SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 512GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7PC512B/WW

<^_^>SUMMARY:Easy Install for MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2012, Great Performance, Stable, No Problems, TRIM Support enabled.DETAIL:After reading through reviews from multiple sources looking at SSD drives to pair with the newest mid-2012 Apple Macbook Pro computers I ended up choosing the Samsung 830 512-gig drive. It was not the fastest of all the drives, it was not the cheapest of all the drives, but a few things drove me to pick this over some of the others I was considering:- It seemed from what I read that the reliability has been pretty good with this drive, this is important to me,- Apple is using the same, or a variant of, the same TM830 controller in their Apple-branded drives, not sure how important this is,- The need to worry about firmware updates is less as the current firmware has been in place and seems solid for quite a while.When looking at the Samsung 830 options I was trying to determine if I needed just the drive or the drive with the laptop kit. I chose the drive-only as it turns out the drive will fit as-is into the mid-2012 Macbook Pro without the need for the spacer that comes with the laptop kit. The 7mm refers to the thickness of the drive, the drive is still the same length and width of 9mm drives so it lines up fine and fits well in the Macbook Pro drive bay.Installation was pretty easy. My Macbook Pro was brand new so I hooked up the Samsung SSD through a firewire->SATA adapter I had laying around. I used Disk Utility to Partition and format the drive. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive from the MacBook Pro Hard Disk to the Samsung Solid State Disk. Carbon Copy Cloner will give you the option to install the Recovery Partition if you choose. I used Carbon Copy Cloner, but you can use Super Duper or Mac-based disk cloning software of your choice.To install the SSD into the Macbook Pro I did the following, wearing a static wristband, using a Torx T6 and a small phillips head screw driver:- Flipped the Macbook Pro over,- Removed the 10 screws,- Popped the bottom off of the computer,- Unplugged the battery lead from the motherboard,- Unscrewed the two screws keeping the disk in place,- Removed the current Hard Drive and Removed the 4 screws bolts in the HDD casing,- Put those 4 bolts back into the Samsung SSD,- Placed the Samsung SSD into the drive bay and screwed it back in place,- Replaced the battery lead to the motherboard,- Placed the bottom back onto the laptop chassis and screwed it in,- Turned the laptop back over and booted it up...Google the following to find a video on replacing the hard drive if you need: video upgrade/replace hard drive macbook pro 15 mid 2012This thing is fast. I'm really glad I decided to get the Samsung 830. I've had it a couple of weeks and have had no trouble. The machine boots fast, applications load in a blink, and the machine is very snappy. By the way I added 16-gig of RAM while I had it open. :-)Now about issues I have read about while researching SSD's for the Mac:1) Firmware UpdatesIt seems that various brands of drives required firmware updates. Some firmware updates worked for some people, some didn't, some had to revert to previous firmware for their system to work. I didn't feel like messing with any of that.I liked that the Samsung has had a fairly stable firmware on their drive and have not required firmware updates in quite a while. To me this means stability. While yes, it is difficult to update the Samsung firmware on a mac (you have to take it out and put it on a windows system) the fact that I don't have to update it in the first place because the firmware has been stable was a big plus for me in my buying decision.2) TRIM support:When you put a 3rd party SSD in an Apple machine the Mac OS does not enable TRIM support. You can enable TRIM support after you install the SSD. You can either use Trim Enabler (v2 or better suggested), or you can do it manually by making a modification to a kernel extension so that the TRIM commands generated by the OS can be passed to the drive. The Samsung 830 does to garbage collection so enabling TRIM is not exactly necessary, but benchmarks, tests, and other things I have read lead me to believe that enabling TRIM is the thing to do and should be OK.Manually modification to Enable TRIM support in Mac OS: GOOGLE: "trim enabler grant"Application to Enable TRIM support in Mac OS: GOOGLE: "trim enabler groths"I've had this drive for a couple of weeks so far and I've been running with no problems. I'm glad I got this SSD for my Macbook Pro.

I havent started booting off the new drive yet because Ive been getting an error migrating data from old drive - using the Samsung data migration tool. It fails with "cloning failed" "Target Disk has been disconnected -00001"Ive run it twice and it fails at the same spot. It looks like most of the data has been moved but who knows. The Samsung website offers you a copy of Ghost but the license apparently only comes with the Full-installation kit. Disappointed.Update April/may : Disappointment increases when the drive began to fail after a few weeks. Blue screens and lockups, random errors that Samsung magician never detected. No tool would definitive point to the drive as the issue. Finally gave up and sent it in for RMA. E Samsung website doesn't even acknowledge these drives exist. so its not possible to log an rma using the website. For the price of these drives I expect better support . Third party support company threatens that they will test the drive and only replace it under very limited circumstances. Mine was replaced but again I expect better support for this kind of cost per gb.Update: NOv 2013 - Since May ive used the drive as cache to speed up my main drive on my Asus motherboard. (ASUS SSD Caching avoided teh pain of reinstalling windows )Finally found time to install windows 7 fresh on the refurbished Samsung 830 and boot from it - that worked for a month and now windows is locking up. No errors, no event log entries, just lockup. Samsung software see no problem. I now wish I had never wasted the $500 on this drive. Samsung support basically does NOT support at all - If YOU think there is a problem - you pay to ship the drive to them - they test it - if they agree they send you another refurb - if they disagree they send back your drive ... Wont make the mistake of buying Samsung again

It is faster, but in my 2007 aluminum iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM), I think there's a bottleneck with the old SATA connector... my Mac is not SATA III, so I don't think I'm seeing the kind of speed enhancements that others with a SATA III connector are seeing. Is this drive worth the price? Maybe not for me considering the bottleneck. Oh, when installing the Mac OSX operating system, you have to go to the menu and format the drive first with the disk utility; otherwise, it won't detect the drive! This is not the fault of the drive though. So far, I like the drive.

Received a Samsung 830 box with a 100GB conventional 6 1/2 year old hard drive in the box. While warehouse deals advertises that they inspect each item for accuracy and operation this is a complete misstatement. When I called customer service as an irate customer they indicated that they receive tons of shipments and don't have time to inspect them. What a lousy selling model. Never again will I buy a used product from Amazon.

SYNOPSISIncredible improvement in performance, I feel like I have a new laptop.MY LAPTOPModel: Macbook Pro 2011 - 15inch - i7 - HDD - 4gb RAMOS: Mountain LionUsage: Editing Raw Photos (Lightroom & Photoshop), Browsing the web (Chrome), Streaming Media (to Sonos, and TV).WHY THIS UPGRADE?Laptop would frequently freeze or crash when simultaneously running Chrome, Lightroom and Photoshop.Despite clean installs, the laptop felt sluggish. I got tired of watching the apple version of the egg timer.WHY SAMSUNG 830, 512GB?The right balance of performance, reliability, capacity and price. Prices have come down significantly in 2012, making SSD a viable option at high capacities.If you upgrade to SSD, I really think it's worth the extra cash to buy the full 512GB (rather than a lower capacity SSD). Some people are buying smaller capacity SSDs and converting the smart drive / DVD drive, to house the HDD and provide additional storage, but I think you lose too many of the benefits from the upgrade (together with the DVD drive).BENEFITS* Applications load instantly. Everything feels a lot more snappy* The computer handles raw processing tasks effortlessly. (for example import and edit of raw images in lightroom/photoshop)* The laptop is silent and cool.* Reduced boot-up times.* Longer battery lifePROCESS I FOLLOWED1. Attach the SSD using a hard disk enclosure bay. Reformat the Samsung SSD and clone the existing HDD onto the SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner (there are some good video tutorials on youtube).Notes:(a) You will need to buy a hard disk enclosure bay or SATA to USB connector.(b) The Macbook pro would not recognize the disk/bay until the Macbook was plugged into the power charger.(c) The cloning process takes quite a long time. Start it off and head out somewhere for a few hours. (I use "Caffeine" from the mac store to keep my PC from switching to sleep mode).2. Open up the Laptop and replace the SSD. This takes 20mins.Notes:(a) Ifixit.com offer loads of free tutorials on how to do this.(b) Buy specialist screw drivers (for the mac screws) in advance.(c) I upgraded the RAM at the same time. This was super cheap. Again, `ifixit' offer tutorials on this.

Ok first I must say that it could be that the fault lies in the Intel HM65 (Rev B2) chipset of my Toshiba Qosmio X770 or, this SSD is truly pathetic! Could be that my BIOS is locked to SATA 2? But that's not possible as it's set to AHCI. According to Intel's website, my specific mobile HM65 chipset has two SATA-3 ports (0 and 1) which equates to the SSD and my second drive. Samsung's own software (SSD Magician 4.2.1) tells me that the SSD is indeed connected to a SATA-3 port and therefore I should get maximum performance.I did 2 benchmark tests on that Magician software. Clean boot-up, no applications loaded and anti-virus off.Test 1: Laptop's power setting on "Balance," result:Random read: 5360 out of 80000Random write: 24854 out of 36000Sequential read: 184 out of 520Sequential write: 333 out of 400Test 2: Laptop's power setting on "Samsung High Performance," result:Random read: 3206 out of 80000Random write: 23400 out of 36000Sequential read: 148 out of 520Sequential write: 250 out of 400Not only does the SSD perform better under Window 7's own "Balance" power setting but I am truly getting pathetic SATA-2 speeds (250-300 MB/s) for reads & writes.I'm stuck with this drive so I have to look on some positives namely, (1) I paid only £300 for 512GB which is about 60p/GB and (2) it's better performance than a 7200rpm hybrid hard-drive. However if I pay for SATA-3 then I want SATA-3. Something I would find helpful is if the Magician software told me "Look mate, you got a dodgy drive from us. Go get a replacement!" All I get from the software is that my SSD has the latest firmware, it optimized Windows for SSD and every test I do give me slightly worse results. My advice: "Avoid this product!" I won't buy anything from Samsung.

I just about had enough of my old HD when the incessant disk thrashing and slow loading got to me. I tend to have many browser tabs and lots of programs open, and so I decided to take the plunge and buy a 512GB SSD, since a 256GB would be too small for me. Now everything is silky smooth - it makes my Windows 7 feel like a new OS.This "Basic Kit" version of the drive is perfect for me; no extras such as Norton Ghost or the extra software that allows you to restore your old Windows setup (many say it's best to install Windows fresh rather than mirror it to the new SSD).What can I say that hasn't already been said? SSDs are the future, and from my massive research, the Samsung make (at least the 830 model) is probably the most reliable of all. I think Apple have discovered this and now use it on many of their own laptops. I don't I recall even one negative review of the 830 drive, unless it had something to do with the Norton Ghost extra which is obviously subsidiary to the main SSD product.

Nachdem die Platte in meinem Rechner läuft, ist alles so wie erwartet. Tempo pur! Dafür wären es 5 Sterne gewesen!Abzüge von einem Stern (entspricht der investierten Zeit und den grauen Haaren) gibt es für die Migration von der alten Platte auf die neue.(1) Platte und Samsung SW installiert - problemlos(2) HD klonen ausgewählt - bitte Norton Ghost herunterladen und installieren - problemlos(3) Lizenzschlüssel für Norton Ghost eingeben - soll hinten auf der CD Verpackung stehen??? Download!! - kein Schlüssel - der Samsung Schlüssel geht nicht(4) Programm läuft auch als Trialversion - gut - also HD klonen ausgewählt - "diese Funktion geht nur mit Lizenzschlüssel" - blöd(5) Telefonieren und Lizenzschlüssel besorgen - dauert......(6) Produkt lizensiert - HD klonen ausgewählt und los gehtŽs.....bis 99% - dann Fehlermldung und Abbruch(7) Detailmeldung besagt: "Bitte Softwareupdate durchführen, dann könnte es gehen"(8) Automatische SW Erkennung der Norton Website findet KEIN installiertes Norton Programm(9) Manuelle Auswahl stellt kein Norton Ghost zum Update zur Verfügung - Abbruch des "One-Click-HD-Klonens"!!!Also der herkömmliche Weg:(1) Platte wieder raus(2) Windows System und Daten sichern auf externes Medium(3) Wiederherstellungsmedium erstellen, wenn nicht sowieso schon vorhanden(4) Alte Platte raus - neue Platte rein(5) von DVD booten und Datensicherung zurückspielen(6) läuft!

S'il ne fait plus partie des meilleurs SSD du moment, il s'agit d'une affaire que l'on ne peut rater.Sa cinquième étoile n'est pas présente car les logiciels Samsung (comme de bien d'autres constructeurs) sont indigents de mon point de vue et surtout ne permette surtout pas de cloner un PC sous Windows 7, 8 :* Il faut bien avoir en tête que nous achetons (le plus souvent) des PC de constructeurs qui contiennent des partitions qui leur sont propres et qui sont indigestes pour a peu près tout les logiciels de clonage (et j'en ai testé...) ;* Il est donc nécessaire à l'installation du SSD de : posséder un DVD/clé USB contenant le système d'exploitation afin d'installer un système sur le SSD en "Clean Install" ; retélécharger tous les drivers et les pilotes ensuite ; avoir sauvegardé ses documents/images/musiques/vidéos... sur un autre support pour les recopier ensuite !* Ce n'est qu'après ces opérations fastidieuses et longues que vous aurez un PC (ou un Mac, mais les problèmes d'installation en moins) transfiguré.* Ne pensez pas non plus pouvoir utiliser les DVD de sauvegardes de votre constructeur (le plus souvent "calés" sur le partitionnement initial, ils refuseront de vous réinstaller votre système sur votre nouveau disque dur de capacité différente ;-()