SAMSUNG 850 EVO 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E500B/AM)

I replaced our OE laptop drive with this SSD. At the time of replacement this was one of the best on the market in terms of read write speeds. It made a huge difference in speed that is readily noticable on boot up. The speed at which you can turn on, log into and begin working with your computer is a night and day difference to an older sata style drive.

Great SSD for the price. I cant wait for the cost of SSDs to be on par with the old-school spinning drives!

Ive installed over a dozen of these and have not had a single one disappoint. These drives are reliable and the included software is a great addition to a solid, reliable storage device. Its great to have the 5-year warrant, which beats many competitors warranties. However, Ive never had to take advantage of the warranty yet!

Replaced the original HD on a 2011 Macbook Pro with this SSD. I have no idea how this SSD compares to others, but I can testify to the improvement over the original HD. Boots up faster, runs faster & quieter. Totally happy. And for the only moderately tech-savvy like me, I followed a how-to video on CNET for replacing HD in Macbook Pros, and its very much a DIY job if you have the appropriate (i.e., older) Macbook Pro.

Why 3 stars? Well, I kinda of like honesty and SAMSUNG markets this drive as 500GB. My system: ASUS Motherboard P8Z77-V, Intel I5 processor and running Windows 10 OS recognizes this drive to be 465GB. So where are the other 35GB? Has anyone who purchased this drive have the full (as advertised) 500GB for use on their system? The extra 35GB sure would come in handy for downloads, system updates, etc. This update is for Samsung; Pursuant to your explanation of why a advertised 500GB drive is in reality 465GB. Myself being a average ignorant consumer to the standards (IDEMA, or whatever) rely on complete transparency and explanation of products from manufacturers just for folks like myself and others. Samsungs analogy is the same as going into a bank with a $100 bill and asking for change and receiving $87 in return. The bank agent then explains to the indignant customer that his/her $100 has been reduced to $87 because of inflation, banking standards or whatever. All manufactures continually complain about US Federal oversight on their products but here everyone can see that at times oversight is not a bad decision because ignorant consumers rely on COMPLETE explanation of the product by the manufacturer. The way I see it from this point on Samsung owes me the ignorant consumer a few flash drives to make up the difference in GB. How about Samsung?

I just got mine a couple days ago and the setup was easy as could be. It comes with the data cable for data migration. I had to buy a Sata cable as this doesnt come with one but that wasnt a problem. Im glad to see the cost of SSDs finally coming down. Definitely a good purchase for anyone. I used mine for gaming on my PC.

Outstanding. My laptop used to take 2 - 3 minutes to boot up, with this SSD it takes about 40 seconds. Applications open much faster as well. As a side benefit, the battery seems to last noticeably longer as well.

Replaced my old failing Crucial M4 with this when my UEFI and Windows wouldnt shut up about the wear leveling count. That drive is still functioning very well after continuous writes for three months after Windows and UEFI declared it to be dead, but thats beside the point. My first time booting with this drive compared to booting with the M4 was the same wow experience as my first time booting from the M4 compared to booting from 7200RPM WD Blacks. The Acronis software it came with made cloning my Windows installation easy. Im very happy with this purchase.

2016-Oct-18: Upgraded to 3 stars after getting it working. 2017-Mar-28: Downgrade to 1 star. It failed after less than 6 months. 2017-Apr-07: Device was counterfeit... see review for details 2017-Apr-10: EDSTECH (Seller of counterfeit goods) responded 11 days after my enquiry. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE NOTE: The device I received from EDSTECH via Amazon was counterfeit (see comments to this review). EDSTECH did not respond to my queries so after a week of waiting I contacted Amazon directly. [Note: EDSTECH finally responded 11 days after I contacted them]. I did purchased another 850 EVO from a reputable local seller and all of what I wrote about setting up the counterfeit device is accurate. I spent much more effort than I expected to install this device in my Dell 6900 XPS desktop machine. ** Highlights ** As received from the seller, most of the box is written in Chinese (Japanese?), and it included a slip of paper entirely in Chinese. This apparently was advertisement for the seller. (See attached photo). NOTE: The non-counterfeit device also had peculiar packaging... the DVDs were GLUED to the bottom of the tray containing the device. Might be easy to overlook if you dont pay close attention. Inside the glued on envelope there is a large fold out diagram based set of instructions. Step 2 of those instructions says to insert the One-step Install Navigator CD/DVD. The diagram also shows a SATA to USB connector to be used apparently for set-up and data migration. That and the cables, screws and mounting hardware are not included. There are tons of privacy intrusions in the installation software from Samsung - rather scary, actually. I discovered that I could Not Accept the privacy policy and the software still installed... I hope that means it is not sending my private data to affiliates and servers in South Korea as the policy stated. ** My Goal ** I have a 2TB hard drive, and wanted a 500 Gb drive to boot and run key programs from. So my aim is to turn the 850 EVO drive into the boot drive and still store massive amounts of data on my hard drive. My machine uses Windows 10. ** Installation and Set Up ** While installation is fairly simply (two cables), it is not clear why several separate software components may be required. I have no USB to SATA connector, but did have an extra SATA cable (and available SATA power connection) I was able to cable the device up. I powered on my machine and the Samsung Magician software recognized the SSD disk (Windows not yet, however). I then used the Samsung Data Migration utility. It took 50 minutes to transfer 310 Gb of data to the drive. I rebooted Windows 10, but got an error message that flashed by more quickly than I could read. I could not see the new drive in Windows. I discovered from internet searches that the Migration Utility clones the contents of the Hard Drive to the SSD - meaning they both are now identical boot volumes. This creates a conflict (see attached shot from windows diskmgmt.msc) - and the new disk remains offline in Windows due to signature collision. Amazon wont let me put a reference to the excellent sites that I found in this article, so added those references in a comment. WARNING, however: its pretty geeky hacking to make the drive work. I wish there was a nice crisp article on Samsungs site about this method of using the drive as I suspect its pretty common. But I still havent found a decently detailed and up-to-date article beyond those links I posted in my comment below. I fault the installation instructions for not providing any alternative installation method other than replace. I want the SSD to speed up my system, but Im not throwing away the 2TB hard drive thats already there. ** SUGGESTIONS ** Open up the computer you want to put this device in and look to see how the drive(s) are installed... then you will know what mounting hardware and cable(s) you may need. There are *many* different drive arrangements in desktop and laptop computers. One of my desktop machines, for example has a caddy that mounts around a 3.5 drive and snugs it into a drive slot without tools. The other has a rather complicated drive bay that must be removed to insert a new drive. ** SAMSUNG SUPPORT ** When my drive failed I learned, sadly, that the drive I purchased was counterfeit per contact with Samsung. One thing I recommend everyone buying this device do is to immediately REGISTER the device and use Samsung Magician to verify the device is valid so you do not find out the hard way - as I did - that it is not a Samsung device. Also, if you DO get a counterfeit, dont expect Samsung to be of any help. They were polite, but offered me no solution to my predicament. Id have been willing to pay for a refurbished/scratch and dent replacement - nothing was offered. Samsungs website is full of holes and gotchas, by the way. Some places allow you to sign up with a + in the email address, other places dont. I tried to use [email protected] but it refused to let me use samsung in the email address. Using the + is a convenient way to keep things organized in gmail. After I signed up and registered using a + in my account, I later discovered it would not let me change my account in anyway because the email address wasnt valid - thats one major inconsistency. ** CONCLUSIONS ** Once/if you get the SSD working, great - until it dies an early death as mine did in 6 months (that device was counterfeit, however)! The SSD is much, much faster and quieter. But you really need to be a geek to have a chance to make a successful install (and yes, Im a geek) and some luck that the product doesnt die so you dont have to repeat the install pain.

Turned my slow, clunky desktop into a fast, smooth machine. Easy to install. Very pleased so far.