Samsung 500GB 840 Series 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD)lMZ-7TD500BW $279 with free shipping @ BuyDig

Quote from sjsfan : Power Power Consumption (W): .15W

Samsung has been lying with power spec claims for years. The 830 was perhaps the worst lie (it uses a lot of power under load), but these TLC drives are up there.

Quote from HardOCP : Samsung claims that the TLC 840 Series SSDs perform with just as low of a power threshold as the 840 Pro. Reason dictates that this is not possible due to the fact that TLC will have a higher P/E voltage requirement. The voltages we recorded with the 500GB TLC 840 are higher than the 840 Pro across the board. Overall this high voltage is to be expected with the nature of TLC NAND, which requires more power for Program/Erase cycles, and the sheer amount of NAND on the SSD. The random write voltage was unsurprisingly very high, and the sequential write voltage requirement is also on the high end. Even with these relatively 'fresh' readings we feel that this would not be the best SSD for mobile applications.

256 GB review:

Quote from HardOCP : The voltages we recorded with the Samsung 840 are higher than the Samsung 840 Pro across the board, and also exhibit one of the highest idle voltages that we have witnessed. This is probably due to some hefty background processes to handle the TLC NAND. The random write voltage was unsurprisingly very high, and the sequential write voltage requirement is also on the high end. With this being a relatively new SSD, with its TLC destined to begin producing more errors over the life of the drive, we would expect these power consumption figures to grow over the life of the SSD. Even with these relatively 'fresh' readings we feel that this would not be the best SSD for mobile applications. That distinction clearly belongs with the Samsung 840 Pro.

The conclusion from the HardOCP. Didn't want to clutter up the wiki.

Quote from HardOCP : The 500GB TLC Samsung 840 SSD is a great performer in steady state, particularly in our trace-based testing. The TLC 840 outperformed flagship MLC products in many aspects of our steady state trace-based testing, making a large investment in extra endurance that will likely be left unused questionable for most users. The higher capacity version provides more endurance to allay users concerns, and more write speed that will provide a smoother user experience. The Samsung SSD Magician software is the best utility for SSD management for consumers, taking the hassle out of SSD installation and management. The price of the 500GB TLC Samsung 840 is simply unmatched by any current generation competitor, making the value aspect unbeatable, especially when the excellent performance is taken into consideration. TLC SSDs seem destined for the high capacity market with its endurance, performance, and value for the dollar increasing with each bump in capacity. We feel that consumers will vote with their wallet, which would give the Samsung 840 SSD an easy win in most cases. We have previously awarded the 250GB model with the [H]ardOCP Silver Award. While reminding users that the performance of the TLC SSDs varies with the capacity, we give the 500GB TLC Samsung 840 SSD the [H]ardOCP Gold Award as it is simply an excellent value in the performance SSD segment.

any rec on a usb to sata cable for laptop hdd to SSD cloning?

Quote from peters4n6 : any rec on a usb to sata cable for laptop hdd to SSD cloning?

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-...sata+cable

Meow :3

I'd recommend spending a little extra though and going for http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake...take+blacx or the non-eSata version http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake...take+blacx

Showing up as 309$ for me for some reason..

Quote from ncovey : http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/err...onyms.html using the apostrophe to denote a plural acronym is an acceptable convention http://english.stackexchange.com/...phe-or-not but has been recently fallen out of favor and become a topic of dispute.

Sticking to the topic is also an acceptable & preferred practice. Try it sometime.

The price is $309 not $279 now, don't think that's a good deal anymore

Quote from SublimeEminence : The price is $309 not $279 now, don't think that's a good deal anymore

Looks like it's available directly from buydig


http://www.buydig.com/shop/produc...0BW&ref=cj


$279 with code DIG5

Quote from btan887 : it's a good deal but wasn't this $240.00 a few days ago at newegg? http://slickdeals.net/f/5888082-2...0-SSD-YMMV

You could only get that deal if you were on their text message list I believe.

"Not recommend for mobile use" ??? What a bummer...

Quote from peters4n6 : any rec on a usb to sata cable for laptop hdd to SSD cloning?

I wouldn't clone your drive unless you are using a tool provided by the manufacturer of the SSD. Even then, the best performance and settings will be chosen when you reinstall your OS on the new SSD that won't be set when you clone (Such as perhaps AHCI, indexing off, defrag off, etc)

Though I know Samsung SSD Magician will let you know what should be optimized...

Quote from peters4n6 : any rec on a usb to sata cable for laptop hdd to SSD cloning?

If you need something right away, the guys in my IT department use this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Apric...cp=1&lp=13

You can pick one up at your local Best Buy Store.

Quote from xexx : I wouldn't clone your drive unless you are using a tool provided by the manufacturer of the SSD. Even then, the best performance and settings will be chosen when you reinstall your OS on the new SSD that won't be set when you clone (Such as perhaps AHCI, indexing off, defrag off, etc) Though I know Samsung SSD Magician will let you know what should be optimized...

Does this apply to Windows OS & Mac OS or just Windows?

Quote from ejicon : Does this apply to Windows OS & Mac OS or just Windows?

For Mac cloning, you can use Disk Copy in Mac OS X to make an image of your boot volume. Then you will choose "Scan for Restore" on the image from the Disk Utility menu. Then you can clone the image ("Restore") to the ssd, which you must first format as GUID and HFS+ Journaled.

After that, you will want to enable TRIM via Grant Pannell's terminal commands: http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/t...-for-lion/

If you are using Snow Leopard, you will need to download the version of Trim Enabler from Oskar Groth. Stick with Pannell's method of later versions of OS X. You will likely want to use a noatime script to improve longevity. (A Unix convention OS X inherited is that every time a file is accessed, it is written to with the latest access time. This is a waste of writes to the SSD NAND.) Google noatime and you'll find instructions.

For Windows, you can use Macrium Reflect. However, Windows is complicated by the assignation of drive letters. After cloning to my SSD with Macrium, I tried to change the drive letter to C and Windows refused. So I changed the C drive (the original boot hard disk) to another letter and shut down the machine. The machine booted to a blue screen that said Windows is not genuine and nothing happened. I tried unplugging the hard disk but Windows wouldn't boot to the SSD even in safe mode. So, I found a utility from Paragon that is free and which fixes drive letter problems. This can be apparently avoided by using some commands detailed in a Microsoft article to change drive letters.

Windows is also complicated by alignment issues. If you're using Windows XP, your partition won't be aligned with the SSD and will need to be aligned with a partition management tool. It is better to do a fresh install of Windows 7 or later. Microsoft does not support TRIM in XP or Vista, so for long-term performance you will want Windows 7 or later because TRIM is important to maintain SSD speed.

When you format your SSD in Windows, choose 4096 as the allocation size, NTFS, and quick format. You will also want MBR not GPT. You can find these in Windows 7 by typing "disk management" into the search bar.

Dealing with boot volumes in Mac OS X is much easier. Not only don't you have to deal with drive letter nonsense, you can boot easily from USB sticks and hard drives. You can install OS X easily onto them and boot from them. You don't have to mess with Linux tools and you can have full access to your files.