Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-76E500), black

Overall a good SSD and the improvements are insane. Came quick through the post and the speeds are all top notch. I am a newbie when it comes to these sort of stuff so I didn't realise you needed a sata cable alongside with the ssd so either make sure you have a spare in your case or buy a new one. Instantly feels like a new pc and boots up windows really quick. I used the data migration tool to transfer most of data from my HDD to the SSD and was really easy and simple, although I found it tricky to pick certain files I wanted to keep and its interface was confusing at first. Games see a massive improvements in load times and in some games in helped with the stuttering I had due to me only running 8gb ram set. Again this doesn't apply for all games only a select few had their stuttering issues disappear when playing watch dogs 2, Kingdom come deliverance and Black ops cold war. Now I got this ssd on a sale for £52. Its definitely worth the price however, if this isnt on sale or retailing at its msrp of £99 then your probably better off getting any cheaper models such as crucial mx500 or bx series. Yes it is from samsung which historically I known to have better build quality and better endurance but usually SSD only last for 5 years before you need to change them. So I say pick this up if this is on a sale if not just go for the cheaper companies. The difference in speeds are hard to see in the real world and more and right now just does not justify the extra £40 compared to its cheaper competition. If its on a sale grab one as personally Samsung products are better in build quality and offer better endurance for the long haul but at £99, your better off getting more storage capacity from a different company at the same price.

I have a 7 year old Dell XPS 8300 Desktop PC with a 1TB HDD which I wanted to breath new life into by installing an SSD to improve boot, file and program load times. I wanted to make the SSD the system/boot disk and relegate the old HDD to secondary large volume storage.I needed a 2.5" to 3.5" mounting frame to allow me to install the new 2.5" SSD in a 3.5" bay inside the PC. There are so many choices of adapter available on Amamzon and I eventually chose this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B075FH3KTT/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You will make your own choice but even though I was only installing a single SSD, this adapter allowed me to add a second in the future if I wanted. I have done a separate review for the adapter, it was a very good choice for me.I was initially a little hesitant beforehand about attempting the install, but it turned out to be much more straightforward than expected. After disconnecting the power from the PC, I screwed the SSD to the base of the adapter then the adapter into the drive bay beneath the existing HDD (all screw holes lined up), then connected the SATA cable (provided with the adapter) to the SSD and motherboard SATA port and then the power cable (there was a spare connected power cable already inside the PC which I used, but there are also two supplied with the adapter) to the SSD. That was it in terms of physical installation.I powered up the PC and then used Samsung's Data Migration software downloaded from their support website (details come with the SSD). Samsung will recommend you clone the SSD by first connecting it externally using a SATA to USB adapter, but although this would be necessary with a Laptop, as long as you have space in the 3.5" bay to install the SSD and the original HDD (true for most desktops) my method will be faster and less fiddly.I made sure that I either deleted or moved to external backup all data (non system) that wouldn't need to be on the new SSD so that my 1TB HDD had a lot less than 500GB (in fact It was less than 100GB as I archived most of my non system data offline). I then ran the Samsung Data Migration tool to clone my HDD to the SSD. The time it takes depends o how much data to clone, but for me it was fast.When the clone finished successfully, I restarted the PC and using F2 key (different for various PC's) immediately at start up let me into the system BIOS. Here you need to reset the boot sequence so that the new SSD is number one for boot. After saving this in the BIOS and exiting, the PC booted up from the new SSD in about 1/10th of the previous time.Once happy everything was stable, I reformatted the old 1TB HDD which is now holding any large volume data that I don't need the high performace of the SSD for.As I said, boot time has reduced significantly and program/file load times are rapid. I'm very happy with my 'new' PC, and hopefully won't need to hit my bank balance for a replacement PC any time soon. Highly recommended upgrade for your PC, and it's also worth checking that you have sufficient RAM as that is just a 10 minute plug and play exercise.

In past times I've not been a great fan of Samsung, either in the guise of phones, tablets, laptops, optical disc drives or AV equipment. These ssd however, and the software you can download to better utilise them is very much better.Unpacking them you realise Samsung have made a reasonable attempt to protect your investment. Yes they are bare bones, just the warranty/installation literature and the disk, but time taken to read them and installation isn't a problem. I was able to download the disk cloning 'Data Migration' software from Samsung, install it on the aging operating disk that gave cause to purchase the two of these discs. Cloning the operating disc was a matter of starting up windows, signing in, shutting down all start up programs and using task manager to close all non-essential services, then closing task manager. Depending on your machine, it is likely you will need to buy a sata to usb adapter, or if you have 'hot swap' drive bays the new ssd can go into one of those.Starting the Samsung 'Data Migration' software, it reads all the disks on the machine to ascertain which disk needs cloning, do not attempt to put the new ssd into the machine to check it, format it or assign it a drive letter before attempting to do the data migration, doing so may stop that from taking place; let Samsung's 'Data Migration' software set the new ssd up from a virgin state. The next step it is just a matter of turning off the machine, physically taking out the old drive and replacing it with the new ssd, and rebooting the machine.The other Samsung software to download and install is Samsung Magician, this tool set will make sure that the drive has the latest firmware, and the best drivers, it also has other features that assist the drive maintain optimal performance.You will need to buy an ssd of equal, or actually better, larger capacity due to the merits of being able to 'over provision' your requirements. 'Over provisioning' offers faster functionality of the ssd and can increase its lifespan too. When purchasing a replacement or upgrade component for computing of any form it is worth deliberately suffering an 'Ouch' factor (higher price) and going for a faster, higher capacity component that will take longer to become obsolete. Such a component can always be upcycled into another machine; you never know what turns life will take, so buy once and buy wisely and these Samsung 860 Evo ssd are most likely fulfil this.