Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE120BW

since all of the other reviews read as if they were advertisements, and this is a relatively new item, I decided to write a review for you guys.Just a heads up, I didn't know this when buying, but yeah, i ordered the single unit which only includes the drive. luckily for me, i had an extra sata cable laying around so no biggie.Installed windows 7 ultimate fresh on this drive and was fairly impressed at the bootup time, but also satisfied at the overall performance of applications and programs being executed right after starting the computer.I was worried about the lifespan of SSD's as this is the first one i've ever bought. I looked up a couple benchmarks and found this relatively comprehensive test which concluded that the drive could last around 23 years: [...] . Which is a massive improvement from the western digital hard drive that lasted me 4 years. They mentioned that although the results are synthetic, the results probably don't range far from real world examples. As other reviews stated, this hard drive was a breeze to install, as are every other standard hard drive.One important thing to mention is that the single unit does not come with the 2.5-3.5 inch adapter, so if you are planning on putting this inside a desktop, make sure you buy an adapter so it can fit in the hard drive bay.This drive really does live up to its expectations and the numbers that it puts up. One important thing to mention is the devices/softwares RAPID mode. which is a really interesting technology that takes up to a gig of your system memory, and turns it into cache for the drive. After a little bit of research, i found a lot of articles that have mixed reviews on the technology: [...]I personally keep RAPID mode off, as it seems only to improve the numbers synthetically and looks like it has no reflection in real world situations.One thing that was cool was the magician software is really usable and simplistic. If you want to enable RAPID mode, then you can click a button, if not, then click it again. you can also use the magician software to update firmware for your SSD. It gives you the option to use TRIM commands easily and simply. One thing i didn't like about the software was that the OS optimization tab. I accidentally clicked maximum performance and didn't realize the difference, i later found out that my processor was constantly running at the maximum 125 watts. Which is weird because it should be able to step down when in idle. I checked my Windows plan settings and found out that Samsung had added its own power setting which put the minimum processor state at 100 percent, which should have been at 1 percent. other than that though, it's a good little piece of software.There are already a lot of reviews out there on this drive, as this is the budget SSD that really can do it all. [...]as you can tell, the drive is incredibly high up there, for a very decent price. This may very well be the best bang for your buck drive out on the market today.one other thing i thought was cool: when you search in the start menu any application you're looking for, the result is INSTANT.Anyways, tl;dr: This is an amazing drive.i like: that it lives up to the numbers that samsung has given us, and its supposed life spandislike: nothing, it's a standard drive that does its job.

I recently ordered this SSD for my Gateway desktop PC. In this review I’ll give you my opinion of the drive.The 840 series are 2.5 inch drives so I had to use a 3.5″ drive adapter bracket (the one recommended on the product page) since the Gateway only has 3.5″ drive bays. The SSD fit into the computer’s drive cage perfectly with the adapter, and after connecting the power and SATA cables I was all set to begin the software installation.First, I set the SSD to work in AHCI mode and the DVD drive as the primary boot drive in the BIOS, then booted the computer from the Gateway Recovery DVD’s that I had on hand. Since I had been planning to do a clean re-installation of Windows 7 on this PC anyway, I temporarily left the hard drive unplugged and followed the prompts to install Windows 7 on the SSD.Everything went as planned with nary a hitch. In no time at all I had Windows booting directly from the SSD. After installing a ton of Windows Updates and some of my most-used programs to the SSD, I reconnected the hard drive as a secondary data drive. I really like this setup because it gives me super fast boot-up and program start-up times from the SSD while providing plenty of storage space for my data files on the hard drive.The speed increase courtesy of the Samsung 840 SSD is simply amazing. This Gateway takes almost 2 minutes to boot to a usable Desktop from the hard drive, but with the SSD it boots in 33 seconds with essentially the same software configuration. Even better, while I used to be able to go grab a quick snack while PhotoShop Elements loaded, now that bloated resource hog loads in a flash!Overall, I think the Samsung 840 is both an outstanding solid state drive and a great value at well less than $100. It’s easy to install, runs as quiet as a mouse, is cool to the touch, and it puts a very capable, but older PC in the proverbial fast lane. I highly recommend this drive if you’re looking for an inexpensive way to really speed up your computer.