I have a Corsair Force GS 128gb and I really like it. It replaced a WD Caviar 80gb drive from 2005 that.. at best, could do 35 MB/sec. This SSD is quoted as being able to do ~590 MB/sec, but all of my testing came in around 425 read and 370 write. that's fine by me.

As far as win10 tech preview.. I installed that in a VM with the virtual disk being on the SSD and the installation took 4 minutes from booting up the VM the first time to being at the desktop ready to use it. Boot time once POST is done is about 5 seconds. Win 8.1 in a VM was about the same. Win7 on the other hand.. that's about 20 seconds, but still better than the 3 minutes that it used to be with that old 80gb Caviar.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Is the 850 the replacement product for the 840 or just a higher end series? In either case I would hope for the same or better out of it vs the 840.

The 850 is an upgrade from the 840. It took top marks in the research I did.

There is both an 840 and 840 Pro, likewise an 850 and 850 Pro. The Pro series are getting top marks. In this case, the 850 Pro uses newer 3D NAND technology with better performance and a few minor bugfixes in the firmware. I'm pretty sure you can update the 840 Pro firmware to get the same fixes.

I have a 850 Evo and getting same speed as the pro version.
I read that the difference between the Evo and Pro is just the warranty.

No, there are some major differences between the EVO series and the Pro series. EVO uses TLC (Tri-Level Cell) while the Pro uses MLC (Multi-Level Cell). The EVO series uses a dual-core proprietary MGX controller while the Pro uses the proprietary triple-core MEX controller.

TLC drives allow manufacturers to pack three bits into a cell, thus increasing drive capacity, but more bits per cell means greater chance for that cell to go bad after so many writes (an entire cell is marked as bad if a single bit is no longer reliable). MLC drives only pack two bits per cell, thus having lesser capacity for the same area, but more longevity for bad bits.

Despite all that, the performance differences between the two, when connected to a standard SATA 3 Gb/s or 6Gb/s controller, is minimal. Both drives should last far longer than most people will keep the device they're used in.

The only area where the Pro's technology really starts to outshine the EVO is when you connect the drives via PCIe rather than SATA for the greater bandwidth and lower overhead (latency). Many ultra-thin laptops and tablets use a connector called M.2 which is PCIe-like, and allows those devices to perform very nicely when paired with the appropriate SSD.

Is the 850 the replacement product for the 840 or just a higher end series? In either case I would hope for the same or better out of it vs the 840.

The 850 is an upgrade from the 840. It took top marks in the research I did.

There is both an 840 and 840 Pro, likewise an 850 and 850 Pro. The Pro series are getting top marks. In this case, the 850 Pro uses newer 3D NAND technology with better performance and a few minor bugfixes in the firmware. I'm pretty sure you can update the 840 Pro firmware to get the same fixes.

I have a 850 Evo and getting same speed as the pro version.
I read that the difference between the Evo and Pro is just the warranty.

No, there are some major differences between the EVO series and the Pro series. EVO uses TLC (Tri-Level Cell) while the Pro uses MLC (Multi-Level Cell). The EVO series uses a dual-core proprietary MGX controller while the Pro uses the proprietary triple-core MEX controller.

TLC drives allow manufacturers to pack three bits into a cell, thus increasing drive capacity, but more bits per cell means greater chance for that cell to go bad after so many writes (an entire cell is marked as bad if a single bit is no longer reliable). MLC drives only pack two bits per cell, thus having lesser capacity for the same area, but more longevity for bad bits.

Despite all that, the performance differences between the two, when connected to a standard SATA 3 Gb/s or 6Gb/s controller, is minimal. Both drives should last far longer than most people will keep the device they're used in.

The only area where the Pro's technology really starts to outshine the EVO is when you connect the drives via PCIe rather than SATA for the greater bandwidth and lower overhead (latency). Many ultra-thin laptops and tablets use a connector called M.2 which is PCIe-like, and allows those devices to perform very nicely when paired with the appropriate SSD.

Thats the reason i bought the EVO.
Don`t have a laptop tho.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Fully updated, plain vanilla Win10 TP x64, seems to boot in 9 seconds to desktop here (disabled login screen). CPU is old Core2Duo 3GHz, 4 GiB DDR3 RAM, GTX 680, Samsung 850 Pro 256GiB. Sisoft Sandra Lite appears to confirm it's on a Sata 2 (3GB/s) link, so won't be pushing this drive with this machine.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Basically, I have 650 Gig filled on a 1 TB drive as the main drive. I have 4 other 1 TB internal drives for files and games, and another 4 TB for external drives for my Wildlife Outdoor Webcam. I also have a 5 TB external detached backup drive, for making me ransom-ware proof.

Steve

Ransom ware, been there, defeated that..

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

My SSD Samsung 840 250 GB went down to 57 MB/s on my HP 635 laptop, while the hard disk Seagate 500 GB on this old SUN host is giving 120 MB/s. So I switched to a SSD 120 GB OCZ Vertex 4 on the laptop and it gives me 200 MB/s, the fastest disk I have on my 3 computers . All measured by the Linux "hdparm" tool.
Tullio

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My SSD Samsung 840 250 GB went down to 57 MB/s on my HP 635 laptop,

Have you checked to see if the TRIM function is working?

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Grant
Darwin NT

I am using SuSE Linux 13.2 and don't know how to check TRIM. But the OCZ SSD is about 4 times faster on the same laptop, a HP 635 with an AMD E450 CPU.
Tullio

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I am using SuSE Linux 13.2 and don't know how to check TRIM. But the OCZ SSD is about 4 times faster on the same laptop, a HP 635 with an AMD E450 CPU.
Tullio

On current Windows & Apple OSes TRIM is enabled by default, my understanding of LINUX is that it generally needs to be enabled manually.

TRIM support is generally necessary to keep SSDs running at their full speed, as relying on periods of low to no disk activity doesn't always allow enough time for garbage collection to be done. And the fuller a drive gets, the more time is needed & the bigger the performance hit is when it can't be done.


From Anandtech's Samsung 840 250GB SSD review.

Ouch, performance takes a big hit. Usually 20 minutes isn't enough to put 256GB drives on their knees but it definitely is for the 840. Write speed drops to as low as 25MB/s, although it's nearly restored before all user-accessible LBAs have been filled. The way to avoid this worst case state is to keep as much free space on your drive as possible. We typically recommend around 20%, however with TLC NAND it might be advisable to bump that up to 30%.

Enabling TRIM in Linux should result in full performance being restored to the 840 (as long as there is at least 20% free space on the drive).

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Grant
Darwin NT

Good note and article but also note that article is back from 2011.

I'm pretty sure all current Linux distros have discard/trim enabled for SSDs.

Note also though that for trim that some SSDs are blacklisted for known firmware errors...

There is "fstrim" that some distros run instead to clean up all SSDs something like once a week or so. For some drives, that is a lot faster than issuing repeated trim commands for the normal continuous small changes made to an in use filesystem.


(Linux was a leader for adding trim support. The distros cautiously included that later.)

Meanwhile, SSDs have progressed far enough now to be a no-brainer for all use cases except for bulk data and archiving...


IT is what we make it!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Dumb question..

I have an SSD as my C: Drive, and a Titan Z Black running Bionic.

Is there a way of knowing what drive Bionic uses??, and if it is using my C: drive. Can I tell it to move it to a HDD and not use my SSD..

Been having some free time so I thought I would let Bionic use the Titan Z to crunch..

Thanks Michael

:)

That would need to be done in setup, as to where you want everything put at.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's