Looking for a suitable SSD for my laptop?

Hi folks, I notice the price of SSDs has now finally fallen to the point where they are looking quite tempting indeed to the likes of yours truly. If I go ahead with this it would be my first ever hardware upgrade I have ever carried out on any of my laptops - so please excuse me for being cautious and asking many questions!

My laptop is in my sig. As you can see it has a 2.5" 1TB 5400rpm HDD (SATA II), which has served me fine up until now; but honestly leaves me wanting more - it is horribly slow. It tanks when trying to do any kind of multi-tasking that involves doing any file transferring of any kind. I currently only use half of that storage but it's mainly Steam games, so easily backed up.

I would want a 256GB SSD at the minimum. Do not want any less storage than that.

OK so here are my q's:

1) Can anyone recommend the best compatible SSDs for my system? Samsung ones preferably seeing as my laptop is Samsung and so the firmware would likely gel well.
2) Seeing as my current SATA drive is version II, does this mean version III SSDs would not be compatible with my system? My chipset is Intel HM76.
3) Some offer, 'easy upgrade kits' - do these copy over the entire BIOS and recovery partition of the laptop - if not, then what is the easiest and safest way to do this?

Cheers!

 

1. Yes, Samsung 830 is a nice choice.
2. SATA III is backward compatible and would work without any problem, you can also use it on a possible future upgrade.
3. This free program will do the migration: Migrate OS to SSD securely with Aomei Partition Assistant - Partition Freeware?
All the best.

 

Samsung's data migration utility will do just fine. It's really good, works on 830s, 470s and 840s. They're extremely good in the sense that you don't need to shrink partitions because it doesn't use sector by sector cloning, decent transfer rates via USB to SATA enclosure (mine hit 30-50MB/s), it doesn't break your Windows Master Boot Record. The software is pretty good even for novices, its so simple and the UI isn't confusing.

Since a proprietary tool that works is already provided, I don't see a need for a 3rd party program tbh.

www.samsung.com/samsungssd

 

I would not recommend cloning at all - a clean install is your best bet to the highest performance possible, sustained, over the lifetime of your drive.


I would recommend the 512GB M4 or (if you can wait) possibly the new M500 from Crucial which will go to 960GB for less than $600.

If you want a 256GB SSD (and want to fill it to capacity) there are non to recommend wholeheartedly. If you won't fill it up and you can leave some capacity as extra spare area via 'unallocated' capacity - then I can recommend the Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD.



See:
AnandTech - Micron/Crucial Announces M500 SSD Line of SSDs


See:
AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs



Good luck.

 

Looks interesting... I may wait for the Crucial M500 - depends how long it takes to arrive this side of the pond! Thanks

 

One thing worth investigating is 7 mm versus 9.5 mm drive bay and SSD heights. I have seen recommendations of using carboard but I am a bit anal and would want any new drive I purchase to fix exactly or at least have a proper drive caddy.

 

Cakefish, I hope it's OK that I borrow your thread
So, I'm looking for 7mm thick 120-128GB SSD for my Samsung 5-series Ultrabook. So far I've found following that would be suitable:
- Kingston SSDNow V300 (95 EUR)
- Samsung SSD 840 (105 EUR) & 840 Pro (150 EUR)
- Intel 520 Series (145 EUR)

Are Intel 520 and Samsung 840 Pro worth the higher price? Samsung 840 has TLC-memory and some reviews said that it's unclear how long those type of memories will last. AFAIK, all other has MLC memory that should be more durable. Please advise a newbie here

 

The Samsung 840 Pro is one of the newest high-end drives and is worth the higher price. The Intel 520 isn't worth it imo because it's only slightly faster than comparable Sandforce drives; you're essentially paying for Intel reliability and a 5-year warranty (look at the Intel 335 if you want to go the Intel route).

TLC memory is indeed less durable than MLC memory, but in normal workloads this is irrelevant (see Anandtech's article on TLC memory).

 

No, I wouldn't say any of those ~120GB capacity SSD's are 'suitable' - unless you're able to make the O/S + Programs and your data fit in less than ~50GiB to allow around 25GiB free space and also allow for an additional 30% 'unallocated' capacity to ensure consistently high performance (over time - or; sustained) with the least WA during active (user) use and also during GC/TRIM activity possible.

By far for consistency the Intel 520 Series is the recommended SSD - the Samsung 840 Pro is a poor substitute if you want to enjoy the performance you're paying for over the lifetime of the product (and the capacity fully used).


The following link shows how extra spare area (via leaving some capacity as 'unallocated') helps performance substantially:

See:
AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs



The following link shows how an Intel 335 Series (similar to the 520 Series) is obviously better than the Samsung if it will be used at full capacity.

See:
AnandTech - Plextor Updates The Firmware on M5 Pro: Promises Increased Performance, We Test It


(See last graph on page above).



What the take-away is from the above is that just like in gaming - the minimum FPS is just as important as the average FPS in determining a 'good' score.

The Samsung looks better than the Plextor M5 Pro (note: most of the data points are along the bottom axis for the Plextor SSD...), but the Intel is the best SSD in real world workloads period.

I am curious why Anand doesn't publish the 25% over-provisioned scores for Intel (consumer) SSD's? Would they score better than even the enterprise model (the Intel DC S3700) does?

To conclude; if you can spring for a 240/250GB model and can over-provision it by ~30% - then almost any SSD's consistency will be improved - but Anand still found the Samsung 830 SSD to be less than satisfactory (due to pauses/stutters) and I would not expect the Samsung 840 Pro to be much different (this is my general experience with Samsung SSD's - though not specifically the 840 Pro).


Anand Lal Shimpi:

See source:
AnandTech - The Intel SSD DC S3700 (200GB) Review



Hope this helps.


Good luck.

 

tilleroftheearth, thanks for your reply. I wasn't aware of all those things you wrote about. I think I'll start to look for Intel 520 180GB.