This was my first venture into SSD drives. I originally had considered going with a cheaper option, most notably Corsairs' FORCE series or OCZ's VERTEX/AGILITY. However, as I started to research those products more in-depth, I realize I would be playing russian roulette with my data as a result of the instability of the drives due to sandforce controller issues that, at the time of this writing, seem to be slightly resolved as a result of OCZ's help. In the end, my search narrowed down to the leading maker of this field, Crucial, and Samsung. Why Samsung? Well, Samsung was a brand that I knew and was very reputable. Moreover, it's flash ram was used by Apple prior to the android scuffle.
I ended up choosing Samsung's drive over Crucial's drive for the following reasons:
1. Success and Brand. Samsung desperately needed a success in the SSD field since it's first attempt was met with a tepid reception. This subsequent attempt was very well put together in my mind. The drive utilized the latest in technology (i.e. SATA III). Furthermore, the drive is sleek, smooth, and sexy beast. Lastly, the pricing is a clear indicator that Samsung wants to be seen as a leading competitor in this field.
2. SSD Magician. Samsung's accompanying program SSD Magician provides an array of well thought options with a very easy to use GUI. Moreover, with your permission, it highlights and then changes options that negatively affect the drive performance. Furthermore, the program allows you to schedule OS optimizations and garbage collection empties. finally, one of the most important selling points, was the ability to upgrade the drives firmware without having to jump through hoops similar to flashing the bios. With this drive, I could do it just from windows.
3. Speed. This drive is fast. Really, really, really fast. Benchmark-wise my sequential write speeds are just over 300 mb/s and my sequential read speeds sit around 520 mb/s. 7.9 on the Windows Experience Index (WEI). To put how fast this drive is in perspective: Windows 7 Professional was installed in under 10 minutes, windows updates take about half the time to install in comparison to my non-ssd computer, and boot takes about 11 seconds from the BIOS finishing posting (total: 36 seconds). More importantly, if I blink when launching Adobe Photoshop CS5.5, I miss its flash screen!
4. Cost benefits. Samsung was really thorough with their kits. For instance, it included a mounting bracket (~$10), really bloody good Ghost data migration tool ($70), and a free top-selling, highly rate videogame ($50). So, I gained about $130 of nice tools/assets. At the time I purchased this, crucial's drive was $10 less than this drive. So, the $10 that I saved I would of had to reinvest to acquire a third party mounting bracket with no compatibility guarantees. However, I would have also lost out on the $120 worth of other goodies.
Positives (elaborated above):
Fast
Stylish
Reliability
Great Software Support
Negatives:
This drive does not play nice with Marvell controllers. But what SSD does?
SSD Magician does not recognize the drive in RAID setup.
The steps in the instruction manual detailing how to transfer an existing windows 7 install to the SSD are incomplete as a result of Windows 7 partition alignment. There are quite a few hoops that you have to jump through to get it working correctly that I'll leave to a third-party technology site to detail. In reality though, it is far better to do a fresh install and I highly recommend it.
Mounting bracket does not have holes on the bottom to secure the drive to a case tray. Your case will need to allow you to mount the drive via the side. (a.k.a it isn't quite a "universal" mounting bracket)
Price per gigabyte is a bit high as a result of the Crucial drive's price dropping significantly (at the time of this writing).
Overall, this product deserves a solid five stars due to the positives overwhelmingly outweighing the negatives and the lack of trouble I've experienced so far with it. It has met all my expectations and even exceeded one or two!
| ブランド | サムスン(SAMSUNG) |
|---|---|
| メーカー | 日本サムスン |
| 製品サイズ | 10.01 x 0.71 x 6.99 cm; 63.5 g |
| 商品モデル番号 | MZ-7PC128D/AM |
| フォームファクタ | 2.5インチ |
| 商品の寸法 幅 × 高さ | 10 x 0.7 x 7 cm |
| HDD容量 | 128.00 |
| ハードディスク種類 | ソリッドステートドライブ |
| HDDインターフェース | Serial ATA |
| 同梱バッテリー | いいえ |
| 商品の重量 | 63.5 g |
