If you're looking for a new SATA SSD and can afford it, this is the one to choose.
+ blisteringly fast reads & writes in every environment (random, sequential, small and large chunks)
+ unparalleled high and sustained write consistency across time, conditioned on overprovisioning (see below)
+ best warranty in the market: 10 years or 150TB writes, whichever comes first
+/- reasonably priced, except for the $700 1TB model (yikes!)
This thing is ridiculously fast. If you've never used a solid state system drive before, then prepare yourself for a huge treat. It's a categorical difference in system performance compared to a spinning disk. For the rest of us that have been fiddling with SSDs for years, you are accustomed to this class of data storage device. I can't say that this drive is worth it if you already have an SSD manufactured in the last couple years. However, if you are in the market for a new SSD and you can afford this one, your search stops here. Aside from price of the 1TB version, there is nothing to criticize about this drive. The smaller capacity models are actually pretty competitively priced. It does a great job as a fast read cache when paired with spinning disk array. It handles the churn of the workstation environment without a hiccup. Perhaps most importantly, its throughput is consistent over time and load, so long as it's highly (>25%) overprovisioned. It can keep up with my write requests over hours of gigs being written down, ensuring I never lose a bit of data being pushed. It is the current market leader in performance and consistency. Samsung did a good job with their earlier
840 Pro
, but this 850 Pro takes things a step further.
I deploy systems for a large variety of environments, from laptops to workstations to high-end enterprise-level data servers. Before this drive came out, I had to pick the right drive for the application. Was I putting together a desktop workstation and needed a good mix of generalized read and write performance? If so, then I'd order a SanDisk, either the
Extreme II
or, more recently, the faster
Extreme Pro
. Was I putting together a small-footprint database server with a write heavy workload? If so, then I'd order the
Crucial M550
,
Samsung 840 Pro
, or
OCZ Vector
. Was I in a mobile/laptop environment or because carrying sensitive data and needed encryption (HIPPA compliance and all that)? Then I had to go with the
Crucial M550
or
Samsung 840 Pro
. Don't get me wrong, these aforementioned drives are not bad by any means. I've deployed several of each in the appropriate setting and they all do well in their respective application. I've used the SanDisk Extreme II for a ZFS data server's L2ARC and ZIL cache and it performed beautifully. I've deployed the Samsung 840 Pro, Crucial M550, and SanDisk Extreme Pro in both read/write heavy workstation environments and they have all kept up very well (the SanDisk Extreme Pro does the best of those three). It's just that the 850 Pro takes things one step further and eliminates the need to pick the right drive for the right environment. This single drive replaces all these other drives which excel at their specific tasks and beats them all at their own game. It's downright remarkable. To top it all off, it's also got the lowest power consumption of any SSD on the market because it's the first to the market with the new 3D NAND cell architecture, so it's incredibly data dense while using so few chips. That makes it even more attractive for mobile/laptop use.
A note on the endurance and the warranty here, as that is also a new move for Samsung here. They are offering an across the board 150TB write endurance or 10 year warranty, whichever comes first, on all drives. This is a very interesting move, as NAND cells have a fixed write lifetime and since the 1TB version has more NAND cells than the 128GB version, you would expect the 1TB version to have a longer life cycle. What this basically means is that you can only fill the 1TB drive up 150 times before your warranty expires, but you have to write 1200 times to the 128GB version to reach the same threshold. I'm not quite sure what Samsung was thinking when they made that calculation, because these NAND cells should have at least 1000 (heck, if not 10000) write life cycles, so they're definitely low-balling the 1TB version. It's possible that with density this high, it's more prone to bad NAND cells. Maybe they're just testing the waters with their first device using a 3D NAND architecture. Most consumers will get to 10 years before they hit 150TB write cycles, but this is something to consider for enterprise, as you could easily hit 150TB on a write-heavy data server.
Packaging is just the standard fare for SSDs. Drive, CD, random booklets, and a couple Samsung SSD stickers. Yay stickers! They're too cheap to throw in drive screws--so much for "retail" packaging. I suppose though if you're willing to drop $700 for a 1TB drive, they figure you aren't hurting to source your own machine screws. Gone are the days of included SATA cables and everything. Alas, I miss those days where you couldn't lose a several hundred dollar retail box hard drive package in between the seats of your car...
Accessories aren't the reason you are buying this though. It's the performance it offers. Scour the web for performance reviews if you want other thoughts and the nitty-gritty numbers, they are all unanimous in their findings. The Samsung 850 Pro defines the new standard for SATA SSDs. As always, don't forget to overprovision the drive to around 25%-30% capacity to maximize performance. It takes a huge performance hit without that step. To be clear, overprovisioning means leaving aside some percentage (25-30%) of the drive as unpartitioned and unallocated free space. SSD drives already have around 5-7% overprovisioning done already (that is why you see some written as 120/240GB capacity, etc), but going beyond the factory overprovisioning only boosts performance even more. Overprovisioning increases the "swap space" for the SSD controller, allowing it more room to do data read/write housekeeping. It's the classic trade-off between memory usage and performance, but it will make a large difference in the performance of the drive. Again, check the product review sites for detailed quantification of just how big a difference this makes (greater than an order of magnitude in write speeds in some cases).
The one thing to consider, if you're in this ballpark, is to forgo SATA all together and spring for a PCI express based drive. Most of these PCIe drives have been limited to industrial applications with their multi-thousand pricetags like the
Intel 910
series. However, the just released (2014/09)
Samsung XP941
drives are amazing in their performance and run circles around any SATA based rive and not ludicrously priced. They're definitely something to consider if you're not wedded to the SATA interface.
In summary, so long as you don't mind the premium for the 1TB version, this is the undisputed best SATA SSD drive of mid 2014 no matter how you slice it. Enjoy the ride.
| RAM | 1 GB |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 1 TB Solid State Drive |
