It used to be that adding RAM was the easiest and cheapest way to speed up a slow computer. That never addressed the real bottleneck of a computer, which is the hard drive. I had a customer complaining that they probably needed a new computer even though theirs was only a little over a year old. Knowing that they had a standard platter-style hard drive, I suggested this. Boy is she glad that I did! Saved her hundreds of dollars on a new computer and likely thousands on lost time waiting for her computer to 'compute' as her entire business relies on her computer to make her money.
The hard drive in my Late 2012 iMac is starting to die. Since the hard drives in iMacs are not user accessible (at least not without major surgery), I decided to use an external drive as my boot and system drive. I bought this drive, and the HighPoint Dual-Bay Thunderbolt 10Gbps Storage Dock (RocketStor 5212) to house it. I put the drive in the HighPoint, plugged everything in, then...
Booted to recovery mode (Command-R at boot chime).
Reformatted the disk to HFS+ journaled (with GUID partition map).
Reinstalled MacOS.
Once MacOS was installed, I followed the prompts to migrate data from a Time Machine backup (Users, Documents, etc. I clicked all the options).
Everything is up and running great! During the OS install process, the drive format was changed to APFS (instead of HFS+) since I'm running High Sierra.
Lastly, I went into System Preferences and turned on FileVault (which is still running in the background and will probably take another day or two).
The best part: Now my 2012 iMac is even faster than the day it was brand new!
Link to the HighPoint Dual-Bay Thunderbolt 10Gbps Storage Dock (RocketStor 5212): HighPoint Dual-Bay Thunderbolt 10Gbps Storage Dock (RocketStor 5212)
I have a nearly 9 year old CyberPower desktop with an Asus P6T Motherboard and wanted to eliminate a potential point of failure to eek out a little more longevity. And if I got some enhanced performance, all the better. Turns out it was a very good move.
Of course the order came within the two day Prime window which one expects from Amazon. I also got the Corsair Dual SSD Mounting Bracket
that was an order option for another 6 bucks. I reviewed it separately but it's a must have if you are installing into a 5 1/2 inch bay like I was. The SSD comes with an Installation Guide, which I didn't need other than to follow a web site link provided in order to install the Samsung Data Migration Software and Samsung Magician Software. Since I was installing the SSD to replace my C System drive, I needed to clone that drive onto the SSD. And the Data Migrations software works perfectly. After formatting the SSD (NTSF), I cloned 232GB to the SSD in just 31 min with a SATA 3.0 to SATA 3.0 connection. It would have been much faster has my PC supported SATA 6.0. Then removed the HDD and installed the SSD into the mounting bracket, connected the SSD to the SATA data cable and power cable (I used the same port as the C drive HDD was connected to), powered the PC up and it booted hassle free, with no issues. It was indeed a perfect clone of the previous drive. There was no issues that required going into the BIOS screen. This will only be an issue if you do not use the same exact SATA data connection that was attached to your former C system drive.
I'm amazed how much faster the drive is. The Magician software not only carves out a bit of the drive for overhead, but it also has a cool performance test you can run on all installed drives. So I ran it on the SSD and a 6 TB WD HDD dedicated to pictures and the Random IOPS results were: for the SSD 8,789 read and 19,775 write vs for the HDD 178 read and 244 write. While that may sound unbelievable, it isn't. You actually experience this speed differential while working on the PC.
This was definitely $150 well spent!
The drive performs fantastically. It truly is a successor to the 850 Evo. I purchased this drive to upgrade my laptop, and right off the bat I noticed a huge improvement. Boot to desktop was about 7 seconds. Would absolutely buy again.
Edit: For any of those curious, the specs of my laptop are as follows:
I7-3632qm Ivy Bridge @ 2.2Ghz
16gb 1600Mhz RAM
Radeon HD 7670M GPU
Samsung 250gb 860 Evo
On a side note, if you are looking to upgrade a laptop and use this drive as your main drive and are looking for a more straight forward approach, cloning your current drive over to the new SSD is fairly straight forward.
I purchased a Started USB 3.0 to 2.5" drive converter for roughly $10 in conjunction with Macrium Reflect Free for this, and it worked perfectly with this drive. The software is super simple to use and is fully compatible with this SSD.
UPDATE: After installing the "Samsung Magician" software and enabling "Rapid Mode," the performance of this drive has increased drastically. The second picture shows the increase from the base performance.
I have an HP Z600 computer. I had to update the BIOS in order for the Samsung Magician Software to recognize the new drive. But I still couldn't see it in Windows Explorer since it wasn't formatted. Took a while to discover the fix:
In Windows 10, open Windows Explorer, click THIS PC from the left column, then click MANAGE from the upper menu. A new window will open called Computer Management. In the left column, click DISK MANAGEMENT. The new drive should appear there. Since it hasn't been formatted, it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer just yet. The new drive should say "unallocated".
Right click on the new drive from the menu below. Select NEW SIMPLE VOLUME. A new window titled Welcome To The New Simple Volume Wizard. Click NEXT. Don't change any of the disk size or space defaults that show up, click NEXT. In the next window, you can assign a drive letter. Click NEXT. The next window allows you to assign a Volume Label (drive name). I called mine 1TB SSD. Click NEXT. A new window will show you what is about to happen, click FINISH.
In a few moments, the formatting of the new drive will be complete. Open Windows Explorer, your new drive should show up.
Now you can run the Samsung Data Migration software if you are swapping out your primary drive. This will detect the original drive, and the new SSD drive. If you need to pick a different drive to copy, the menu makes it easy. When ready, run the transfer. Mine took about 20 minutes. It then prompted me to shutdown the computer, remove the C drive, and put the SSD in its place. After that was done, I booted the machine and it started just like nothing had changed. The speed improved, and all my programs are working. I kept the older drive as an archive if this one fails.
Hopefully these details will save you a few frustrating hours of getting the new drive to work. It definitely wasn't a plug & play operation, but ultimately was worth the trouble. Took a star off because of the effort to install it.
Feature Product
- Powered by Samsung V-NAND Technology. Optimized Performance for Everyday Computing
- Enhanced Performance: Sequential Read/Write speeds up to 550MB/s and 520MB/s respectively. Reliability : 1.5 Million Hours Reliability (MTBF)
- Ideal for mainstream PCs and laptops for personal, gaming and business use. Operating Temperature: 0 - 70 ℃ Operating Temperature
- Hardware/Software Compatibility: Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Vista (SP1 and above), XP (SP2 and above), MAC OSX, and Linux
- Included Contents: 2.5" (7mm) SATA III (6Gb/s) SSD & User Manual (All Other Cables, Screws, Brackets Not Included). 5-Year Warranty
Description
Samsung 860 EVO solid state drive is the SSD to trust. Based on 3D VNAND flash, Samsung offers enhanced read/write performance, endurance and power management efficiency. With multiple form factors, the 860 EVO is ideal for mainstream PCs and laptops. Cache Memory - Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
First - get this! I was about to hold a funeral for my aging tower system. It has a reasonable quad-core CPU, I packed all the memory it holds, got a GPU, bought new and faster drives, and put the operating system and applications on their own drive. The boot time and constant lag were killing me. Then I saw this.
My only problem was that the instruction booklet and multiple help sites told me to run Magician which did nothing for me whatsoever.I ended up calling Samsung Support (very good support).
This is what he told me:
-- install the drive - I got the Corsair mount. Then just plug in power and SATA cables.
-- boot your computer
-- google samsung.com data migration
-- download the Data Migration file and run it.
The Data Migration program runs until it's done. Shutdown and unplug/remove your old C: drive. I put the C:\ SATA cable from my old drive to the SSD drive (I had to put the one used for installation back in my CD drive.
-- boot your system. It will boot to the MUCH faster SSD.
-- Go back to the page you downloaded Data Migration from and download Magician.
-- Run Benchmark and Performance Optimize then RAPID.
I used the SSD for my operating system and Application files - any engine stuff. I left my mountains of data, pictures, art, music, etc. on the spinning disk drive they were on in the first place.
Voila! Your system lives again. Mine now boots in less than 1 minute, then it runs all my programs much faster the better.
Bought two of these for my wife and I's 2012 Gateway NV57H i5 laptops.A few weeks ago I had been issued a laptop at work with SSD and saw the dramatic improvement in boot time, program launch, etc.
Our personal laptops originally had Windows 7. The Windows 10 upgrade dramatically slowed the machines down. Boot up took 2+ minutes, with task manager showing 100% disk usage. Cloning the HDD to the SSDs was simple using the downloaded Samsung cloning software and a USB3 to SATA adapter. It took a little over an hour to clone each machine's 500 gb hdd. I found a youtube video that showed how to access and replace the NV57H hard drive. The swap took ~5 minutes - installed the SSDs in the existing HDD bracket (4 screws). The laptops booted up from the SSD with no problem. Ran the Magician software to optimize the SSD.
The performance is amazing - boot time reduced by 80%, lightning fast program launches, adding new life to our laptops. Buy the EVO - you won't be disappointed!
UPDATE: Just installed a third 860 EVO for our desktop. Ordered a Amazon Warehouse model for $15 less - had been opened, but installed with no problems and Samsung registered it as new. Purchased the Fenlink 2.5 to 3.5 SATA Drive Converter Fenlink SSD Mounting Bracket Converter for Samsung Sandisk Crucial Adata 2.5Inch SATA Solid State Drives (Silver) - PERFECT installation - no mods required - converter lines up power and data with standard 3.5 disk placement.
Purchased to replace a standard 500gb laptop hard drive in the Lenovo Yoga 2 I received from my Father. After replacing the battery in the system I noticed the drive Yoga 2 had was attached to the standard SATA cable, opening the option to easily upgrade the slow hdd to a ssd. Looking into the compatibility drives I saw a few “nays” and “yeas” concerning the Samsung 860 EVO 500gb in this particular convertible laptop. Took the chance and ordered. Cloning the drive was simple enough with an external enclosure I had on hand using Samsung’s software. System literally takes 5 seconds to boot fully into Windows 10. If the drive was not going to work in this system I was considering it to replace the boot ssd in my desktop, but happily it went smoothly. Only issue was the Samsung Magician software not detecting the drive as genuine - which was easy to fix by hunting for the latest Samsung Magician software under their support. For some reason Samsung’s product page for this drive links an older Magician software that doesn’t properly detect the drive.
I'm no geek so I don't know much except basic install and Samsung doesn't give you much to work with. Your on your own with this. Difficult time installing because the Samsung migration software has limited functionality. It will only produce a clone under perfect circumstances. This means if you have multiple drives within your disc then it fails. Anyway EaseUS backup (free) worked perfectly. Just tick the boxes to to clone the entire disc with all drives to the new SSD. Also tick the boxes "sector copy" and "SSD optimize" and "shut down" Then install the new drive before booting again. That way it clones exactly and includes all the crap it needs to boot.
I already had a smaller SSD (Samsung 850 PRO) so there was no performance improvement and I don't know if the extra cash is worth it for the PRO. If your upgrading from old mechanical drive then you will definitely be impressed. I got a feeling SSD drives all scream relative to the old style drives. Good luck!
I just installed this on my Macbook Pro (Late 2011 2.7ghz core i7, 4GB's of RAM.) I'm using it as my main drive and using the HDD in place of my Optical drive (There are lots of tutorials online that can teach you how to do this.) For my first time doing a computer hardware upgrade, I found the process to be straightforward and clear. Check out a couple videos to see if you'd be comfortable with the process.
After installing the SSD, I installed High Sierra onto it. I'm currently using it as my boot drive and immediately noticed a difference in speed. I've got the 2018 version of Adobe Creative Cloud installed and was surprised at how quickly the apps opened up.
For the price, an hour of research, and a maybe small investment of precision screwdrivers (if you don't already own them), this was a $110 dollar upgrade that took me an hour to install. After hours of backing up my files, I booted from the SSD and it breathed life straight into my trusty ol' mac and now my computer feels better than new! IMy next move is to upgrade my RAM to 8gb, but as of now, the computer is doing well with 4.
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