Do some research into SSDs and the new Samsung 850 Pro Solid State Drive range repeatedly comes out on top. There are a range of sizes available, and the model available on Amazon is the SSD only, you don’t get any drive caddy, cables or screws to go with it, it’s just the drive.
Opening the box you’ll find the Samsung 850 Pro (which is really light), some pictorial instructions and a software CD. The migration and management software can be downloaded directly from Samsung’s website for the most up to date versions.
There are two sets of instructions, one for a desktop installation and one for a laptop installation, and they are aimed at people looking to replace an existing drive, and not have this in addition to their existing drive.
Setup was very simple, it just takes a little time due to the cloning process. The instructions show the Samsung 850 Pro being plugged in via a USB adapter to migrate data, but if you plan on using the SSD in addition to your existing drive you can go ahead and install it into your PC/laptop right away.
In this case the Samsung 850 Pro was installed using a 2.5 to 3.5 caddy to fit it into a desktop, which happened to be in the ‘frequently bought together’ suggestion from Amazon and was ideal for the job.
Once connected (either via a USB caddy or having been installed into your desktop) you fire up the Samsung Migration software which will automatically detect the size of the source drive and target drive and let you know if there is enough space.
If your source drive contains too much data you’ll need to either exclude or delete some of it, the perfect opportunity for a little spring cleaning. Remove the software and games you no longer play, transfer music, videos and photos to an external drive, and very quickly you’ll have cleared a lot of space.
The migration tool then gets to work, and this is the part that can take some time. The drive reviewed was the Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and it took just under 1 hour and 15 minutes to fully migrate.
Once completed the drive boot order was changed so the Samsung 850 Pro was the boot drive rather than the secondary drive and that was it, drive installed!
With a nice speedy new boot drive the original source drive was formatted for use as a secondary drive. The entire process from start to finish was really simple, the Samsung migration tool works really well.
To give a general idea the PC originally took about a minute or two to boot up and be usable. With the Samsung 850 Pro t takes about 12 seconds!
Checking out the Windows experience score my drive had gone from a score of 5.9 to 7.9 and the overall score had gone from 5.9 to 7.7.
In use you don’t just benefit from a faster boot speed, everything just feels quicker and more responsive and that makes this one of the best upgrades you can get if you’ve not got an SSD at the moment.
As well as the migration software Samsung also provide the Samsung Magician software to optimise your PC and check the SSD is working correctly. It can tell if you’ve plugged this into a SATA 2 port rather than SATA 3 and can also run a benchmarking test to compare your new drive to your old.
The Samsung 850 Pro Solid State Drive is a brilliant drive backed up by simple to use software that makes the installation process really simple.
Keep in mind when purchasing that you’ll need to check what you get with the drive as the Amazon version required the additional purchase of a caddy, cables and screws.
Available now from Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1wNZ1zA and Amazon com: http://amzn.to/1KbgWuo
Samsung 860 PRO 512 GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-76P512)
£102.59 in stock
Free shipping
Amazon.co.uk
Features
- Sequential Read/Write speeds up to 560/530 MB/s respectively. Performance varies based on system hardware configuration
- Interface : SATA 6 Gb/s, compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interfaces
- Form Factor : 2.5 Inch
- Available Capacity : Up to 4 TB
- Designed for gamers and professionals to handle heavy workloads of high-end PCs, workstations and NAS
Samsung 850 PRO 512 GB 2.5 inch SATA III Solid State Drive - Black (Certified Refurbished)
Features
- 3D V-NAND Flash Memory
- Samsung 850 EVO - RAPID MODE
- Secure Valuable Data Using AES 256 Encryption
- Sequential read speed up to 550, Sequential write speed up to 520, Random read speed up to 100K IOPS, Random write speed up to 90K IOPS
Samsung 850 PRO 512 GB Serial ATA III 2.5" - Internal Solid State Drives (SSD) 512 GB 2.5", 550 MB/s 6 Gbit/s
Free shipping
Features
- Samsung SSD 512GB SATA3 850 PRO
- Manufacturer: Samsung
- Manufacturer's number: MZ-7KE512Z
