude laptops and SSDs, I phoned Dell (that's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back).

Apparently my laptop does not support solid state drives - so I guess that's that idea out of the window

anomaly · 4 Aug 2015

I find that very hard to believe... What model of Dell Latitude do you have?

Alison556 · 4 Aug 2015

It's an E6400 - but I don't get it either - if you look at any adverts way back when it was new, you had the option of customising it with an SSD - though 128GB seemed to be the limit on it.

anomaly · 4 Aug 2015

OK. So most SSD's are thinner than 2.5" hard drives and this seems to be the problem with some Dells (yours included) as you mentioned.
This thread on the Dell forums explains it pretty well

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19337790

There doesn't seem to be any technical reason why the SSD won't work, but when you install it you need to make sure it physically lines up properly with the connectors inside the laptop. The current hard drive will be secured with two screws on the bottom of the laptop, undo these and the hard drive will slide out of the side. When you install the SSD you'll want to turn the laptop right side up again (so you'll have to hold up the laptop and work underneath it). That way gravity will push the SSD down and hopefully into the path of the connectors, then you re-install the two screws you removed which will hold the SSD in place.

If you were to do it with the underside of the laptop facing up, because the SSD is thinner gravity would push it down so it won't line up with the connectors.

Hopefully that makes some sense?

Alison556 · 4 Aug 2015

Yeah that makes perfect sense - I think I read that thread as well.

Samsung said I was to ask Dell if the motherboard had a Sata III port or if it supported it - and that was what I was trying to ask but wasn't getting very far with the guy at Dell Tech Support

anomaly · 4 Aug 2015

I think the E6400 is SATA II but the SSD, which is SATA III, is backwards compatible so it should work fine and be detected in the BIOS. You shouldn't notice any difference running a SATA III drive through a SATA II laptop.

Yeah Dell tech support probably aren't going to know what you're talking about if it isn't on a screen in front of them... even then!

Alison556 · 4 Aug 2015

You'd like to think that a tech support department would actually have half a clue - without it being on a screen - it was torture - had to spell everything to him and he kept tellingme it was out of warranty.

I had run a Crucial scan on it and it says it's SATA II - and also listed two Crucial SSD's that were recommended, so I'd imagine that it can take it

anomaly · 4 Aug 2015

That's the thing though, I think a lot of big companies tech support aren't trained beyond following along on a computer, pulling up your info and warranty status, and if the troubleshooting strays from that they're at a loss!

Anyway, now you know that you can make the jump to solid state and you'll never want to use a hard drive again!

SSD's

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