uh? don't use that if you have applied the fix. that fix is supposed to fix everything so that 840 evo will become a 'normal' ssd again.

defragmentation is not good for ssd (it's actually for hdd only), and normal ssd doesn't need it. all you need is trim, it's already built-in in w8.x (right click on the drive, select properties, then click the optimize button under 'optimize and defragment drive' area). alternatively, you can use magician's optimization feature. also, leave your machine alone for a few hours during weekends for ssd self optimizations (i.e. garbage collection, gc).

however, when the drive becomes terribly slow, (usually after a year or two, but the time frame depends on your usage also) you can do a secure erase to 'refresh' the drive back to its factory state.

--

yes, if your drive is filled with stuff it will take longer

oh ok. still, it's better to avoid it for ssd

by the way, here is how M2P4A from bplus looks like. (the pci-e adapter with heat sink for samsung xp941)



This post has been edited by horns: Oct 23 2014, 05:23 PM

haha mobo's don't provide these. i need it because i have a bare m.2 ssd only. i have seen many pci-e ssd's like intel p3000 series, which are already prepackaged nicely. all you need to do is plug and play

it depends on the mobo design. for my asrock mobo the ultra m.2 slot is under the first pci-e slot. (exactly what you have seen ) i use that slot for my gpu, so the ssd is covered this whole time. (most probably it has bad air flow)

the uefi bios does wonder. the migration of my ssd (os drive) from m.2 slot to pci-e adapter was painless. just migrated, installed, and booted without doing anything else.

maybe you should also tell us your budget and usage first. also, do you need power loss protection? do you use tpm for disk encryption? what do you expect of ssd warranty?

sweet you can go for samsung 850 pro 512gb (ronaldjoe @garage sales), for mlc chip, 150tbw, warranty wise it's 10 years, but no power loss protection. (since it's a laptop i guess it's not a big deal)

plextor m6pro and crucial m550 are decent too, but warranty is 5 years and 3 respectively. if you need power loss protection, then crucial drive is your choice. (although the plextor drive has some sort of data loss preventions due to power interruption but i am not really sure about this)

no. non-pro have tlc (840/840 evo/upcoming 850 evo). 84o pro and 850 pro have mlc.

no problem

old news? there was a new firmware released by plextor weeks ago. 1.02 iinm. did that fix the issues?

putting aside 'fake' performance, samsung still produce some of the top ssd's in terms of reliability, endurance, and speed. these days many oem manufacturers are putting samsung drives in their products (consumer and enterprise alike). there is one thing weird about intel drives, but that's just my thought. if i can gather more proofs i will share with you guys.

i stopped using my samsung 840 evo too, and am getting ready to test if there is anything wrong about the old data on them later. it needs time to validate this part.

intel drives are decent. it has a relatively solid implementation of sandforce chips. (they should. they spent so much on r&d) i will say the same goes to samsung drives. these two brands have their own forte. i will always go for their higher-end ssd's. it's much harder to get disappointed.

yes it's not always about the speed.

if you can't wait, just grab intel's. (longer warranty, with mlc chip). know that in very near future most if not all mainstream ssd's will base on tlc chips. mlc are most probably available but only for enthusiast grade.

there is a difference in speed (responsiveness) between tlc and mlc flash chips in general. endurance is secondary because even the tlc chip is good enough to cater for general use for years.

ram-based enhancements are used to overcome this. (besides the obvious advantage of reducing writes)

Uh? That long? You must either be a very patient guy, or use system hibernate alot :/

hahaha you just brought back my memories during those hdd days. i guess all of us used the same trick to save some times (a minute was a lot already. with that time i could update user accounts of a whole organization with new random passwords via a simple shell script and got paid lol!)

if it's about value for money, intel 530. between the two, get the one with longer warranty.

every electronic product has their lifespan. like what chocobo7779 pointed out, theoretically it's hard for you to wear off nand flash.

do you mind sharing with us why you dislike samsung stuff?

nothing unusual here.

ah those insanely high-speed product releases. i'm not sure about other samsung products, but in terms of ssd's, they are one of the best, as of now (because of their advantages in that particular industry)

it's fine that you don't like their products, because you still have plenty of choices

yes in general don't play catch-up games with technologies. usually such improvements are not really impressive if the release gap is close to each other, unless that gap is of technological, like sata to pci-e to nvme. (provided that the price gap is almost the same, which has been proven to be very unlikely) manufacturers are smart. they will not release something that can kill their own products. so, don't ever feel that you miss something important when there is a new stuff coming out after you got yours. most likely you miss nothing.

it's true that samsung has every technological advantage in making some of the best drives. for now, they are doing just that. however, there is one thing that they don't do: sell them cheap. cheaper price points always help accelerate adoption of things. higher adoption means even cheaper price. so far no one is as aggressive as crucial.

as consumer, it's better for us to find the balance between performance and price. this is why i think for general use, other choices will still suffice. (most recent ssd's already can meet such expectations)

hehe that's kind of oversimplified but it's still fine in general. there are always exceptions. i will still go for crucial mx100 512gb because it's much cheaper for general use. i have crucial drives (m500, 2x 960gb) in one of my laptops. i'm happy with them.

toshiba q series is not well populated in the local market yet, right? lacking of this might affect warranty support imo.

in terms of general use, i think their raw performance should be the same. physically toshiba q series uses mlc chip (which is faster than tlc chips in 840 evo, besides higher endurance). however it doesn't have dram. this might affect its overall raw performance. (like samsung, toshiba has the advantage of picking the best flash chips that they make for their own products)

the above are just my thoughts. it's better to consult more technically sounded reviews.

This post has been edited by horns: Nov 1 2014, 01:58 PM

crucial drives are usually at lower ends in terms of performance benchmarks. however what matters the most is still the speeds when all these drives are in steady state. for real world usage, this speed in steady state is good enough for us to have a good user experience (seriously, you will not feel obvious slowness in general)

oh the reason why i said mx100 512gb is because the die count in a ssd can affect speed (parallelism). the more the die count the better.

all in all just get one based on your budgets. unless you have to rely on high-speed storage to earn a livings, mainstream ssd's are usually good enough.

if you want it now, just grab the best performance/value drives available to that budget.

or, you can save up some more and grab the same but with higher capacities. (480gb and up) for people who have tight budgets, i think this makes more sense than going for so-called the best. this is because that 'the best' tag can only last for a year at best. after that, you are still left with the fact that the capacity is only good for OS-only drive, if you considered stuff like overprovisioning and all.

so i assume that you already have a compatible hdd caddy with you, yes m6s is fine. (in general a 7mm or 9.5mm should work, depending on the caddy) however, it's also better to check if the manufacturer releases mac-compatible firmware updates.