- Sep 28, 2001
- 8,464
- 155
- 106
So the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB arrived after an annoying weekend shipping delay which simply reminded me again never, ever to order hardware or whatever else online on a Friday - since it's really frustrating having to wait over the weekend...
The SSD came in a nice packaging with the usual installation sheet and warranty information.
The SSD looks "stylish yet simple" but to be honest I didn't really spend too long looking at it since once I had it here it was time to migrate my OS (Windows 8.1) which I had on an ancient Supertalent 64GB SSD POS onto the new drive.
For that reason I already prepared with an in image which I made using EaseUS TODO Backup - my initial plan was actually to use the clone feature right from within EaseUS TODO to migrate the OS and if that failed to recover from this image, just to be on the safe side. (Not that I expected any problem migrating, I did already many, many times).
I quickly disconnected one spare SATA drive (I took out an optical) and hooked up the still virgin Samsung.
I booted my system and without a hitch, there she was, the new 840 EVO.
Before anything else I wanted to check whether the drive had the latest firmware so I downloaded the latest "Samsung Magician" Software 4.3 and installed it - the first thing I did was updating the firmware to the latest which it flawlessly did.
I also tried out this software in terms of its recommendations for "OS optimization"...but there was some issues I will get into later.
After I used Samsung SSD Magician, for some reason I entirely ditched the idea to use EaseUS for the migration but used the Samsung "Migration software" instead to move my Win8.1 to the new SSD.
After the installation and running this piece of software it was as straightforward as it can be, basically move OS from Disk A ---> B (there were not really any other options)....and the entire operation of moving my ca. 45GB OS partition took like 12 mins.
PC off, exchanged new SSD with old one and put old Supertalent SSD away. (There is a reason for that, this old drive is extremely unreliable so I don't want to use it as a backup drive, I have enough mechanicals in my system for that purpose.)
First Boot
Oups! Something "wrong"? It didn't boot as I expected (well, in fact it didn't really boot into the OS at all) but the "issue" was less so an "issue" but a simple case of specifying the new Samsung SSD as the 1st drive in my PCs BIOS. After I did that it booted flawlessly.
Once the system booted, being a nerd, obviously I HAD TO do some benchmark and be it only to assure myself that "nothing was wrong" with the drive. So I used AS SSD benchmark and did a quicky, here:
According to comparisons with other Samsung EVOs of this size, the numbers seems alright.
NOTE: Yes I am running this SSD on a SATA II controller since my mobo is older. As a result, my max. data transfer rates and overall performance is less than optimal! But I expected this.
Intel's RST Rapid Storage Manager / Matrix Driver - Or Keeping the MS AHCI Driver?
For some bizarre reason I started to wonder whether I may see "better" numbers using Intel's RST AHCI drivers as compared to the MS drivers.
I didn't know that I was in for a nerve-wrecking and extremely annoying search for the right driver. Intel really managed it to confuse the * out of people when it comes to driver downloads and I am NOT talking about people who are technically "not so savvy".
It turned out that Intel, for some reason dropped ICH9R support (the Southbridge my mobo uses) without specifying WHICH driver would still support it and which would not.
The result was that I downloaded approx. 5 different Intel RST tools and individual zip files with drivers, but EACH of them refused to run on my PC and aborted upon installation.
On some site, I came across "modded" RST drivers where someone claimed to have re-added the support for those old southbridges into newer Intel RST drivers.
This also prove a pointless exercise since THOSE drivers didn't install either, with a message from my OS they were tampered with and some checksum would not be right.
After two or so hours I somehow came across an older RST driver which was still supposed to work with ICH9, so I installed that one and it successfully activated iAstore.sys for my SSD.
I benchmark again, but don't see any change except a MARGINAL actually lower number as compared to the MS AHCI drivers, so I de-installed the Intel stuff again.
The Mysterious, Non-Explainanable and Completely Non-Rational Fear of Partitioning a SSD
Later on I realized that a ca. 240GB SSD with the OS on it and Games is not optimal. In the past, I am sure I already partitioned a zillion or so hard drives since I am not really a PC newbie.
But here, for some reason I experienced a completely irrational hesitation about partitioning the Samsung as if partitioning a SSD would somehow have a negative effect.
After some back and forth I actually DID decide to partition simply because I wanted a 64GB partition again for the OS which I can conveniently backup/image using EaseUS, without worrying about the new, added stuff such as games. (Yes, that's what a 250GB SSD is supposed to be for : ))
So I went ahead and used Paragon HDM 14 and I shrunk the SSD down to 64GB (which I considered 'reasonable'). It rebooted and did the shrinking, the entire process took about...3 mins?
After I booted again I now had the new unallocated 170GB partition, now conveniently named "G:" as in "Games". So, here too rather than using any system management function or using "format" I did this task of formatting the new partition right from Paragon HDM...mainly also for that reason that Paragon HDM popped up again after this boot... so I could as well do all that crap from within Paragon which I did.
After this was done (took about 2 mins) I used AS SSD Benchmark again but just to check for correct alignment of the now two partitions. (Since it has this convenient display right when you start it indicating right or wrong partition alignment).
C: was aligned right (the usual 1024K) so was G: so there were no problems.
Performance
There is not really much to say in terms of performance for this SSD, in particular since I already had the OS on an old, but slower SSD previously.
So the most constructive I can say here is that it "feels" snapper even compared to the old Supertalent SSD and that the Benchmark numbers "seem alright".
I moved a giant 35GB MMORPG "The Secret World" which is a disk access hog from a highly optimized (w/ Ultra Defrag) mechanical drive onto the SSD now and I did a few test runs of this game. Without having done an actual "measurement" I would say the game loads now 3x faster. This is purely subjective simply by observing the loading bars when zones are loaded. And BOY does this game load zones! (Believe me, you want a SSD with this game....)
I haven't actually "played" yet whether to see whether some stutter issues which I attribute to the extreme disk accesses this games does are gone now, but I am positively looking forward to that the overall gaming experience will be a much better one. (Comparable to Diablo III where a SSD also made a huge difference in subjective game experience since the SSD eliminated extremely annoying zone level loading stutters).
OS Optimization & Confusion
I ran into some confusion using Samsung Magician 4.3 in regards to its "OS Optimization" features and what it told me it changed respective not.
The confusion arose from the fact that what I see using another 3rd party tool "SSD Tweaker" and the information given by Magician 4.3 are not consistent.
For example, according to SSD Tweaker my OS Prefetch settings are still activated and the indexing service is also on.
According to Magician and after I told it to "optimize for performance" Superfetch (Prefetch?) is off so I am not sure what program to trust now.
I was also a bit annoyed seeing that the "optimized" settings in Magician tampered with my virtual memory OS settings and, worse, activated hibernate. AFAIK I had my OS virtual mem "page file" at a fix 2GB and the software set it to "system managed", ok, not really an "issue" but nevertheless I didn't like it messing with this. Since I never ever USE hibernation, the hibernation activation was even more annoying especially since I don't see any direct relationship from SSD performance to having activated Hibernate. (So I turned hibernate off again from system level).
Conclusion
I didn't want to write "yet another review" with the 100th benchmark about speed of the Samsung SSD since there are a zillion sites where this information is already available.
My purchase decision for THIS particular SSD was naturally influenced by the performance of this drive (which is an oxymoron since I don't even have a SATA III board yet, I know!) but even more so by the price of the drive and the advantage the now 240GB space available on a fast SSD would have over my old 64GB. (Eg. copying games over to the SSD which I was unable to do so before - eg Win8.1 + "The Secret World", just to name an example).
I don't have one reason to complain about the SSD neither do I see any type of flaw. The installation was easy, the migration happened without a major hitch, updating firmware was a breeze.
So..from that PoV the SSD does all I wanted it to do. The performance is as expected, the price attractive. I can recommend it. It's great to have a larger, faster SSD which now has more storage-space to also hold plenty of my favorite games.
The SSD came in a nice packaging with the usual installation sheet and warranty information.
The SSD looks "stylish yet simple" but to be honest I didn't really spend too long looking at it since once I had it here it was time to migrate my OS (Windows 8.1) which I had on an ancient Supertalent 64GB SSD POS onto the new drive.
For that reason I already prepared with an in image which I made using EaseUS TODO Backup - my initial plan was actually to use the clone feature right from within EaseUS TODO to migrate the OS and if that failed to recover from this image, just to be on the safe side. (Not that I expected any problem migrating, I did already many, many times).
I quickly disconnected one spare SATA drive (I took out an optical) and hooked up the still virgin Samsung.
I booted my system and without a hitch, there she was, the new 840 EVO.
Before anything else I wanted to check whether the drive had the latest firmware so I downloaded the latest "Samsung Magician" Software 4.3 and installed it - the first thing I did was updating the firmware to the latest which it flawlessly did.
I also tried out this software in terms of its recommendations for "OS optimization"...but there was some issues I will get into later.
After I used Samsung SSD Magician, for some reason I entirely ditched the idea to use EaseUS for the migration but used the Samsung "Migration software" instead to move my Win8.1 to the new SSD.
After the installation and running this piece of software it was as straightforward as it can be, basically move OS from Disk A ---> B (there were not really any other options)....and the entire operation of moving my ca. 45GB OS partition took like 12 mins.
PC off, exchanged new SSD with old one and put old Supertalent SSD away. (There is a reason for that, this old drive is extremely unreliable so I don't want to use it as a backup drive, I have enough mechanicals in my system for that purpose.)
First Boot
Oups! Something "wrong"? It didn't boot as I expected (well, in fact it didn't really boot into the OS at all) but the "issue" was less so an "issue" but a simple case of specifying the new Samsung SSD as the 1st drive in my PCs BIOS. After I did that it booted flawlessly.
Once the system booted, being a nerd, obviously I HAD TO do some benchmark and be it only to assure myself that "nothing was wrong" with the drive. So I used AS SSD benchmark and did a quicky, here:
According to comparisons with other Samsung EVOs of this size, the numbers seems alright.
NOTE: Yes I am running this SSD on a SATA II controller since my mobo is older. As a result, my max. data transfer rates and overall performance is less than optimal! But I expected this.
Intel's RST Rapid Storage Manager / Matrix Driver - Or Keeping the MS AHCI Driver?
For some bizarre reason I started to wonder whether I may see "better" numbers using Intel's RST AHCI drivers as compared to the MS drivers.
I didn't know that I was in for a nerve-wrecking and extremely annoying search for the right driver. Intel really managed it to confuse the * out of people when it comes to driver downloads and I am NOT talking about people who are technically "not so savvy".
It turned out that Intel, for some reason dropped ICH9R support (the Southbridge my mobo uses) without specifying WHICH driver would still support it and which would not.
The result was that I downloaded approx. 5 different Intel RST tools and individual zip files with drivers, but EACH of them refused to run on my PC and aborted upon installation.
On some site, I came across "modded" RST drivers where someone claimed to have re-added the support for those old southbridges into newer Intel RST drivers.
This also prove a pointless exercise since THOSE drivers didn't install either, with a message from my OS they were tampered with and some checksum would not be right.
After two or so hours I somehow came across an older RST driver which was still supposed to work with ICH9, so I installed that one and it successfully activated iAstore.sys for my SSD.
I benchmark again, but don't see any change except a MARGINAL actually lower number as compared to the MS AHCI drivers, so I de-installed the Intel stuff again.
The Mysterious, Non-Explainanable and Completely Non-Rational Fear of Partitioning a SSD
Later on I realized that a ca. 240GB SSD with the OS on it and Games is not optimal. In the past, I am sure I already partitioned a zillion or so hard drives since I am not really a PC newbie.
But here, for some reason I experienced a completely irrational hesitation about partitioning the Samsung as if partitioning a SSD would somehow have a negative effect.
After some back and forth I actually DID decide to partition simply because I wanted a 64GB partition again for the OS which I can conveniently backup/image using EaseUS, without worrying about the new, added stuff such as games. (Yes, that's what a 250GB SSD is supposed to be for : ))
So I went ahead and used Paragon HDM 14 and I shrunk the SSD down to 64GB (which I considered 'reasonable'). It rebooted and did the shrinking, the entire process took about...3 mins?
After I booted again I now had the new unallocated 170GB partition, now conveniently named "G:" as in "Games". So, here too rather than using any system management function or using "format" I did this task of formatting the new partition right from Paragon HDM...mainly also for that reason that Paragon HDM popped up again after this boot... so I could as well do all that crap from within Paragon which I did.
After this was done (took about 2 mins) I used AS SSD Benchmark again but just to check for correct alignment of the now two partitions. (Since it has this convenient display right when you start it indicating right or wrong partition alignment).
C: was aligned right (the usual 1024K) so was G: so there were no problems.
Performance
There is not really much to say in terms of performance for this SSD, in particular since I already had the OS on an old, but slower SSD previously.
So the most constructive I can say here is that it "feels" snapper even compared to the old Supertalent SSD and that the Benchmark numbers "seem alright".
I moved a giant 35GB MMORPG "The Secret World" which is a disk access hog from a highly optimized (w/ Ultra Defrag) mechanical drive onto the SSD now and I did a few test runs of this game. Without having done an actual "measurement" I would say the game loads now 3x faster. This is purely subjective simply by observing the loading bars when zones are loaded. And BOY does this game load zones! (Believe me, you want a SSD with this game....)
I haven't actually "played" yet whether to see whether some stutter issues which I attribute to the extreme disk accesses this games does are gone now, but I am positively looking forward to that the overall gaming experience will be a much better one. (Comparable to Diablo III where a SSD also made a huge difference in subjective game experience since the SSD eliminated extremely annoying zone level loading stutters).
OS Optimization & Confusion
I ran into some confusion using Samsung Magician 4.3 in regards to its "OS Optimization" features and what it told me it changed respective not.
The confusion arose from the fact that what I see using another 3rd party tool "SSD Tweaker" and the information given by Magician 4.3 are not consistent.
For example, according to SSD Tweaker my OS Prefetch settings are still activated and the indexing service is also on.
According to Magician and after I told it to "optimize for performance" Superfetch (Prefetch?) is off so I am not sure what program to trust now.
I was also a bit annoyed seeing that the "optimized" settings in Magician tampered with my virtual memory OS settings and, worse, activated hibernate. AFAIK I had my OS virtual mem "page file" at a fix 2GB and the software set it to "system managed", ok, not really an "issue" but nevertheless I didn't like it messing with this. Since I never ever USE hibernation, the hibernation activation was even more annoying especially since I don't see any direct relationship from SSD performance to having activated Hibernate. (So I turned hibernate off again from system level).
Conclusion
I didn't want to write "yet another review" with the 100th benchmark about speed of the Samsung SSD since there are a zillion sites where this information is already available.
My purchase decision for THIS particular SSD was naturally influenced by the performance of this drive (which is an oxymoron since I don't even have a SATA III board yet, I know!) but even more so by the price of the drive and the advantage the now 240GB space available on a fast SSD would have over my old 64GB. (Eg. copying games over to the SSD which I was unable to do so before - eg Win8.1 + "The Secret World", just to name an example).
I don't have one reason to complain about the SSD neither do I see any type of flaw. The installation was easy, the migration happened without a major hitch, updating firmware was a breeze.
So..from that PoV the SSD does all I wanted it to do. The performance is as expected, the price attractive. I can recommend it. It's great to have a larger, faster SSD which now has more storage-space to also hold plenty of my favorite games.
Last edited:
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