Customer Reviews

Samsung SSD 830 2.5inch SATA III 6GBps 128GB Notebook Accessory Kit with Free Norton Ghost 15

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I wanted to get an SSD drive to replace the small hard drive (40G) in my ageing, slow 2004 vintage HP laptop .. and the Samsung SSD 830 was for me the perfect choice.

I had read a couple of horror stories about Ghost, and as the drive was pretty small, I elected for a complete re-install ... of XP ... I wanted to do this because I have similar vintage but quite expensive scanners and A3 printers that simply do not run under 64 bit Windows 7, and also some legacy software that didn't make the cut on the 7 migration.

Replacement of the drive was very easy on the HP ... a couple of screws and a slider look care of the old drive, and the new Samsung SSD (with the addition of the packing kit and a ground up install of XP was fine ... only slowed down by having to reinstall all of the updates and service packs etc.

As my intention is that this laptop will only service the needs of my legacy software and hardware, the reinstall of all of my software was not really arduous, and was completed over a weekend. There are some features on the Samsung Drive that are not supported on XP or Vista, but they were not really relevant to me.

Boot-up (which used to be measured in geological time) is now less than a minute ... program start-up is now super quick (I used to be able to make coffee). and I have also noticed that the fan is kicking in less, so that is an unexpected bonus.

So in summary ... if you have a perfectly serviceable laptop that is just getting a bit long in the tooth, or have legacy software and hardware that has not made the Windows 7 cut ... buy and install one of these drives. If my old laptop does finally die ... I can always retrieve the drive and use it elsewhere.

I used this kit to upgrade the hard drive on a Dell laptop running Windows 7 64-bit. What you get is an SSD drive (with a spacer as it is thinner than a standard laptop drive), a USB adaptor that lets you connect it as an external drive for data migration, Norton Ghost, a further utility CD, and a short user manual.

The packaging is great, but the bundle lacks a clear step-by-step guide so it can be confusing. Physically replacing the drive in a laptop is usually pretty easy if you have the right small screwdriver, but migrating the operating system takes some care. This is why Samsung supplies Norton Ghost; but it is overkill for the task and installs stuff that you may not need. I would prefer a more lightweight utility, or even to use the backup and restore that is built into Windows 7, but for this review I used Ghost as supplied.

If you do this, I recommend that you read the document called NortonGhost_Data_Migration_User_Manual_(English).pdf which is in the MagicianSoftware folder on the Samsung Magician CD. The main issue is that Windows 7 creates a hidden system partition which you need to copy to the SSD *first*, otherwise Windows 7 will not boot.

You need to install Ghost first of course, which I found slow and difficult. The install flashed several command prompts at me and then seemed to hang. I waited ages, then gave up and rebooted. The install actually seemed to have worked, but I did a further Repair Install just to be on the safe side. Annoying.

I then attached the drive using the USB cable and copied the partitions, which took around 2 hours for my 100GB of data.

Note: this SSD is 128GB and probably smaller than your current laptop drive. You must ensure that your data is small enough to fit before attempting the migration. Note that Samsung also do a 256GB model if you think the task is hopeless.

Once the copy completed, I swapped the drives. I needed the supplied spacer, but otherwise this was straightforward. Windows complained a bit when I started for the first time with the SSD drive, but after a restart all was well.

When the SSD is up and running, it is a good idea to install the Samsung Magician utility on the other CD. This has a tool to configure Windows optimally for SSD. The issue is that SSD drives may wear if they suffer constant intensive data writes, so the tweaks are designed to reduce disk activity.

I did a before and after test of disk performance. Wow. Here are the results from PassMark, comparing the old 7200 RPM HD to the new SSD Drive:

Disk Mark 234.7 improved to 2186.9
Sequential Read 31.4 improved to 241.2
Sequential Write 31.2 improved to 205.4
Random Seek + RW 2.31 improved to 158.2

Another test showed the disk speed improving from 3.7 MB/Sec to 34.8 MB/Sec.

These are amazing figures, and the result is a laptop that is significantly faster. It boots quickly, applications load fast, and everything is snappier. Well worth it.

Technical notes:

You could also use the drive in a desktop PC, but will need a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor bracket to fit it; Samsung do an alternative kit that has this included. It supports both Windows and Mac. Windows 7 is recommended since earlier versions of Windows do not have proper support for SSD. Your BIOS should be set to AHCI or RAID. On a Mac you need OS 10.5 Leopard or higher. The drive is a 6GB/s SATA drive and you should get even better performance than I got when fitted to a modern PC with 6GB/s ports. Finally, this drive comes with a 3 year warranty "for desktop and laptop PC usage only".

I installed it in my mac mini 2011 i5. You don't need to remove logic board. I used internet recovery to install os x lion and then all were amazing fast. My ssd has the second version firmware, which works fine. No need to update to the third which is the latest! Also , I used the program trim enabler to enable trim command and works fine with lion 10.7.3. All now are incredibly fast and lion boots in 13 sec!!!
I have compared also 8gb fo samsung ram. Totally worth the money! Totally recomended!

P.S. I used the adaptor included , to convert my stock 500gb hard disk to an external 500gb storage!

Update: I bought another one and installed it in my new macbook pro mid2012 with same super fast results.

I already got the desktop version last month from amazon for my main pc and it really transfors the response time as now days HDD's are the bottleneck for speed on day to day tasks. So i have now brought this one to go in my laptop. The reason I say it buy it now while got chance is samsung are bringing out a higher priced 840 model which has kept this one down in price, so the 830 is a very good deal at the moment. The notebook and desktop are both the same drives, but the accesories differ,this one comes with usb to sata cables to allow the old drive its replacing (or any other sata drive) to be attached via usb externally, good for transferring old data etc. The desktop kit instead comes with a bracket to allow the drive to be fitted in a 3.5" bay in a pc case. Thats the difference between the 2, so it may be a case some PC owners will prefer buying the notebook kit for the accessories. Both versions come with norton ghost which is useful if you dont want to reinstall the operating system.

The drive itself is piece of technology. Fast, responsive, even nice looking.
Norton Ghost 15 is on the other side...it's useless if u want to transfer whole partitions.

I've had a few SSD drives over the past couple of years. They boost the speed of your machine by way more than any other upgrade. If you're thinking about buying more RAM, forget it - get one of these and use it as your system drive. Don't worry about it being relatively small capacity, buy a large USB 3.0 external hard drive and keep all your data on there if you need that much space. Alternatively the larger 256 and 512Gb versions are getting surprisingly cheap.

I put this in my 2012 Mac Mini and it gives a read/write performance of around 350Mb/s and 450Mb/s respectively. Apparently the newer 840 model is actually slower, so get these older models whilst you can!

It's very solid, a full metal chassis and with the notebook kit you get a handy lead so you can clone your system drive onto it before installing it, which means you don't have to re-install your whole system and applications again.

BEWARE however that the supplied copy of Norton Ghost is **PC ONLY** - it WON'T work on the MAC - Something that isn't mentioned in the description. Not that you actually need it for a Mac anyway because the Mac has the built-in Disc Utility that allows you to clone a drive (do a search if you don't know how). Just be sure to re-size your existing system partition to smaller than the SSD you're installing otherwise the clone won't work.

All in all, a highly recommended bit of kit that will give any system a huge boost. Mac boot-up times fall from around 40s to around 12s with an SSD! Programs load pretty much instantly!

After several months of use, its fair to say that this is a great SSD.

I get amazing boot times in windows 7 (sub 20 second) along with great read an write performance even if the computer is on for hours or days. The build quality is also very nice, metal and decent plastics...

Overall, a great product!

I have upgraded all of my computer products to SSD, the increase in responsiveness is unbelievable. When my PS3 hard drive failed, I decided to replace it with this SSD - I knew the PS3 wouldn't be able to make the most of the drive's speed, but wanted to see for myself if it made any difference to the overall experience on PS3.

The difference this drive makes in the PS3 is very small, but it is an improvement - XMB is more responsive and deleting old messages is much faster. Loading games is a little quicker as is installing them.

I wouldn't really recommend this for a PS3 as the improvement is very small and the price of SSDs is still high. However, the small increase is a limitation of the PS3 and not the drive - once I replace my PS3 with the PS4 I will be using this SSD either in my backup laptop or as a boot drive for a gaming PC I plan to build.

First of All this SSD looks better in aesthetics than any other SSD out there. The Samsung 830 series is a 6Gb/s SATA 3 SSD, After having this SSD for several months now it is still performing like new, using AS SSD benchmark i am getting sequential read speeds of 504.83MB/s and write 303.76MB/s, but if you are doing daily computing tasks then you should pay close attention to the 4k speeds, which were 22.08MB/s read and 64.39MB/s write. I got a overall score of 710 which is really good.
The 830 series also came with norton ghost and software for the SSD( in most cases you dont need to use the software CD). I am running windows 7 ultimate and the trim support is working correctly. For good SSD look no further

I spent a while making the decision to change my HDD to SSD - my only regret is not doing it sooner!!

The cloning of the device was a little tricky, the software that is provided, Norton Ghost is pants and not very user friendly, i did a lot of trawling forums and YouTube to find the best solution, in the end I used Macrium reflect - could not be easier..... it goes like this:

Step 1 - Choose the drive you wish to clone
Step 2 - Choose where you would like it cloned to
Step 3 - Cloning complete - swap the drives and you're off.

I have to say Samsung Magician software does all the optimisation for you even though Win7 is SSD friendly and automatically adjusts most settings as soon as its detected.

A couple of things that did come up in my research was make sure you tidy your HDD before cloning, uninstall unused programs defrag etc. and secondly - most obvious is back everything up just in case!!

I purchased this just as the 840 was being released so it was really cheap!!