What Is Samsung Magician? Does It Support Your Drive?
What is Samsung Magician software? If you are using a Samsung SSD, it could be a wonderful disk manager for you. However, if you are using a disk of other brands, some features of this application would be unavailable. In this case, another professional tool for disk management, MiniTool Partition Wizard, could help you.
What Is Samsung Magician?
Samsung Magician, also called Samsung SSD Magician Software, is a powerful suite of optimization tools provided by Samsung business conglomerate. The Samsung Magician software has a dark theme and it can be used to monitor drive health, customize your SSD, and maximize performance.
To help users understand the software, Samsung divides its features into three parts in the latest version: Drive Information, Drive Management, and Data Management. Let’s see what you can do with these features.
Drive Information
In the Drive Information part, you will get a brief overview of all drives connected to your computer. In this screen, you can get an easy access to key indicators of your hard drive’s health along with TB Written, Temperature (whether it is normal), Benchmark results, as well as the used and free volumes of your hard drives.
Tip: You might need to manually refresh the disk list in Drive Information for Magician to make sure that all the connected disks are detected.
Drive Management
The Drive Management of Samsung Magician software can help you maintain your drive’s health and boost performance. It contains 5 features. Let’s see them one by one.
- Drive Details: With this feature, you can learn about more detailed information about the selected disk, including Drive Health, Temperature, Serial Number, Interface, Firmware, AHCI Mode, Total Volume, and Volume Detail. It also includes S.M.A.R.T check which inspects your SSD and detects possible drive failure before it happens.
- Performance Benchmark: You can check the drive’s performance with Performance Benchmark.
The testing process will take a few minutes. Please wait patiently and do not proceed with other operations during the process. In the Benchmark results, you can see the sequential/random read/write speed of the drive.
- Diagnostic Scan: You can decide a partial or full scan for your hard drive to identify and fix potential problems and maintain your drive’s capabilities.
- Over Provisioning: This feature can help you allocate a certain capacity of the disk to available space to improve the performance and lifespan.
- Performance Optimization: If you want to improve the performance of your hard drive without Over Provisioning feature, you can try Performance Optimization. It allows you to turn on RAPID mode and TRIM scheduling.
Tip: RAPID refers to Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data which optimizes system performance by using DRAM as a cache for storage. RAPID mode requires 1GHz or faster processor, at least 2GB DRAM, 50MB free disk space, and NTFS file system. TRIM deletes data from blocks that are no longer used to improve the performance of the storage device.
Data Management
The last part of Samsung Magician is Data Management which can help you manage and protect valuable data on your disk. There are 3 features in this part.
- Secure Erase: This can help you permanently deletes data stored in your hard drive. If you need to sell your disk out, you can use this feature to make sure that the information stored on it is permanently gone. You need to create a bootable USB drive during the process. This feature is not supported for Windows 8/8.1.
- PSID Revert: PSID Revert is a new feature which allows you to unlock and reset your drive to its factory setting by entering the 32–character PSID password printed on the drive label. All data on the target drive will be deleted in the unencrypting process.
- Encrypted Drive: This feature will help you encrypt storage devices with BitLocker to prevent your private and sensitive data from being accessed by others who are not trusted.
Apart from the features above, you can find a button for Update at the bottom left corner of the window. It can help you update all the drives to the latest version of firmware.
Samsung Magician doesn’t require the internet connection to run, but you need to connect to the internet if you want to update firmware. And after the update, your PC will be shut down automatically after counting down 20 seconds.
Warning: There is always the risk of data loss while updating the firmware. Before updating the firmware, you should back up your data and close all running applications except Samsung Magician, and please do not power off during the process.
Does My Hard Drive Work with Samsung Magician Software?
After learning about all the features of the Samsung Magician Software, you might want to get it to have a try. To run the software, your PC has to meet the following system requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (32/64bit).
- Disk Capacity: At least 95MB available for installation.
- Supported Partition Types: MBR, GPT.
Besides, you need to pay attention that not all hard drives can work with the software.
As you know, the software is designed for Samsung SSDs. Even in this condition, some features are unavailable for Samsung SSDs themselves. Here is a chart from Samsung and you can know the features that are available for a specific Samsung SSD.
In addition, the Samsung Magician software is not compatible with other manufacturers’ SSDs and HDDs, according to Samsung. Therefore, you cannot use certain features especially when your hard drive is of other brands, such as Western Digital, Seagate, etc.
And once you miss a feature, you will get an error message like “the selected drive does not support this feature” or “not supported” in Samsung Magician. Just as the following picture shows.
For a disk that is not Samsung-branded, you can still get some drive information like temperature and volume information. Performance Benchmark should be available for most drives.
However, you will be unable to use most of its advanced features for the disk, including Diagnostic Scan, Over Provisioning, Performance Optimization, Secure Erase, PSID Revert, and Encrypted Drive.
For a USB drive of other brands, there are no available features.
Samsung Magician Alternative
What to do if your hard drive doesn’t support Samsung Magician software? The best way is to find an alternative for its features. Here I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard for you. It is a professional wonderful disk management tool. It is equipped with a lot of powerful features and some of them are similar to the features of Samsung Magician.
You don’t need to worry about the brands of your hard drive, as MiniTool Partition Wizard is available for almost all the hard drives on the market, including Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, SanDisk, and so on. You can also manage your USB drives with it.
Here is the step-by-step guide for two typical features of MiniTool Partition Wizard which can be used as alternatives for Samsung Magician software.
Performance Benchmark Alternative
MiniTool Partition Wizard provides a feature named Disk Benchmark which can be used to measure disk performance for free. It is a nice alternative for Performance Benchmark of Samsung Magician. With this feature, you can test the sequential and random read/write speeds.
Now, let’s see how to use it.
Step 1: Click the following button to download MiniTool Partition Wizard and install it by following the installation wizard.
Free Download
Step 2: Launch the disk manager to get the main interface, and click Disk Benchmark from the top toolbar.
Step 3: Select the drive you want to test. Then set the provided parameters, including Transfer Size, Total Length, Queue Number, Thread Number, Test Mode, and Cool Down Time.
Tip: Please make sure the target drive has been assigned with a drive letter. Otherwise, you can’t perform the operation.
Step 4: Click Start to run Disk Benchmark. You need to wait for a while to get the test results.
After the scanning, the test results will be displayed as a graphical chart and you can view it intuitively.
Secure Erase Alternative
When you don’t need your old disk anymore, you might want to throw it away or sell it out. To protect your information, you should erase all the data on the disk before you take any actions. For Samsung SSD users, Samsung SSD Magician software might be a nice assistant. But how to erase data if your hard drive doesn’t support Samsung Magician?
In this case, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard. After performing Wipe Disk with this tool, the data on the disk can’t be recovered by most data recovery software. Now, let’s see how to erase data via MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard. When you get the main interface, right-click the disk you want to erase and select Wipe Disk.
Free Download
Note: If you are planning to wipe your system disk, you need to upgrade MiniTool Partition Wizard to Pro Ultimate edition. Then create a bootable USB drive and boot your PC from the drive before wiping.
Step 2: Choose a wiping method and click OK. MiniTool Partition Wizard provides you with 5 wiping methods. They get different results and spend different time. The latter two methods will procure a better effect and take relatively longer time. You can choose one according to your needs.
Step 3: When you go back to the main interface, click Apply from the bottom left corner of the application to execute the pending operations.
Tip: If you want to learn about more applications for erasing data, you can refer to the following post: Top 10 Free Hard Drive/Disk Data Wipe Software for Windows 10/8/7.
In addition to the features mentioned above, you also can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create/move/resize/copy/delete partitions, recover lost data, change cluster size, rebuild MBR, check for file system errors, and do many other managing works. For more information about this software, you can get help from the user manual.
How can you manage your hard drive if it doesn’t support Samsung Magician? Here is an alternative for Samsung Magician and you can have a try. Click to Tweet
What is Samsung Magician? I guess you get the answer now. You can keep using it if you have a Samsung SSD. If you are using a hard drive of other brands, it should be a wise choice to find an alternative.
We’re glad if you share your ideas and experience in the following comment zone. And for any problems about MiniTool Partition Wizard software, please don’t hesitate to contact us via [email protected].
What Is Samsung Magician FAQ
Is Samsung Magician free?
Yes, Samsung Magician software is designed for Samsung SSDs, and you can download and use it without spending money. This software is incompatible with hard drives of other brands and you will miss some features if you are not using a Samsung SSD.
Is Samsung Magician any good?
For Samsung SSDs, Samsung Magician should be a powerful application for disk management. It comes with various features, such as Drive Information, Performance Benchmark, Diagnostic Scan, Over Provisioning, Secure Erase, etc. They are useful and might help you a lot. But it’s not good for other hard drives, as most features will be unavailable.
How to use Samsung Magician?
- Download Samsung Magician from the Samsung official website.
- Run the downloaded setup file and install the software by following the onscreen instructions.
- Launch Samsung Magician and you will get the access to its features.
- Select the feature you want to use from the left pane, and operate referring to the instructions in the right pane.
Samsung Magician Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global
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Own a Samsung SSD? You need this important Magician software update
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Own a Samsung SSD? You need this important Magician software update
Last updated: May 21st, 2020 at 14:47 UTC+02:00
Samsung today released version 6.1 of its Magician software. Samsung Magician is the software that’s used to optimize the company’s solid state drives (SSDs). Magician allows users to keep an eye on the drive health, manage and protect their data as well as improve the performance of the drive.
In Samsung’s own words, this software is “an essential service for keeping drives running smoothly and securely.” It’s important to get this latest version as the company is dropping support for older versions of Samsung Magician on Saturday, May 30, 2020.
Samsung dropping support for older versions of Samsung Magician
The company recommends users to update to version 6.1 of Samsung Magician as soon as possible. It’s available as a free download. Those who are using version 5.1 and above of the software will get a push notification to download the latest version. Those using version 5.1 or below won’t get a notification, they will need to manually download version 6.1.
Do keep in mind that older versions of Samsung Magician will be erased from your computer when the new version is installed. This latest version is backwards compatible with all of Samsung’s consumer SSDs, starting from the 470 Series all the way to the latest 970 EVO Plus. The software also brings some limited features for other storage drives like portable SSDs and hard disk drives.
For those who are unaware, the Samsung Magician software was launched in 2012 to provide an advanced suite of tools to SSD owners. Five major updates have been released for the software since. It has an intuitive user interface which provides information about drive health and other metrics through easy to understand graphs and charts.
You can download Samsung Magician version 6. 1 from here.
SourceGeneralSSD
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Samsung SSD 870 EVO Review
Given all else it’s known for across the galaxy, Samsung is certainly no stranger to the world of internal solid-state drives (SSDs). The company continues to be a leading force in the industry, producing some of the best SSDs we’ve reviewed year in and year out. Pairing a few industry-standard features with a few more industry-leading speeds, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO (starts at $39. 99; $479.99 for the 4TB version we tested) comes within inches of successfully bridging the gap between SATA and PCI Express drives with stellar results in program and game launching, as well as booting into Windows 10. Whether you need a new boot drive, a massive digital tome to store all your games (looking at you, Call of Duty: Warzone), or just a solid storage option all around, the zip-quick Samsung SSD 870 EVO is a premier option in the world of SATA SSDs, and easily wins our Editors’ Choice award as our favorite performance-minded SATA drive.
Samsung Brings Out the Big Guns
The Samsung SSD 870 EVO is a SATA SSD launched in the standard 2.5-inch form factor. It’s based on Samsung’s own V-NAND 3-bit triple-layer-cell (TLC) flash using Samsung’s in-house controller, and it’s launching in five different storage-volume sizes: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. (Check out our SSD dejargonizer to clarify those acronyms if you need the SSD terminology breakdown.)
Samsung has never shied away from being a premium-priced contender in the storage space, and the story is no different with the launch of the Samsung SSD 870 EVO. ..
Above, you can see that the 1TB Samsung SSD 870 EVO hits parity when compared with leading options like the 12-cent-per-gigabyte ADATA SX8200 Pro, a PCIe 3.0 M.2 drive.
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Samsung rates the 4TB drive we tested to hit a sequential read speed of up to 560MBps, with sequential-write speeds topping out at 530MBps, pretty standard stuff for SATA 3.0 at this stage in the game.
On durability, the TBW (or «terabytes written») rating is an estimate of the total amount of allowable lifetime write activity, after which the drive will start to take memory cells out of service as they «wear out. «
The 4TB Samsung SSD 870 EVO is rated at 2,400TBW with a five-year warranty (whichever happens first, the warranty end or the write limit), which is right within standard expectations for SATA-based TLC drives these days at that capacity. TBW scales with capacity, as you can see in the chart above.
Samsung pairs every EVO drive with its stellar Samsung Magician software package(Opens in a new window), which continues to set the standard to which all other storage manufacturers should aspire.
From both aesthetic and functional standpoints, Samsung Magician stands well above the rest. The software features an elegant design that helps to demystify some of the more complex storage-management tasks, such as using Secure Erase or defragmenting the drive.
Testing the Samsung SSD 870 EVO: Souping Up Stagnant SATA
We test all of our SATA and PCI Express 3.0 SSDs on PC Labs’ main storage testbed, which is built on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition CPU.
We use 16GB of DDR4 Corsair Dominator RAM clocked to 3,600MHz, and the system employs Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition as its discrete graphics card. (Read much more about how we test SSDs and what the results mean.)
PCMark 10 Overall Storage Test
First up is the overall PCMark 10 storage test, from UL, running the full storage suite. This score represents how well a drive does throughout the entire PCMark 10 run. It’s the sanctioned score presented by UL’s software at the end of each run. Next are some more granular measures derived from PCMark 10’s background «traces.» These following PCMark 10-derived tests represent a simulation of how quickly a drive is capable of launching a particular program (or, in the first case, booting Windows 10). The Windows 10 trace simulates the full Windows 10 operating system startup procedure and records how quickly the drive can feed the kind of data requested.
After that is a game-launching test set, which simulates how quickly a drive can read shallow-depth small random 4K packages; 4K is one of the more commonly used file-block sizes for game installations, though that composition does depend on the title you’re playing.
Finally, the drives are put through a very important test for creative types. As anyone who regularly works in programs like Adobe Premiere or Photoshop can tell you, a constant pinch point is the time it takes for these programs to launch. Note that the 4TB version of the drive we reviewed is at the top of the charts; we also received a 1TB sample of the SSD 870 EVO and tested that too, with the results just below the 4TB.
The numbers we saw out of the overall PCMark 10 score are quite promising, putting this SATA drive in the same leagues as M.2 PCI Express 3.0 NVMe drives like the ADATA Spectrix S40G or Crucial P2.
Going down the list, however, that’s where the similarities end. The Samsung SSD 870 EVO quickly starts to outpace those drives in the tests where it matters most, like booting Windows, loading game levels, or launching creative programs like Adobe with simulated projects housed inside.
In each of these tests, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO proved itself not only as a leader among SATA drives, but also a regular competitor with both PCIe 3. 0 and PCIe 4.0-based NVMe M.2 drives. While both of those standards are great for what they do (hitting all-time sequential throughput records), their added bandwidth doesn’t always translate to better 4K random read and write scores, which is what a large percentage of SSD buyers in this category tend to care about most.
As for the PCMark 10 Copy Tests tab (the last tab in the chart above), those numbers tie in with the next test set…
Speed and Copy Tests
The PCMark 10 copy tests are also derived from PCMark 10 traces. At first, these numbers might look low compared with the straight sequential-throughput numbers achieved in benchmarks like Crystal DiskMark 6.0 and AS-SSD, charted below. But that’s due to the way this score is calculated and the nature of (and differences between) the source data sets.
Moving on from PCMark 10-derived numbers, the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 sequential tests simulate best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. Last up is a series of file and folder transfers done in the SSD benchmarking utility AS-SSD. This trio of tests involves copying large files or folders from one location on the test drive to another…
Of course, even with all those big wins in our games and programs testing, ultimately the SSD 870 EVO is still based on SATA, and SATA has a speed ceiling that even the best controllers and NAND flash in the world can’t break through.
In sequential Crystal DiskMark speeds, the SSD 870 EVO hits Samsung’s own rated spec without a sweat, while 4K results were just a bit stronger, but still a bit slower than expected when comparing the 4TB and 1TB variants of the same drive.
The drive also loses slightly to the Samsung 870 QVO in our AS-SSD copy tests, though not by enough to be perceptible to most users in real-world use.
Samsung Gives SATA a Perk-Up
While there aren’t a ton of innovations on offer with Samsung’s SSD 870 EVO, the incremental improvements that Samsung has made both to its flash technology and its controllers looks to have translated into some decent gains for the drive’s 4K random read and write performance.
It’ll be a sweater-weather kind of day down below before we see SATA 3.0 speeds make any sort of jumps in sequential throughput, so until then, companies like Samsung are focusing their storage efforts where they can: improving speeds for real-world 4K random read and write scenarios.
In that quest, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO succeeds handily, setting new records for SATA while also keeping the drive just about competitive with M.2 drives when launching games or Adobe Photoshop. If you’re married to SATA pricing (or your PC can’t handle anything else) but want to optimize 4K performance, the Samsung SSD 870 EVO is the best new SATA drive of the early days of 2021. It should be at the top of anyone’s list who wants the best combination of performance, product quality, and price in a 2.5-incher.
[Editors’ Note, Jan 20, 2021: Samsung contacted us after this review went live and informed us that the MSRP of the drive we tested was lower than its original pricing reported at launch, dropping from $529. 99 for the 4TB version to $479.99. The other capacities mentioned also saw drops from the originally reported pricing, and the new prices are reflected above.]
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Record-setting 4K results for SATA drives
-
Strong write-durability rating
-
Samsung Magician is the gold standard of SSD management software
The Bottom Line
The Samsung SSD 870 EVO offers the peak of Serial ATA SSD performance, and moves so fast in 4K random read and write operations you’d almost be forgiven for confusing it with PCI Express 3.0.
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Samsung SSD 980 Pro 2TB Review: Flagship PCIe 4 NVMe Storage
In September of last year, the initial salvo of Samsung SSD 980 Pro drives was launched. At the time, Samsung SSD 980 Pro PCIe 4 NVMe drives in capacities of 250GB on up to 1TB were made available, but a 2TB drive had been announced and was on the roadmap as well. It took a bit of time for Samsung to make the 2TB drive a reality, but nevertheless it is here now, and we’ve got one on hand for some benchmarking and evaluation.
Except for its obviously higher capacity, the 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro doesn’t differ from the smaller drives that were previously made available. Due to how the drives function, however, the higher capacity does alter the performance profile a bit. We’ll explain exactly how and why that happens when we get to the benchmarks. For now, here’s a quick breakdown of the drive’s main features and specifications. Take a gander and we’ll dig in deeper down below…
|
Capacity | 2000GB |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
Interface / Protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3c |
Controller | Samsung Elpis |
DRAM | 2GB LPDDR4 |
NAND Flash | Samsung TLC |
Sequential Read | 7,000 MB/s |
Sequential Write | 5,100 MB/s |
Random Read | 1,000,000 IOPS |
Random Write | 1,000,000 IOPS |
Endurance (TBW) | 1200 TBW |
Warranty | 5-Years |
Find The Samsung SSD 980 Pro 2TB @ Amazon
With the launch of the 2TB model, Samsung SSD 980 Pro Gen 4 drives are now offered in four capacities — 250GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. Our article featuring the 250GB and 1TB models was posted when the drives were initially made available, so if you’d like to see how the lowest capacity drive performs, check out that article — we’ve got the 1TB drive listed in our benchmarks for easy comparisons, though.
All of the drives in the Samsung SSD 980 Pro series use the common M.2 (2280) ‘gumstick’ form factor, but the performance between the different models varies based on their capacity. The 250GB drive is rated for peak read bandwidth of 6.4GB/s, with 2.7GB/s writes, for examples, but the larger 2TB drive featured here offers higher speeds that top out at up to 7GB/s reads with up to 5.1GB/s writes.
The Samsung SSD 980 Pro drives’ max IOPS ratings also vary depending on queue depth, but peak at right around 500K – 1,000K at QD32 depending on the capacity. The drives’ endurance ratings vary based on capacity too, as you would expect, with the 250GB drive landing at the 150TBW mark and the big 2TB drive hitting 1200TBW. That’s half of what the previous-gen 970 Pros are rated for, but should still be plenty for the vast majority of consumer use cases.
The Samsung SSD 980 Pro series features Samsung’s latest V-NAND flash memory. To be specific, the drives are equipped with 6th generation, 1xx-layer (up to 136 layer) TLC V-NAND flash with 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells. This 6th generation V-NAND offers up to 10% lower latency for reads and writes, at up to 15% lower power than previous-generation V-NAND.
The drives are also outfitted with a new controller, dubbed Elpis. In addition to the aforementioned native PCI Express 4.0 interface, the Elpis controller supports 4x the number of maximum queues as the Phoenix controller used on the 970 series (32 vs. 128). And the Elpis controller is manufactured on a leading-edge 8nm process as well.
The Elpis controller supports all of the features you’d expect from a modern SSD, like TRIM, garbage collection, S.M. A.R.T., etc., in addition to various encryption technologies. Depending on the capacity, all of the drives also feature 512MB to 2GB of discrete LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The 2TB drive here packs the maximum 2GB of DRAM.
The Elpis controller has a nickel coating that helps to dissipate heat and the underside of the drives has a thin copper plate hidden underneath the decal to aid in cooling as well – you can see the copper if you look closely around the edges of the decal.
In somewhat of a twist, Samsung SSD 980 Pro drives feature TurboWrite technology, similar to Samsung EVO-branded drives. TurboWrite uses a portion of the drives’ V-NAND as an SLC write buffer, which results in improved write performance, as long as the buffer isn’t exhausted. With 980 Pro drives, Samsung has tweaked the algorithm and TurboWrite capacities versus older drives, so it’s virtually transparent to end users, at least on the higher capacity drives.
As was the case with previous-gen drives, the TurboWrite buffer dynamically adjusts in size based on the workload. With the 250GB model, the TurboWrite buffer can be as large as 45GB if the drive has enough unused capacity, which is much larger than the 970 EVO series. The 1TB drive’s TurboWrite buffer can scale as large 108GB and the 2TB drive featured here maxes out at 216GB. The larger TurboWrite buffers in the 980 Pro series give them the ability to maintain maximum write performance up to 92% longer than the 970 EVO Plus series.
TurboWrite will allow the Samsung SSD 980 Pro drives to perform well in the vast majority of consumer-class workloads, because writes are fastest when the SLC buffer is being utilized. Once the buffer is exhausted, write performance either tapers off or becomes somewhat more erratic on the lower-capacity drives (512GB and below), but on the 1TB and 2TB drives, the SLC cache is flushed fast enough to maintain strong write performance across the entire capacity of the drive.
Samsung warranties the SSD 980 Pro series drives for 5 years, which is in-line with previous-gen offerings. Anecdotally, in all of the years we have been evaluating Samsung SSDs, we have yet to have one fail. Every one of the Samsung drives we have on hand, including much older SATA-based solutions, are still functioning properly.
Samsung SSD 980 Pro 2TB Benchmarks
Under each test condition, the SSDs tested here were installed as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a separate drive used for the OS and benchmark installations. Our testbed’s motherboard was updated with the latest BIOS available at the time of publication. The SSDs were secure erased prior to testing (when applicable), and left blank without partitions for some tests, while others required them to be partitioned and formatted, as is the case with the ATTO, PCMark, and CrystalDiskMark tests. Windows firewall, automatic updates, and screen savers were all disabled before testing and Windows 10 Quiet Hours / Focus Assist was enabled.
In all test runs, we rebooted the system, ensured all temp and prefetch data was purged, waited several minutes for drive activity to settle and for the system to reach an idle state before invoking a test. Also note, we have completely revamped our test bed, so the numbers shown in this review aren’t comparable to previous articles. All of the drives here have also been updated to their latest firmware and where applicable.
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Processor —
Motherboard — Video Card — Memory — Audio — Storage — |
AMD Threadripper 3990X
MSI TRX40 Creator GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 32GB G.SKILL DDR4-3200 Integrated on board Corsair MP600 (OS Drive) |
OS —
Chipset Drivers — DirectX — Benchmarks — |
Windows 10 Pro x64 (2004)
AMD v2. DirectX 12 IOMeter |
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As we’ve noted in previous SSD articles, though IOMeter is clearly a well-respected industry standard benchmark, the fact of the matter is, though our results with IOMeter scale, it is debatable as to whether or not certain access patterns actually provide a valid example of real-world performance. The access patterns we tested may not reflect your particular workload, for example. That said, we do think IOMeter is a reliable gauge for relative throughput, latency, and bandwidth with a given storage solution. In addition, there are certain highly-strenuous workloads you can place on a drive with IOMeter, that you can’t with most other storage benchmark tools.
In the following tables, we’re showing two sets of access patterns; a custom Workstation pattern, with an 8K transfer size, consisting of 80% reads (20% writes) and 80% random (20% sequential) access and a 4K access pattern with a 4K transfer size, comprised of 67% reads (33% writes) and 100% random access. Queue depths from 1 to 32 were tested…
For the most part, the new 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro performed right on par with its lower-capacity 1TB counterpart, though it did pull ahead slightly at the lower queue depths.
The latency characteristics of the 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro are also right in-line with the lower-capacity 1TB model, which are among the best in the group according to the IOMeter access patterns we used for testing.
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Next we used SiSoft SANDRA, the the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant for some quick tests. Here, we used the File System Test and provide the results from our comparison SSDs. Read and write performance metrics, along with the overall drive score, are detailed below.
The 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro once again performs right on par with the 1TB model. And although it lands in the second place position overall, note it actually had the best write performance in this benchmark. The ADATA drive takes the pole position due to its stronger read score.
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ATTO is another «quick and dirty» type of disk benchmark that measures transfer speeds across a specific volume length. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and graphs them out in an easily interpreted chart. We chose .5KB through 64MB transfer sizes and a queue depth of 6 over a total max volume length of 256MB. ATTO’s workloads are sequential in nature and measure raw bandwidth, rather than I/O response time, access latency, etc.
In ATTO’s read and write bandwidth tests, Samsung 1TB SSD 980 Pro drives offers slightly better read and write performance at transfer sizes below the 64K — 128K range, but things level off and the two drives perform similarly with larger transfers. Overall, the SSD 980 Pro’s performance is strong, but the ADATA S70 with its InnoGrit controller and Micron NAND takes the lead in sequentials.
The 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro’s IOPS also trail the 1TB model at the smaller transfer sizes, and land about in the middle of the pack. Once again though, performance between the 1TB and 2TB model equalizes with larger transfers.
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Next up we ran the Compression Benchmark built-into AS SSD, an SSD specific benchmark being developed by Alex Intelligent Software. This test is interesting because it uses a mix of compressible and non-compressible data and outputs both Read and Write throughput of the drive. We only graphed a small fraction of the data (1% compressible, 50% compressible, and 100% compressible), but the trend is representative of the benchmark’s complete results.
The compressibility of the data being transferred across the drives has minimal impact on performance, The 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro showed slightly larger variances than the 1TB drive, but they effectively finished right on top of each other here, with the ADATA XPG S70 taking the overall lead yet again.
Samsung 870 Evo SSD Review
Introduction
Samsung’s consumer line SSDs are highly successful, especially the EVO series.
The company has recently launched the 870 EVO which is the successor of their popular 860 EVO that was released more than 2 years ago.
Samsung’s new 870 EVO series range from 250GB and up to 4TB and feature the company’s new 128-layer 3D NAND flash technology.
The 128-layer NAND is said to offer improvements in read latency and power consumption.
The 870 Evo features a 5-year limited warranty and retails for $40 (250GB), $70 (500GB), $130 (1TB), $250 (2TB), and $480 (4TB).
Samsung uses the updated MKX controller in the 870 Evo which is also used in the 870 QVO SDDs so we should expect a nice performance bump across the board.
Today we will be reviewing the 870 Evo 500GB model and we will be comparing it against other SATA drives that are on the market.
Samsung advertises the 870 Evo series with sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 530 MB/s for all capacities.
Random write speeds for all capacities is rated for up to 88K IOPS and 98K IOPS for random read speeds.
The new 128-layer NAND along with the new MKX controller is able to deliver improved sequential write speeds and random
write speeds compared to the previous generation.
Pricing & Endurance
Samsung’s 3D-NAND technology is built to endure 150TB (TBW) for the 250GB model which equals to about 82GB per day for 5 years.
The 500GB and 1TB models can handle up to 300TB and 600TB (TBW) and this amounts to 164GB daily read/write for the 500GB model and 328GB for the 1TB model for 5 years.
The 2TB and 4TB models on the other hand can endure up to 1200TB (TBW) and 2400TB (TBW), respectively.
This equals to about 657GB per day for 5 years for the 2TB model and 1314GB for the 4TB model.
In this review we will be primarily comparing the Samsung 870 Evo to the Crucial MX500 SSD to see which one offers the best performance.
Price-wise, the 870 Evo SSDs are significantly more expensive than the Crucial MX500 drives.
For example, the 870 Evo 1TB retails for $130 while the MX500 1TB sells for $90 which makes the MX500 1TB about $40 cheaper.
The other MX500 models are just as cheaper but capacity-wise, the MX500 series max out at 2TB while Samsung offers users up to 4TB
which is very impressive. Samsung clearly has an advantage in the industry with their 4TB capacity model.
Crucial does have the upper hand in price but that’s about it.
Samsung’s 870 Evo SSDs offer much higher write endurance than the competition.
Crucial’s MX500 1TB drive can only endure 360TB (TBW) while the 870 Evo 1TB almost doubles that with up to 600TB TBW.
The MX500 500GB comes with 180TB (TBW) which is almost half of the 870 Evo 500GB that endures up to 300TB (TBW).
The difference in write endurance increases even more if we compare the 2TB model. We are looking at up to 1,200TB (TBW)
for the 870 Evo 2TB versus 700TB (TBW) for the MX500 2TB.
Features
The 870 Evo supports many advance features such as Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART) which is basically a monitoring system
used to perform an analysis of the drive for problems with the intent of anticipating hardware failures.
It also comes with support for error correction codes (ECC) which are used in NAND Flash memories to detect and correct bit-errors.
TRIM is also supported in the 870 Evo which basically means the operating system can inform the SSD which blocks of data are no longer
in use and can be wiped internally to improve performance.
The 870 Evo has up to six times longer sustained performance than its predecessor due to enhanced Intelligent TurboWrite.
The TurboWrite buffer size varies based on the capacity of the SSD; 12GB for 250GB model, 22GB for 500GB model, 42GB for 1TB model and 78GB for 2/4TB models.
With the TurboWrite technology, a part of the 3D V-NAND memory (3 bits per cell) acts as SLC memory (one bit per cell) and
this portion of the NAND memory in the disk acts as a specific buffer through which all data write operations pass.
Samsung’s MKX controller comes with support for Opal/TCG V2.0 encryption which you can use to
keep your personal files and confidential data restricted from hackers and thieves with AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption.
Being hardware-based means that the encryption engine secures your data without the performance degradation that you may experience with software-based encryption.
These are all the advanced features the Samsung 870 Evo supports:
- Error Correction Code (ECC)
- Garbage Collection
- TRIM Support
- Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART)
- AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption
- TCG/Opal V2.
0
- TurboWrite Technology
- Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
Specifications
Samsung 870 Evo Series Lineup | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Model | 250GB | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | Price | $39.99 | $69.99 | $129.99 | $249.99 | $479.99 |
Interface | SATA III 6Gb/s | ||||
Protocol | AHCI | ||||
Form Factor | 2.5″ | ||||
Dimensions | 100x 69.85x 6.8 (mm) | ||||
Controller | Samsung MKX | ||||
DRAM (LPDDR4) | 512MB | 1GB | 2GB | 4GB | |
NAND | Samsung 512Gbit 128L 3D TLC | ||||
Sequential Read | 560 MB/s | ||||
Sequential Write | 530 MB/s | ||||
Random Read | 98K IOPS | ||||
Random Write | 88K IOPS | ||||
SLC Write Cache | 12 GB | 22 GB | 42 GB | 78 GB | 78 GB |
Endurance (TBW) | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,200 TB | 2,400 TB |
TRIM supported | Yes | ||||
Encryption | AES 256-bit encryption | ||||
Warranty | 5 Years | ||||
Launch Date | January 2021 |
Packaging
The front of the package lists sequential read and write speeds and the capacity which is located on the top right corner.
On the back you will find a large sticker displaying similar information such as model, serial number, capacity and warranty information.
The 870 Evo comes in a black aluminum enclosure and has a light gray square under the Samsung branding.
Like most SATA SSDs, the 870 Evo utilizes the SATA III 6Gbps interface but it is compatible with SATA II and SATA I interfaces,
but that means it will work at a reduced speed.
When you first install a Samsung SSD, I highly recommend downloading and installing Samsung’s Magician software because
it helps enhance the performance of your SSD by
allowing you to update the firmware, over-provision, secure-erase, track the health of the SSD and you can also see how much storage you’ve used.
When you are inside the Samsung Magician software, make sure to head over to the OS Optimization screen
to configure your OS to work best with the SSD.
By default, index searching, prefetch, superfetch are enabled so you can disable them because they are not needed if you are using an SSD
and I would also set the power options to high performance.
Above you will see a picture of the PCB of the 870 Evo model which has just three components on it.
There is the MKX controller, a 128-layer NAND package and a LP-DDR4 DRAM module.
The 250GB/500GB models get 512MB DRAM cache buffer while the bigger 1TB, 2TB and 4TB models come with 1GB, 2GB and 4GB DRAM cache buffer, respectively.
Test Methodology
Test Setup | |
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Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X oc’d 4.2Ghz |
Motherboard | ASUS ROG STRIX X470-F |
RAM | Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200 MHz |
Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 FE |
Storage | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB Samsung 870 Evo 500GB Samsung 860 Evo 500GB Western Digital Black 3D 500GB Crucial P1 500GB Crucial MX500 500GB Toshiba TR200 480GB |
Power Supply | Seasonic Focus Plus 750W Gold |
Heatsink | Noctua NH-U14S |
OS | Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit (20h3) |
Thermal Compound | Noctua NT-h2 |
Case | Open bench |
To make sure these drives perform at their maximum performance, we will be disabling all the power saving features in the BIOS (C6-state, etc).
The testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 10 64-bit with the latest windows updates installed.
We disabled a bunch of unnecessary services such as drive indexing, Prefetch, Superfetch, Defrag and removed all the bloatware from Windows 10 to make sure there were as few processes running as possible during the testing.
We’ll be using the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor all-cores overclocked to 4.2Ghz and the ASUS ROG STRIX X470-F motherboard
with the latest BIOS version installed which at the time of writing this review is v5809.
Installing and using an SSD is pretty straight forward, simply connect one end of your SATA cable to the SATA port in your motherboard and the other end of the cable to your SSD.
After installing windows, make sure to check if you have the latest firmware.
Benchmark Software:
+ Windows 10 Startup
+ HD Tune Pro
+ ISO File Copy
+ AS SSD Read/Write
+ AS SSD Score
+ IOMeter
Benchmark Results
Windows 10 Startup Time | |
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SSDs | Seconds (lower is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 6. |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 7.1s |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 7.1s |
Crucial P1 500GB | 7.2s |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 7.6s |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 8.4s |
Windows 10 boot times are measured from the time it takes between hitting the power button to reaching the Windows desktop.
AS-SSD Score Benchmark | |
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SSDs | Score (higher is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 4931 |
Crucial P1 500GB | 2691 |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 1242 |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 1238 |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 1231 |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 823 |
The AS-SSD software is a popular benchmarking software used to measure the performance of an SSD. In this test we are measuring the overall score.
AS-SSD Sequential Benchmark | |
---|---|
SSDs | Read/Write (higher is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 3285 MB/s (write) 3503 MB/s (read) |
Crucial P1 500GB | 1527 MB/s (write) 1829 MB/s (read) |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 549 MB/s (write) 558 MB/s (read) |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 531 MB/s (write) 549 MB/s (read) |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 529 MB/s (write) 548 MB/s (read) |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 452 MB/s (write) 508 MB/s (read) |
Once again, we are using the AS-SSD software to measure sequential read and write speed of each drive.
IOMeter 4KB Benchmark | |
---|---|
SSDs | Read/Write (higher is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 241162 KB/s (write) 281266 KB/s (read) |
Crucial P1 500GB | 228481 KB/s (write) 271437 KB/s (read) |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 89161 KB/s (write) 98045 KB/s (read) |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 89148 KB/s (write) 98029 KB/s (read) |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 89353 KB/s (write) 98246 KB/s (read) |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 71692 KB/s (write) 95381 KB/s (read) |
In this test, we are using IOMeter which is one of the best application for stress testing the random IO performance of an SSD. IOMeter is set to use 4KB file size chunks and will stress the SSD with random 4 KB files.
HD Tune Pro IOPS Benchmark | |
---|---|
SSDs | Read/Write (higher is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 2681 MB/s (write) 2932 MB/s (read) |
Crucial P1 500GB | 1611 MB/s (write) 2087 MB/s (read) |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 519 MB/s (write) 517 MB/s (read) |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 513 MB/s (write) 513 MB/s (read) |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 488 MB/s (write) 511 MB/s (read) |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 479 MB/s (write) 508 MB/s (read) |
Here we are using HD Tune Pro to measure read and write IOPS. HD Tune Pro is a Hard Disk Utility with many functions such as error checking, S.M.A.R.T and benchmarking.
ISO File Copy Benchmark | |
---|---|
SSDs | Seconds (lower is better) |
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | 4.2s |
Crucial P1 500GB | 7.3s |
Samsung 870 Evo 500GB | 13.5s |
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB | 13.7s |
Crucial MX500 500GB | 13.9s |
Toshiba TR200 480GB | 16.3s |
To represent a large file usage scenario, we are copying a 5GB ISO image to a different folder on the same drive.
Conclusion
The 870 EVO is an impressive SATA SSD and it delivers the best SATA performance I have seen.
It comes loaded with features such as hardware-based encryption, great read/write performance and high write endurance.
With the 870 Evo, Samsung has managed to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the SATA III interface which is awesome to see.
But I will say that the performance difference going from the 860 Evo to 870 Evo is tiny.
Pros:
+ Fantastic Performance
+ Up To 4TB Capacity
+ Samsung Magician Software
+ Hardware-Based Encryption
+ 5-Year Warranty
Cons:
— Pricier Than Competition
The biggest downside of the 870 Evo 500GB is its high price-tag and there are plenty of SSDs on the market that deliver close to the
performance of the 870 Evo while being significantly cheaper.
At $130, the 870 Evo 500GB costs about $40 more than the Crucial MX500 500GB which retails for $90 and the performance
difference between the two SSDs is very small.
If you are on a tight budget, we recommend going with the MX500 500GB since it offers similar performance at a much attractive price.
But if you’re looking to buy the absolute best performing SATA SSD on the market regardless of price, the new Samsung 870 Evo SSDs
are what you should be looking at. If you are using a traditional hard drive, then you should definitely consider
upgrading to an SSD because it will offer a massive improvement in every aspect from read/write speeds to access times to power consumption.
With the release of the 870 Evo, Samsung continues to dominate the consumer SSD industry with the fastest SATA SSD on the market.
Overall, I believe the Samsung 870 Evo 500GB SSD deserves our Gold award.
Final Score 9.5
Samsung magician how to transfer windows to ssd
Contents
- How to transfer windows 10 to ssd without reinstalling: 3 easy ways
- What do we get?
- Samsung magician how to transfer windows to ssd
- How to use Samsung Data Migration
- How to transfer Samsung Data Migration 9 system0006
- Classic System Migration
- Advanced Cloning
- Some Limitations
- Easy Migration from HDD to SSD
- Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Why SSD? Aomei Partition Assistant Standard Edition
- Transfer Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7 to another drive in Minitool Partition Wizard Bootable
- Macrium Reflect
- Additional information
- Video
How to transfer windows 10 to ssd without reinstalling: 3 easy ways
9002 lose data, system settings, software products and documents — transfer the installed Windows 10 OS from the HDD (hard drive) to a more mechanically stress-resistant and fast SSD drive. The transfer is performed not only for the purpose of quick file recovery, but also for the purpose of replacing the HDD disk with an SSD. Therefore, it makes sense to figure out in detail how to competently transfer the Windows 10 operating system from a hard drive to an SSD drive.
Using the built-in functionality
Migration tools available for SSD drives
Large SSD manufacturers Samsung or Seagate, for example, release special software products for data cloning along with drives: software released by the Seagate brand for transferring information to an SSD of its own production. A very capacious program that covers virtually all user needs: deleting confidential information, cloning the system, transferring OS and software product settings, restoring files, etc .;
Data Migration — software designed to work with Samsung SSDs. The program helps to optimize the potential of the disk, searches for drivers, clones the system, etc.
The listed software products are complex packages that backup all data from the HDD to SSD drives or only the necessary sections of the main disk. With their help, you can clone the operating system and create disks to boot the system.
Important! Using SSD native software reduces the risk of errors during the cloning process.
There are also universal programs. Acronis has released free True Image software for backing up OS to SSD of any brands: Kingston, Samsung, Seagate, etc. There are many paid and free analogues on the net — Paragon Drive Copy, Macrium Reflect, etc. To start the process, you need to download from software manufacturer’s website and install it on a PC. Installation is performed by the classical method.
Acronis True Image migration procedure
What do we get?
Source
Samsung magician how to transfer windows to ssd
Transferring the Windows operating system on a laptop second hard drive.
In this case, you need a SATA USB adapter.
My main goal is to use free programs to transfer Windows to SSD or a trial version that will allow you to do cloning without the need to purchase the full version of the program. You will not need to look for some hacked versions of the program that can harm your computer.
We figured out the connection of the second drive, now let’s move on to the Windows transfer itself.
The cloning process is similar for any Windows system or any Linux distributions.
System transfer using Acronis TrueImage.
1. Go to the Acronis.com website and download the trial version of Acronis TrueImage.
Click try for free and download the installer.
2. Install the Acronis TrueImage program on your laptop and run it.
In the «Tools» section there is a disk cloning function, but it is not available in the trial version of the program, so we will clone by creating a backup copy.
Go to EaseUS. com and download Todo Beckup free.
Enter any email in the pop-up window and download the free version of the program in the next window.
Install the program on your laptop. At the first pop-up window that asks for activation, click the Laiter button. The program in free mode provides two ways to clone your data clone and system clone.
In clone mode, you can clone only the entire hard drive without the ability to select any separate partition of the drive. This approach can be inconvenient if you have a D drive that does not need to be transferred to an SSD drive.
Cloning is very easy.
In the first step, select the partitions you want to scan. Click Next and select the disk to which the clone will be performed.
Next, click Next again, the program shows how the source hard drive looks like schematically and how the target will look like after the cloning is completed.
If this option suits you, press the Proceed button, after which the cloning of the hard drive begins.
In the system clone partition, you can clone partitions with the operating system.
The program itself will select the partition with windows and all additional partitions for its work.
You only need to specify the target SSD drive on which the system will be migrated.
Transferring the system using the free program Samsung Data Migration
Please note that this program will only work if the system is transferred to a disk manufactured by Samsung.
Go to the site where you can download the Samsung Data Migration program and the drop-down menu under the inscription Data Migration download the Data Migration Software program itself.
Below is a detailed instruction on how to use this program.
The manual describes all cloning steps and supported media.
The program itself is completely free and very easy to use.
When launched, the program itself selects the source disk with the operating system and the final SSD drive on which Windows will be transferred.
You can easily add or remove additional partitions from the source disk, as well as change their new size on the fly on the SSD drive. In addition, there is a very useful advanced clone feature if the original disk is larger than your new SSD.
In this case, the program offers to exclude the files you selected that do not fit on the new drive, and after transferring the system to the SSD, the program itself will offer to copy these files to another drive.
Taken from: How-FixIT
Source
How to use Samsung Data Migration
You can migrate your operating system to a new SSD using Samsung Data Migration. The software supports multiple HDD/SSD manufacturers (Samsung, Kingston, SanDisk, Seagate, Intel, etc.).
This article will show you how to use Samsung Data Migration. It allows you to clone a larger capacity drive to a smaller SSD. Although it will be more reliable to perform a clean installation of the system. The latest version of Samsung Data Migration has received support for Windows 10.
How to migrate your Samsung Data Migration system
Classic system migration
Download Samsung Data Migration from the manufacturer’s official website. Let’s figure out how to use it using the example of the new Samsung 9 SSD70 Evo 500 GB and old Kingston A400 120 GB. I actually need to transfer the system, in the program we press Start .
In the analysis options, select Source and Destination drives . The system partition is already listed and the target drive will need to be changed. Everything was automatically selected for me. After checking the source drive and destination Samsung SSD, click Start .
Important! When cloning starts, all data from the target disk will be permanently deleted. Also, it is not possible to clone files that are open on the source drive. Close all open files before you start transferring (copying).
Advanced Cloning
Sometimes the size of the source disk is larger than the size of the destination disk. Click Next to select the media files on the source drive that will be excluded from the cloning process. Or connect a drive with sufficient capacity press Scan .
Before proceeding with the system migration, select the files that will be excluded from the cloning process. Keep selecting unnecessary files until it changes to Ready to clone , then click Next . And wait for the OS transfer to complete.
Some restrictions
Samsung Data Migration software allows you to quickly and securely migrate all data (including the current operating system, programs, and user data) from an existing storage device (for example, from an HDD to a new SSD).
At the end of the migration, the utility will report that the source disk data has been successfully cloned to the Samsung SSD. Now just turn off the computer and boot the system from the new SSD drive. You need to set the correct priorities in the BIOS).
Source
How easy it is to transfer the system from HDD to SSD
Contents
Contents
You come to an IT specialist and see that everything “flies” in his PC. Are you asking how? The answer is SSD. You think it would be nice to install an SSD for yourself. But it’s half a day to reinstall Windows, and then even configure it. Is there a way to replace the HDD with an SSD without reinstalling Windows?
Why SSD?
Computer without a drive — a pile of hardware. Traditionally, hard disk drives have been used for permanent storage of information in computers. Any hard disk is primarily a mechanical device in which magnetic platters rotate, and information is written and read using a magnetic head.
The biggest problem with hard drives is random access to the necessary sectors with information. Even 10-15 years ago, the “chirring” of gestures was clearly audible when they were actively used. Now such a sound may mean an imminent drive failure.
In contrast to HDD (hard disk drive), SSD (solid-state drive) has no moving parts. In terms of write speed, SSDs have long overtaken traditional HDDs, and in terms of access speed to arbitrary blocks of information, they compete exclusively with each other.
In real-life PC scenarios, the use of a solid state drive is reflected in the most positive way. The operating system is loaded in a matter of seconds instead of a couple of minutes, working applications start almost instantly. Even the most voluminous games load several times faster than from the HDD, and during the game there are almost no so-called “freezes” when data from the drive is loaded into the RAM.
A couple of mouse clicks
So, in order to speed up your computer or laptop, you decided to buy an SSD. But here a problem arises. You have had a computer for several years, the operating system is configured the way you need it, and everything works like clockwork.
Any reinstallation of the operating system is, if not stressful, then certainly not the most interesting activity. But I still want to try an SSD.
Transferring a system from a hard drive to an SSD is not a problem these days. There are many commercial and free programs for byte-by-byte transfer of operating systems, individual partitions, and full cloning of hard drives.
For example, Acronis True Image, EASEUS Disk Copy, Paragon Drive Backup, AOMEI Backupper, Clonezilla, Renee Becca.
Renee Becca
For example, let’s see what a popular program for cloning hard drives Renee Becca is. When it is launched, the following dialog box appears in front of us.
Selecting the “Clone” item, we get to a dialog box in which you can select the necessary operation, whether it is cloning a disk / system disk, a separate partition, or deploying a system from an image.
By going to the Disk Clone section, you can select the partition to be cloned and the drive to which it will be transferred.
In general, this is a very solid program, its main drawback is the English-language interface. For some, this is not a problem, while for others, a completely Russian-language interface is important.
HDClone
One of the fully Russified programs for cloning partitions and operating systems is the HDClone utility. There are both commercial and free versions of this program.
The free version of the program has a cloning speed limit and does not allow you to transfer the OS to a drive smaller than the one you are looking for.
The principle of the program is extremely simple. To create a clone of your system hard drive, select the appropriate section of the program.
Next, we need to select the drive we want to clone.
The next step is to select the SSD to migrate the system to.
The program will automatically select the optimal settings, but if necessary, you can configure everything manually.
Our next step is to start directly cloning the operating system and data on the SSD.
In the free version of the program, the cloning process takes quite a long time.
However, there is absolutely no need to hurry in such matters. Moreover, the speed of reading data from the HDD obviously loses to modern SSDs.
Upon completion of the cloning process, the program will once again prompt you to automatically make the necessary changes, after which you will have a full-fledged clone of a fully customized Windows.
As you can see, there is nothing difficult in transferring the operating system. It remains to restart the computer and configure the boot from the newly installed SSD.
Before you make sure that the operating system has been transferred without errors, it is better not to delete the information from the old hard drive. But, if no problems have been identified for several days, you will have an additional drive for storing and transferring data.
As a rule, the old HDD is left in the computer as a backup drive. But you can just put it on a shelf, thereby reducing the noise and vibration of the system unit case.
Source
How to transfer Windows to another drive or SSD
If you have bought a new hard drive or SSD for your computer, it is very likely that you do not have much desire to reinstall Windows, drivers and all programs. In this case, you can clone or, otherwise, transfer Windows to another drive, not only the operating system itself, but also all installed components, programs, and more. A separate instruction for Windows 10 installed on a GPT disk in a UEFI system: How to transfer Windows 10 to an SSD.
There are several paid and free programs for cloning hard drives and SSDs, some of which work only with certain brands of drives (Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital), others with almost any drive and file system. In this short review, I will describe several free programs that will be the easiest way to transfer Windows and will suit almost any user. See also: SSD setup for Windows 10.
Acronis True Image
Acronis True Image is the official utility for SSDs and hard drives from the following manufacturers: WD, Kingston, SanDisk, Crucial, A-Data. This means that by purchasing a disk of this brand, you have the right to use a special free version of Acronis True Image to transfer Windows 10, 8.1 or Windows 7 to an SSD. After a simple installation and launch of the program, in the main window, select the item “Disk cloning. Copy partitions from one disk to another. The action is available both for hard drives and if you need to transfer the OS to an SSD.
In the next window, you will need to select the cloning mode — automatic or manual, automatic is suitable for most tasks. When it is selected, all partitions and data from the source disk are copied to the target (if there was something on the target disk, it will be deleted), after which the target disk is made bootable, that is, Windows or other operating systems will start from it, as well as before. After selecting the source and destination disk, data transfer from one disk to another will begin, which may take quite a long time (it all depends on the speed of the disk and the amount of data).
Step-by-step detailed instructions for using the program and where to download branded free versions for different SSD manufacturers — How to transfer Windows 10, 8.1 or Windows 7 to an SSD in Acronis Ture Image.
Seagate DiscWizard
In fact, Seagate DiscWizard is a complete copy of the previous program, only it needs at least one Seagate hard drive on the computer to work.
All actions that allow you to transfer Windows to another drive and completely clone it are similar to Acronis True Image WD Edition (in fact, this is the same program), the interface is the same.
You can download the Seagate DiscWizard program from the official website https://www.seagate.com/ru/ru/support/downloads/discwizard/
Samsung Data Migration
Samsung brand SSD from any other drive. So, if you are the owner of such a solid state drive, this is what you need.
The migration process is a multi-step wizard. At the same time, in the latest versions of the program, not only full disk cloning with operating systems and files is possible, but also selective data transfer, which may be relevant, given that SSD sizes are still smaller than modern hard drives.
The Samsung Data Migration program in Russian is available on the official website https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/
Important: other manufacturers of SSD and HDD. Usually, you can find them by entering a query consisting of the brand and the phrase «Data Migration», so you will find, for example, the Intel Data Migration Tool and similar programs for other brands of drives.
How to move Windows from HDD to SSD (or other HDD) in Aomei Partition Assistant Standard Edition
Another free program, also in Russian, that allows you to conveniently transfer the operating system from your hard drive to a solid state drive or to a new HDD — Aomei Partition Assistant Standard Edition.
Note: this method only works for Windows 10, 8 and 7 installed on an MBR disk on computers with BIOS (or UEFI and Legacy boot), when trying to transfer the OS from a GPT disk, the program reports that it cannot do this (perhaps, a simple copying of disks in Aomei will work here, but it was not possible to experiment — failures when rebooting to complete the operation, despite disabled Secure Boot and checking the digital signature of drivers).
The steps for copying the system to another drive are simple and I think even a novice user will understand:
If everything goes well, then at the end you will receive a copy of the system that can be booted from your new SSD or hard drive. You can download Aomei Partition Assistant Standard Edition for free from the official website https://www.disk-partition.com/free-partition-manager.html
Transferring Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7 to another drive in Minitool Partition Wizard Bootable
Update: To migrate using MiniTool Partition Wizard, I recommend using the new guide: How to transfer Windows to an SSD or another drive in MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.
Minitool Partition Wizard Free, along with Aomei Partition Assistant Standard, I would classify as one of the best free programs for working with disks and partitions. One of the advantages of the product from Minitool is the availability of a fully functional bootable ISO image of the Partition Wizard on the official website (the free Aomei allows you to create a demo image with important features disabled).
By burning this image to a disk or flash drive (the developers recommend using Rufus for this) and booting your computer from it, you can transfer the Windows system or another to another hard drive or SSD, and in this case, we will not be hindered by possible OS restrictions, because it is not running.
Note: I checked the cloning of the system to another disk in Minitool Partition Wizard Free only without EFI boot and only on MBR disks (Windows 10 was transferred), I can not vouch for performance in EFI / GPT systems (I could not make the program work in this mode, despite disabled Secure Boot, but it seems to be a bug specifically on my hardware).
The process of migrating the system to another drive consists of the following steps:
When completed, you can close the Minitool Partition Wizard, restart the computer, and set to boot from the new drive to which the system was transferred: in my test (as I mentioned, BIOS + MBR, Windows 10) everything went well, and the system booted up as if nothing had happened with the source disk disconnected.
You can download the Minitool Partition Wizard Free boot image for free from the official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html
Macrium Reflect
The free Macrium Reflect program allows you to clone entire drives (both hard drives and SSDs) or individual partitions, regardless of what brand your drive is. In addition, you can create an image of a separate disk partition (including Windows) and later use it to restore the system. It also supports the creation of bootable recovery discs based on Windows PE.
After starting the program in the main window, you will see a list of connected hard drives and SSDs. Select the disk where the operating system is located and click «Clone this disk» (Clone this disk).
In the next step, in the “Source” item, the source hard drive will already be selected, and in the “Destination” item, you will need to specify the one to which you want to transfer the data. You can also select only individual partitions on the disk to copy. Everything else happens automatically and is not difficult even for a novice user. Detailed instructions are available here: Transferring Windows to an SSD or another drive in Macrium Reflect.
After you have migrated Windows and files, remember to either set the BIOS to boot from the new disk or disconnect the old disk from the computer.
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Hello. I ordered a Kingston A1000 SSD drive with the M2 form factor and a new mat. board for this connector. On offsite, Kingston read that the company does not support installing windows 7 on a disk, so there are no NVME drivers. Will the seven work on a Kingston SSD drive if the system is transferred using Acronis from the HDD?
Hello.
In your case, it would be correct to integrate the NVMe drivers on a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 7 (there are instructions on the network on how to do this, here, for example, a simple utility is offered by forum.oszone.net/thread-333485.html ) and put on the SSD from scratch.
Where can I get NVME drivers for SSD Kingston M2?
They are general, i.e. just an NVMe driver for Windows 7 and not for a specific drive.
Hello. need help: on a laptop with the program samsung data migration transferred win10 to ssd m2 970 evo 250gb (70gb total) with not so fast 500gb ssd split in half. the transfer is nearly successful. win10 on two ssds, I can boot from any and at the same time the other disk is disabled due to a signature conflict (this message is visible in disk management). how to format a partition in a 500gb ssd on which it stood before win10?
Hello.
In principle, you can do this: boot from some LiveCD or even a Windows 10 bootable flash drive and format the disk from it (just don’t mix up the disks). If you are using a 10 bootable flash drive, then using Shift + F10 (or Shift + Fn + F10 on some laptops) a command line opens in which you can format.
thanks, I did. deleted the old system partitions and added the resulting unallocated area to the second partition. everything worked out. the same could be done with the help of third-party programs for working with partitions.
Minitool Partition Wizard Bootable is no longer free. The link in the article asks for money
Yes, they removed him from there. But there is a way to download a free ISO: we take a copy of the link to the page, then go to web. archive.org (Internet archive), paste this link, and see how the page looked like in 2015, there is a direct download of the ISO image.
Hello Dmitry. Tell me, with these cloning methods (Aomei Par .. and GoodRam tool) — (before it) you need to remove or disable antivirus programs (I have AVAST), as well as CCleaner (they will somehow affect the cloning process). I think it will be interesting to know your opinion on this for everyone who is doing this for the first time. I did not find an answer to this nuance. Thanks in advance for your reply.
Anti-virus in theory can affect if third-party, not built-in. CCleaner, if it is not enabled, no automatic cleaning will affect.
Hello, I tried to use Acronis True Image WD Edition, but after starting the transfer, the program asks me to restart the computer, and nothing happens after the restart. If you run the program manually and try to perform the transfer again, then you run into the same notification about the need to reboot. Tell me what to do?
Hello.
Try disabling Secure Boot in the BIOS before performing the migration.
Hello and Happy New Year!
There is an old Samsung n150 netbook on an atom with 1GB of memory, 160GB of HDD and licensed Windows 7 Starter. Works like a clock, only, of course, slowly. Used for home network, printer, and other handy things. Tell me, if I transfer the OS from hard to a new 120GB SSD and put it in place of a hard drive, will everything hardware and software work? Thank you )))))
Hello, and Happy New Year to you!
If there are no unknown nuances there (and judging by the description, there are none). Then yes, everything will work as before, but faster. I can’t give a direct 100% guarantee, but close to it if everything is done correctly.
Hello, please tell me. I have an external hard drive (HDD) on which windows 10 is installed, as well as a laptop on which windows 10 is also installed. The question is: how to transfer the operating system from an external hard drive to a laptop? But so that on the laptop in the end there was only one windows, which came from an external drive.
Thank you very much in advance!
Hello.
Before proceeding: I do not guarantee that everything will work properly after these steps, we can butt in. In general, the path is:
1. Create a bootable flash drive with the program that we will use to transfer. Such a bootable flash drive can be created in Macrium Reflect, for example. Or you can find the Minitool partition wizard bootable ISO image on the network (removed from the official site).
2. We connect an external drive with Windows and boot from the created bootable flash drive. We carry out the transfer (we will lose the data on the internal hard drive of the laptop).
3. Finished the transfer, turned off the external hard drive, flash drive, crossed fingers, rebooted.
The simplest option seems to me to open the case of a portable drive and stupidly swap the hard drives. ?
Transferred windows 10 to a 240 GB ssd wd green using macrium reflect. After transferring to ssd, 53. 7 GB became occupied, 23.9 GB were free, and the capacity was 77.6 GB. How to transfer windows to ssd so that after transferring windows the entire capacity of ssd 240 GB is available?
Hello.
It’s all there and available: look in disk management, there most likely is unallocated space (highlighted in black), which can be attached to the «C drive».
Shown at the end of the video in this manual: https://remontka.pro/move-windows-10-ssd-hdd-macrium-reflect-free/
Hello. I have a ready-made disk image with Windows NT OS, and a FUJITSU hard drive to which this OS needs to be transferred. The computer has Windows 7 installed, Hitachi hard drive. How and with what program can this be done?
Hello.
How was the image created? In theory, the same program is enough to transfer.
As if by an Acronis program.
Acronis cannot be installed, it asks for a Western disk.
I figured out why the installation of Acronis did not work — I downloaded a version tailored specifically for the Western Digital manufacturer, and not a universal one.
Is it possible to transfer server operating systems in this way, will the license for the operating system and other programs fly off?
In fact, I get two disks with the OS, you can boot from one and store the other as a backup copy, in which case you can return to the OS on the old disk again?
Hello.
OS activation and other programs in the general case should not crash, but:
if there is some very specific software — financial, cryptographic, etc, I can’t say anything about it — you need to find out from the developer, because drive identifiers can play role.
is it possible to transfer to another disk only the logical disk from which the boot occurs. For example, a copy of the logical disk From one HDD was made and you need to transfer it to the partition From another disk without touching the logical partition D of this second disk?
i.e. pure cloning is not suitable for me, because in this case I will lose the data of the second disk.
It won’t work. Is it just a simple transfer of data between partitions (we clear that partition C, copy everything from this partition C to it), but after such operations it is likely that something will not be partially copied, and even if it is copied, it will not start.
Aomei Partition Assistant Standard Edition is installed, but when you try to start the transfer, it requires you to buy it. The “update” window pops up and for further actions you need to buy the program with a 30% discount..
Not exactly partitions are transferred, but a disk to a disk with a partition structure (you can select partitions to transfer and change their sizes on the target disk, but you cannot make it so that only part of the target disk is affected — i.e. everything that is there will be removed).
Thank you. Can I turn off one of the disks, insert a new one in its place, transfer the system there, and then put it in place of the current system disk? and disconnected to return to its place? Can something turn off? Do you have to go into bios to change the boot?
Hello.
No, everything should work right away without any settings. Unless the BIOS starts changing the settings itself when new hardware is detected (but usually this does not happen).
Dmitry, good day!
Have you worked with HDDClone v.9, with server2016 support, is there a free version there too?
Hello. No, I haven’t tried it, at least I don’t remember lately, so I can’t answer.
But Seagate DiscWizard told me that it couldn’t do cloning and the reason to look in the log. Where is the journal itself?
Cloning should be done from a boot disk or can it be done directly from under a running system?
I have selected source and target. Through the parameters, I marked extra logical drives to ignore and left only the system C:. But the program produced the above.
Better from a boot disk, but most programs can start in the system and, if necessary, continue after a reboot.
In general, from programs to work for free and guaranteed to work, I recommend: https://remontka. pro/move-windows-10-ssd-hdd-macrium-reflect-free/
Downloaded the latest version of Acronix. He, according to the same scheme, from under the working system, started cloning the first time. True for a very long time. The system partition of 295 GB (the other five are ignored) clones for more than four hours. Maybe because quite a lot of reassigned.
I don’t know how I’ll copy partitions from a half-dead. It is determined at system startup almost always and then disappears physically. The loop changed, does not help. Problem. It’s good that there is only 500 MB disk.
Hello.
Unfortunately, I won’t suggest a solution: when cloning, in any case, the target disk is cleared and the entire partition structure is completely overwritten, so we won’t save partition D. And I won’t tell you the options to “turn” (except to look for where to save the contents of D), the options for manually copying system files will not work here.
And I think I filmed such a video with a folder on some other issue (either transferring partitions with data, or in the context of «leave folders when resetting Windows»).
Thank you for your reply. I watched your video on my tablet, didn’t bookmark it. And then no matter how much I searched, I did not find it. That’s why I wrote here.
I want to transfer windows 10 from HDD to SSD, but at the same time I want all other data, except for windows 10, to remain where they were, that is, on the HDD. In other words, I want to transfer only Windows to the SSD. How to do it? I work with MiniTool Partition Wizard. HDD (on which the system is installed) 1 TB, SSD (to which you want to transfer the system) 119GB
I don’t remember that there was such an opportunity. Acronis allows you to exclude folders from transfer, for example. I remember some other instrument (but I don’t remember which one specifically). But most copy entire sections.
Good afternoon.
What would you recommend for cloning an HDD with a system partition under Win NT?
In fact, any software should be able to handle it… well, I wouldn’t use Aomei and Minitool here, but I would try Macrium from the free ones.
I was already desperate, I wanted to clone win10 to a new ssd from wd. At first, Acronis did not want to carry out the cloning procedure at all, it asked for a reboot, and after it there was nothing at all. I made a bootable flash drive to crank it through the bios. I started to set the settings, when choosing automatic (which is recommended), the laptop suddenly said at the start of cloning that cloning was impossible (all disks were selected correctly). When he set the transfer proportionally at the final stage, for some reason he writes that the transfer will occur one to one O_o. After a couple of attempts, he suddenly started copying and then notified that the cloning was completed. Super! But only Windows does not load … Just a black screen no matter how much I wait.
Does anyone know what could have gone wrong?
Are there only two physical disks on the computer?
Just in theory, if we assume that, for example, you have such a configuration: HDD + another HDD + new SSD, then it may turn out that Windows itself is on one HDD, and the partition with the bootloader is on another, and then in theory there may be something like the behavior that you describe.
Hello.
If the OS (Windows 10 2004) is already installed on the portable disk, can I clone my old disk from above (with an older 10 and all files)
Hello.
In principle, you can, but all data that is already on that portable drive will be deleted. Plus, it’s not a fact that you can boot from an external drive after such a transfer (Windows, by default, generally doesn’t know how to boot from removable drives normally, and I suspect that when installing 2004 there, you might not have done it with a simple system installer. But with some disks, it happens, he can).
That’s right, all data from the new disk will be deleted, and what is on the old disk with all partitions (provided that it fits and you select all partitions for transfer) will be transferred.
Source
Video
How to transfer operating system to SSD M.2
Samsung SSD 980 Pro M.2 1TB How to transfer windows to ssd Overview test
How to transfer Windows to SSD / Clone Windows from HDD to SSD
Samsung Magician 7. 0 is the best software to extend the life of your SSD, right?
REVIEW ON THE BEST SSD DISK ★ SAMSUNG 860 EVO ➤ HOW TO TRANSFER WINDOWS WITHOUT REINSTALLING TO SSD
Samsung Magician 6.0 — new software and firmware update for Samsung 9 SSD drives0003
How to move Windows to an SSD in 2022
How to move Windows to an SSD? Windows Disk Cloning
Windows Transfer by Samsung Data Migration to ssd disk
SSD Samsung 870 EVO REVIEW and TEST ❗ How to transfer Windows 10 to SSD?
What is Samsung SSD Rapid Mode and how do I use it? — Help And How To
Tiffany Garrett
Help And How To
SSDs are pretty fast and Samsung has some of the fastest consumer drives out there. While the company’s trendy new 970 Evo and Pro drives boast insanely fast read and write speeds, there’s still hope for older SATA drives.
Samsung has a feature called Rapid Mode that can add a bit of extra power to some of its SSDs. Here’s a quick overview of what it is, how you use it, and whether you should.
Image icons are not displayed in Windows 10
What is fast mode?
From Samsung’s official description:
More than 2x performance improvement with intelligent DRAM data caching for faster reads and optimized writes.
You can’t physically make a drive faster because read/write speeds are limited by hardware limitations. Instead, Fast Mode uses your PC’s smart and other resources, namely RAM, to cache files for faster access and a more streamlined write process.
Since fast mode uses your PC’s RAM, the minimum system requirement is 2 GB, so you have enough to work with.
Which drives can use Rapid Mode
Samsung’s latest and fastest NVMe drives cannot use Rapid Mode. They don’t need to either. So, if you’re using a 960 or 970 series SSD, you can end up right here.
Samsung’s official listings show a wide range of SSDs that support Rapid Mode, but they don’t seem all-encompassing. My 750 Evo is not listed but fully supports fast mode.
You are limited to SATA drives for this, including the 2.5″ size and some non-NVMe m.2 drives such as the 860 Evo. Apart from this and 2 GB of RAM, your computer must also be running Windows 7 or later.
How to enable and disable fast mode
Enabling fast mode is very simple. The first thing you need to do is download the free (and very useful) Samsung Magician app. It’s worth it if you use any Samsung SSD, as it’s an easy way to keep the firmware up to date, monitor the drive’s health and performance, and even safely erase it if you’re about to replace it.
After downloading and installing Samsung Magician, follow these steps:
- Open Samsung Magician.
-
Make sure a supported drive is selected from the drop down list.
- Change Quick mode enable.
-
Press yes when the description message appears.
how to enable nvidia g sync
-
After you restart your computer and apply fast mode, click yes in the next dialog box.
Magician will force your computer to reboot, and when it returns to its original state, fast mode will be enabled. You can check this by opening the app and you will see that the button under Rapid Mode now says to .
If you need to run any performance tests on your drive, you must first disable fast mode, restart your computer, and then run the tests. Because this interferes with the direct read/write feature, you’ll never get an accurate result, and the test is essentially running on your RAM, not your SSD.
Is Rapid Mode worth it?
Why don’t you run performance checks when fast mode is enabled!
Transfer your Windows 10 license to a new computer
Question for 64 thousand dollars. In my experience, I can’t say I’ve noticed much of a difference anyway, but I also don’t use my 750 Evo as a boot drive (I have a 960 Evo for this, which is amazing. The theory behind this is sounds like mine, but since mine is mainly used for storing games and other large, non-essential programs, I’m not exactly the right use case.0003
You can find various resources on the Internet about Quick Mode, including «Of course it would be nice to have it enabled.»
This comment in a thread back in 2016 on the UK Overclockers Forum seems to sum it up nicely:
“Samsung Rapid Mode tests are a bit misleading. Technical reviews have shown real performance gains ranging from 0% to 25% depending on what was loaded into the Ramdisk.
0% represents brand new data of some type that was never loaded into the Ramdisk, and 25% represents some type of data that is normally loaded into the Ramdisk.»
This makes sense. The software intelligently caches data, so if you’re downloading the same thing over and over again, this is obviously where you’ll see the most benefit.
Some users claim that this is a clear improvement, some are waiting, and some will simply refuse it. In my use case, I won’t get anything from turning it on, but your mileage may vary. There is a lot of discussion on this topic, so there’s plenty to read if you’re unsure.
Best SSDs for Windows PCs
How to get started with SSD hardware encryption using Samsung EVO 850 and sedutil as an example / Sudo Null IT News
SED, self encrypting drives). There is no deep explanation of the principles and terms.
Samsung EVO or PRO always stores data in encrypted (AES) form, even if you have not done anything about it. Simply, until you enable protection, it always returns this data decrypted. And when you enable protection, it will require a password for decryption. This means that setting a password will not lead to the fact that the speed of the disk will drop, everything was encrypted without it. It also means that you do not have to encrypt the disk from beginning to end — it is already encrypted.
However, there is no information about which encryption key is used. Perhaps it is the same for all disks of the model, or, for example, for those that are supplied to us. And with serious efforts (for example, soldering a piece from a donor disk in which the password is not set), it will be possible to read the data.
But if, like me, you just don’t like the fact that someone can shamelessly delve into the data of a stolen or lost laptop, then the proposed method is quite enough.
You can close data on Samsung EVO drives in one of three ways (no need to try to combine them, you will only break everything):
1.
set the password for the ATA drive in BIOS
This is the easiest way, but almost useless. In addition to the user password, the BIOS, as a rule, also prescribes a master password, which is known to the service department of the computer manufacturer, and then kind people can help anyone who asks for help decrypt the data. See, for example, the iXBT conferences, “Remove BIOS password (BIOS)”.
There are examples of ugly BIOS behavior when setting an ATA password, caching the password in BIOS and reading it from there, using hdparm instead of BIOS to set a password, reading a disk with a password set on a computer of the same model, etc. If you wish, you can read and evaluate yourself, but this method disappointed me.
2. Enable eDrive functionality and use BitLocker
Not bad, but only suitable for expensive versions of Windows, and not suitable for linux, if that.
3. use OPAL TCG functions via sedutil
In large strokes: the idea of this method is that when the protection is activated, after turning on the power, the disk, instead of its real contents, shows a small service partition. You can write anything in there, but it’s usually a utility that will ask you for a password and try to feed it to the drive to make it work for real.
Plus of this method is that the password is entered before the operating system is loaded, that is, nothing needs to be changed in the operating system, and there is no one to intercept this password.
The disadvantages of are:
- The computer cannot be put into standby. Once power is restored to the drive, it will be in a locked state. The operating system, woken up in RAM, will fall sharply.
- Extra reboot — after entering the password, when the disk has opened its true contents, the machine reboots so that the BIOS re-determines what kind of disk it is.
Before continuing, let’s ask ourselves the question, is it possible, as a result of incorrect actions, to turn a disk into a brick, that is, into a mass-dimensional model of a disk that does not respond to external stimuli?
Well, you can easily lose data if you set the password incorrectly when closing the disk, or forget it right there, for example. Therefore it is MANDATORY to back up before any further steps.
In the case when the disk cannot be decrypted, it can usually be reset to its original (factory) state, however, at the cost of complete data loss.
Total: a brick can be brought back to life, but data can be lost.
Let’s get back to Samsung drives.
There is no ready-made utility on the service partition for Samsung drives. There are commercial programs that can prescribe themselves there, but we will use the free and open source utility — sedutil (nee — msed).
Go to https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil/wiki
Download files from section executable distributions (do not forget to open .gz archives!!!):
Archive sedutil_WIN.zip is what we will use to enliven the encryption on the disk if we are working under Windows. The following is a description of how it works under Windows. Working with the linux version is practically the same. Unless the drive names are different, for example, instead of \\.\PhysicalDrive0 it will be /dev/sda.
Archives LINUXPBARelease.img.gz or UEFI64_Release.img.gz — contain what will be loaded from a small disk partition when its main content becomes locked after turning off the power. Different options for machines with BIOS and UEFI.
Archive Rescue.img.gz — contains an image of the recovery utility — if something goes wrong and you want to return everything back, but the computer does not boot.
We write the recovery utility to the USB flash drive just in case (proposed by the Win32DiskImager program) and check that we can boot from it. At the same time, we will see that it works from the linux command line, and make sure that we are not afraid of it.
Also on the site it is recommended to write LINUXPBARelease.img to another flash drive and check that when you boot and enter any password, we will see a list of disks. But this is not so, the site has an outdated description that they forgot to change (as of 01/01/2017). If the disk is not yet encrypted, we will only get error messages and go into a reboot. Don’t worry, this is normal (described in Issues on github).
So, from the command line, let’s see which of our drives is capable of self-encryption:
V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --scan Scanning for Opal compliant discs \\.\PhysicalDrive0 12 Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB EMT01B6Q \\.\PhysicalDrive1 12 Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA 500GB EMT41B6Q No more disks present ending scan
Let’s close both disks, but the password for them will be the same. Since we’ll be typing it on the command line, it needs to be free of characters that have a special meaning on the command line, like spaces, slashes, quotes, less than, more than. In addition, the characters you will be using must be available for keyboard input when the computer boots up (read QWERTY keyboard characters). Finally, type the password into a text file, save it to a flash drive, and copy-paste it into subsequent commands.
Let’s say our boot drive is PhysicalDrive1.
Let the password be MyPassword.
V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --initialsetup MyPassword \\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 13:21:04.000 INFO: takeOwnership complete - 13:21:04.436 INFO: Locking SP Activate Complete - 13:21:05.982 INFO: LockingRange0 disabled - 13:21:05.513 INFO: LockingRange0 set to RW - 13:21:06.028 INFO: MBRDone set on - 13:21:06.558 INFO: MBRDone set on - 13:21:07.057 INFO: MBREnable set on - 13:21:07.057 INFO: Initial setup of TPer complete on \\.\PhysicalDrive1
We load the bootloader image into the service partition (here you must determine which bootloader option you need: BIOS or UEFI)
V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --loadPBAimage MyPassword\\.\PhysicalDrive1 - 13:01:34.000 INFO: Writing PBA to \\.\PhysicalDrive1 | [*************************] 1049600 bytes written - 13:03:38.317 INFO: PBA image written to \\.\PhysicalDrive1 V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --setMBREnable on MyPassword \\. \PhysicalDrive1 - 13:05:02.000 INFO: MBRDone set on - 13:05:03.562 INFO: MBREnable set on
The very moment after which the drive starts to behave differently after power off:
V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --enableLockingRange 0 MyPassword \\.\PhysicalDrive1
Let’s encrypt the second disk (not bootable) at the same time. Everything is the same, only the bootloader can not be written to it.
V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --initialsetup MyPassword \\.\PhysicalDrive0 V:\sedutil>sedutil-cli --enableLockingRange 0 MyPassword \\.\PhysicalDrive0
After turning off the power and turning it on again, we will see a password request. If you entered it incorrectly — reboot and re-request. If correct, reboot and start the operating system from the opened disk partition.
In case of success, you can see how the icons of disks have changed in Windows — they have open yellow locks:
In case of failure . .. Hmm … Weekends are long today. Start by learning more about the sedutil utility from the link above.
First of all, the «Remove OPAL» section talks about how to restore the normal behavior of the disk so that it works again without changing the partitions at power on and without asking for a password.
The PSID Revert section provides extreme measures when you forgot/don’t know your password but want to revive the drive at the cost of data loss. In this case, you will need to find out the unique number of the disk (PSID), usually written somewhere on its case.
Good luck.
The most common mistakes that users make when using an SSD / Sudo Null IT News0001
Hello Habr! We have already written more than once about how to properly operate Kingston SSDs in order to achieve maximum performance from them with a long MTBF. However, we still see comments where users express their opinion about the unreliability of SSDs in general, as well as write to us about bad experiences with their use.
In the latter case, such unsuccessful purchases make PC users doubt the reliability of our devices as well. As a result, over the years of the existence of the blog on Habré, we have accumulated enough material to look at the problem of operating SSDs from the other side. This time we will not talk about “how to do it right”, but on the contrary, we will analyze the most common mistakes that SSD owners make and try to understand which of them can really lead to rapid wear of solid-state solutions.
The most common description of the problem, as a rule, sounds like this: “I installed an SSD drive in my computer, and after a year of operation (or even earlier) it started to slow down,” or “read / write speeds turned out to be noticeably lower than those declared by the manufacturer.” What is the reason for such situations?
Problem one: re-optimizing SSD
Many users of all brain neurons refuse to trust the manufacturers of operating systems and components, believing that the developers are not focused on providing them with a quality product. Therefore, after reading numerous tips on the Internet, people begin to optimize the drive just installed in the PC with the help of numerous tweaks and improvers. The priority is the desire to achieve maximum performance from an SSD solution.
Many tips for «optimizing» Windows for SSDs state that you should avoid unnecessary wear on the SSD by minimizing the number of writes. But these concerns about wear and tear are clearly exaggerated. With the same success, you can put the drive under glass, and then it will simply live forever. Otherwise, you don’t need to be afraid to put programs on the SSD and worry that the browser cache is located on it (some users, for example, transfer the browser cache to the HDD drive, after which the whole point of installing an SSD is lost).
In particular, Kingston, for example, tests its products in common user scenarios as early as the device manufacturing stage. And this, in turn, allows you to achieve maximum stability of the drive for future home use. Worrying about the imminent failure of the drive is simply irrational, because the manufacturer has taken care of this in advance.
TIP: Don’t waste time optimizing your SSDs! None of the tweaks will improve the performance of your drive, and some are completely harmful to the operation of the drive: they cause brakes, slow performance and other issues in the operation of the device. Yes, there are many guides on the Internet to improve the performance of SSDs, but we do not recommend following most of them. Windows 7, 8 and 10 will automatically perform the necessary optimizations.
Please note that starting with Windows 7, the operating system automatically enables TRIM for all drives it detects as SSDs and disables defragmentation for them on its own. In addition, Windows 7, 8, and 10 automatically disable the SuperFetch service for high-speed SSDs. As a result: you do not need to configure anything manually — Windows itself will do everything that is needed for the SSD to work properly.
Problem two: disabling the paging file
Continuing the over-optimization story, let’s take a look at the most surreal tips for «reducing the load» on an SSD drive. Some users deliberately turn off the paging file, believing that they already have enough RAM. Recall that the paging file is used to store data that RAM places into virtual memory in case of overflow. For example, if you have a program minimized for a long time and it does nothing, its data can be moved from RAM to the swap file.
TIP: You don’t need to disable the paging file! Without it, some programs simply will not work properly: they may start to crash or even refuse to start. Keep in mind — if you have a lot of free RAM, Windows will automatically give preference to it, so the paging file will not slow anything down. Yes, in theory it could cause more writes to your SSD and take up some space on it, but that’s not a problem with today’s SSDs. In addition, Windows automatically manages the size of virtual memory.
Problem three: Disabling indexing or Windows search services
Some SSD performance guides recommend disabling Indexing Services, which speeds up searching for data on the drive. The reason why this needs to be done is absurdly simple — you have an SSD, which means that search on it works many times faster than on a traditional HDD. However, this is not quite true.
TIP: You don’t need to disable Indexing and Search Services yourself. Indexing creates a list of files on your drive so you can instantly search for the data you need. If indexing is disabled, Windows will have to scan the entire SSD and look inside the files, which will require additional time and CPU resources. As a result: you will have the feeling that the SSD is not at all fast, contrary to the promises of the manufacturer.
Fourth problem: writing speed drops sharply
As a rule, this situation is observed in two cases: 1) you are trying to write a large amount of data, and the SLC cache of your drive is not enough to fit them all; 2) you have filled the capacity of the drive to the eyeballs, while you do not have the TRIM function activated (this problem most often occurs when using SSDs with outdated operating systems), or the drive has no capacity reserve.
To solve the first problem, Kingston SSD, for example, uses a combination of two types of caching (static + dynamic), which allows the drive to work stably in any situation.
To solve the second situation, part of the flash memory is made inaccessible to the user, and this ensures that the drive is never completely full — that is, there is always free capacity to maintain a stable write speed. In addition, SSD controllers have garbage collection algorithms that look for partially filled blocks and merge them, reclaiming as many empty blocks as possible. Note that the reserve capacity (as a rule, it is about 7% of the total NAND capacity) and «garbage collectors» (a simplified analogue of TRIM) are in all Kingston drives, as well as support for the TRIM function itself.
TIP: Do not fill the drive with data to the last megabyte! Keep a small margin to ensure sufficient empty blocks and maintain high performance. And one more thing: capacious files that do not require quick access, it is more logical to store them on the HDD (for example, movies and music), rather than stuff them into flash memory.
Problem five: controller firmware is not updated
Windows Update automatically updates your hardware drivers whether you want to or not, so you don’t have to search for new drivers from your motherboard manufacturer’s website to improve performance and stability. But with controller firmware, the situation may be different.
Please note that many SSD manufacturers offer their own utilities to maintain their SSDs. For example, Kingston has Kingston SSD Manager. With the help of this utility, you can literally check in one click if the latest firmware for your drive controller has appeared, and in the same way, install it in one click without risking anything.
It is worth noting that Kingston does not often release firmware updates for its SSDs, as the manufacturer brings to the market a ready-made solution that does not need constant “finishing”, such as computer games that receive a lot of patches in the early days release.
TIP: Keep your SSD up to date! It is clear that you can not update the firmware without taking into account the recommendations of the manufacturers, but in this case you will deprive yourself of the additional features and improvements that are brought to the drive with such updates: bug fixes, improved compatibility, improved performance, reduced power consumption (which is important for laptops), etc.
Problem six: NVMe drive performance is slower than advertised
One of the common problems that occurs when installing NVMe drives in PCs and laptops is not enough speed. And this happens by no means through the fault of the manufacturer, but due to the inattention of the user. Let’s take a closer look: what is the reason for the situation?
The M.2 slot can be found on motherboards with an LGA 1150 processor socket and higher, but on older motherboards (using, for example, Intel 8th and 9th series system logic for Haswell and Broadwell processors), only two are used for data transfer PCI-E 2. 0 lanes. As a result, we get a bandwidth of up to 1 GB / s, which makes users bewildered “where are the speeds of 2-3-4 GB / s promised by the manufacturer?”.
In the case of Skylake motherboards, motherboard chipsets allocate two to four PCI-E 3.0 lanes for NVMe drives, which allows for a throughput of 3.94 GB / s. But here, too, you need to carefully look at what other interfaces the M.2 slot shares the bandwidth with (the motherboard manual will help with this), otherwise the possibility of cutting the NVMe speed is still likely. You should not lose sight of the fact that if only two PCI-E 3.0 lines are used for the operation of the drive, the throughput of the drive will be limited to a threshold of 1.97 GB/s
TIP: If you want to get the best performance from your NVMe solution, carefully study the specifications of your motherboard and the drive itself.
Problem seven: Incorrect drive partitioning structure selection
When installing an operating system on an SSD (or adding an SSD to an existing system), a thorny question arises: which partitioning structure should I choose? Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT)? Do not rush to hype in the comments — for some PC users this is still a serious stumbling block, so we will not bypass it. Unless … we will not go into technical details and will immediately move on to the recommendations.
Of course, GPT is a newer and more reliable sectorization standard that we recommend using on high capacity drives. Compared to MBR, this protocol is more resistant to data corruption, supports a larger number of sectors (128 versus four for MBR), and allows the SSD to maximize its performance in terms of complex performance. But … there is a caveat: if you are still working with outdated operating systems (in the spirit of Windows XP or Windows Vista), it is more logical to opt for MBR.
TIP: For high-capacity SSDs running Windows 7, 8, or 10, we recommend using GPT partitioning. Otherwise, you will make your drive less reliable and productive, and later you will write comments about the unreliability of solid state solutions, reproaching manufacturers for excessive exaggeration and product marketing.
What is the result?
But how to properly operate SATA SSD and NVMe SSD? The main advice will be very simple — install them on your PC and laptop based on Windows 7,8,10, and then just forget that they need additional optimization. Do not forget to check for firmware updates in order to receive updates in time that increase the stability of the devices.
As for choosing a drive, give preference to solutions from well-known brands. Then you definitely won’t need to arrange “dancing with a tambourine”: look for programs to optimize and improve the operation of solid-state storage from a little-known manufacturer.
This concludes our tour of the misuse history of SSDs. Tell us in the comments what situations of improper operation do you encounter? It will be interesting for us to learn new stories from readers and analyze them in detail in the blog.
For more information about Kingston products, please visit the official website of the company.
Test and review: Samsung SSD 980 — another failure of the Korean manufacturer That’s right, the Samsung 980 has hit the market without the PRO add-on. But Samsung not only went over the suffix with a red pen, but also removed the DRAM cache. Let’s see if the new drive can live up to Samsung’s reputation for years.
Or has the Korean manufacturer shot itself in the foot again?
If in the case of the 980 PRO Samsung unpleasantly surprised by the transition from MLC to TLC NAND, this time the company went even further towards cheaper prices. A logical step after the 980 PRO would be the 980 EVO or QVO drives for the budget segment. A NVMe QLC SSD called «980 QVO» was highly likely to come out, which would work with a PCIe4 connection and enough DRAM cache for an acceptable level of performance.
But Samsung has deceived all expectations by introducing the SSD 980 as an entry-level NVMe drive. It has TLC memory but no DRAM buffer, and the connectivity is only PCIe3. The new Samsung SSD is designed to replace the popular 970 EVO (Plus) of its own production, that is, it should captivate with a good price / performance ratio.
As with many SSDs without a DRAM cache, the specs are to be expected, though it’s all about capacity. The maximum capacity is only 1 TB, which is already the first disappointment. The difference in characteristics between the younger model of 250 GB and the tested 1 TB drive is very large. Samsung lists a relatively high serial data rate (for PCIe3). Moreover, the Korean manufacturer is aware that high performance SSD requires a DRAM cache. Instead, it advertises the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature that was introduced with NVMe 1.2, and here 980 is similar to many other non-DRAM SSDs. But pay attention: this standard was introduced back in 2014, but for some reason Samsung did not remove DRAM in all other SSDs until today.
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Model | Samsung SSD 980 |
250 GB: 150 TBW 500 GB: 300 TBW 1 TB: 600 TBW |
Opening time (MTBF) | 1. |
Price | from 17.300 ₽ (1 TB) |
Samsung SSD 980 in detail
It will not take long to understand the key specifications of the new Samsung SSD. The controller used is an ARM controller of our own production, codenamed «Pablo», with the designation S4LR033SZHZ42 A2014. Surprisingly, the Korean manufacturer decided to use the old PCIe3 standard with four lanes. Therefore, the SSD will in any case rest on a maximum throughput of 3500 MB / s, although for everyday use 980 this bar does not matter. Only the older 1TB model achieves similar read performance. The write speed is only 3000 MB/s. At the same time, the younger model of 250 GB has a write speed of only 1300 MB / s.
As we noted above, the controller works without a DRAM cache, so it has to use the PC’s system memory in the form of Host Memory Buffer (HMB). Samsung is citing a cost advantage in this case, as the SSD is aimed at the «budget» category of users, and compared to SATA it is faster. The idea of HMB is by no means new, the technology was implemented with the NVMe 1.2 protocol update, which Samsung has supported since 960 EVO (NVMe 1.4 is officially listed for Samsung 980). Some of the SSDs we tested also use HMB instead of DRAM, but these are among the more budget-friendly options, such as the Western Digital WD_Blue SN550 or the Toshiba BG4.
Unlike SSDs with DRAM, HMB technology allocates a portion of the computer’s RAM to SSD tables. Typically, mid-range and high-end SSDs use their own memory for tables, which the controller works with, and its size is about 1 GB of DRAM per terabyte of capacity. Samsung 980 allocates 64 MB of RAM that the SSD works with. It doesn’t sound so bad, but the problem here is the increase in delays associated with accessing the controller to the PC’s RAM. Users have even reported lag when accessing a non-DRAM drive, especially if it’s filled to capacity.
The drive has NAND memory called «V-NAND 3bit MLC», it probably uses modern Samsung TLC NAND with more than 100 layers. This characteristic of Samsung SSD 980 is identical to the older Pro model, and it is the only one in common — other than the name, of course. Still, the 980 fills memory a little differently than the Pro model. The latter, like all modern Samsung SSDs, has a dedicated guaranteed SLC cache, but the 980 doesn’t have that either. Samsung only relies on pseudo-SLC dynamic cache, which is even larger than the 970 EVO with its «Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0», but requires more free space, depending on the scenario. For 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB models, the cache is 45 GB, 122 GB and 160 GB, after which it will write directly to the TLC NAND memory.
In our tests, we even exceeded the 160 GB mark mentioned by Samsung. After writing 163 GB, the speed dropped rapidly to a level of about 400 MB / s, after which it remained at this mark until the end of the tests.
Without a dedicated SLC cache, the results with a 80% full drive are not surprising. Although the Samsung SSD 980 was able to deliver the promised write speed for a moment at the start, it then dropped back to 400 MB/s.
As we expected, the Samsung 980 has no problems with temperature throttling. As with the Pro version, the drive’s power consumption is low, and the SSD showed no performance degradation even after ten minutes of continuous recording. However, Samsung traditionally uses a copper sticker for heat distribution. Recall that in the temperature throttling test, we write a large number of files in parallel and immediately erase them after the write is completed so that performance does not rest against the limitations of the SLC cache.
Like the five-year warranty, the specifications of the TBW Samsung 980 are identical to those of the 980 Pro. In principle, the performance cannot be called bad, but compared to competitors, they are much lower. Of course, reaching TBW doesn’t mean the drive will fail. But a higher level of TBW still inspires more confidence.
Max. write load
Model |
240 — 280 GB | 400 — 512 GB | 800 — 1.024 GB | 1.500 — < 4.000 GB | >= 4.000 GB |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Samsung SSD 980 | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | — | — |
Western Digital WD_Black SN850 | — | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — |
HP SSD EX950 | — | 320 TB | 650 TB | 1,4 PB | — |
Corsair MP400 | — | — | 200 TB | 400 TB | 800 TB — 1,6 PB |
TeamGroup T-Force Cardea C440 | — | — | 1,8 PB | 3,6 PB | — |
Samsung SSD 980 PRO | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — |
Crucial P5 | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — |
TeamGroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z340 | 380 TB | 800 TB | 1,66 PB | — | — |
Samsung SSD 870 QVO | — | — | 370 TB | 720 TB | 1,44 — 2,88 PB |
Kingston DC1000M | — | — | 1,7 PB | 3,4 PB — 6,7 PB | 13,5 PB |
Kioxia Exceria Plus | — | 200 TB | 400 TB | 800 TB | — |
Kioxia Exceria | 100 TB | 200 TB | 400 TB | — | — |
Kioxia Exceria SATA | 60 TB | 120 TB | 240 TB | — | — |
Gigabyte Aorus RAID SSD | — | — | — | 4 x 700 TB | — |
Western Digital WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD | 100 TB | 200 TB | 400 TB | 500 TB | 600 TB |
Corsair Force Series MP600 | — | 900 TB | 1,8 PB | 3,6 PB | — |
Seagate FireCuda 520 SSD | — | 850 TB | 1,8 PB | 3,6 PB | — |
Seagate FireCuda 510 SSD | — | — | 1,3 PB | 2,6 PB | — |
Toshiba RC500 | 100 TB | 200 TB | — | — | — |
Intel Optane SSD 905P | — | 8,76PB | 17,52 PB | 27,37 PB | — |
Western Digital WD Black SN750 | 200 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — |
Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus | — | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — |
Samsung SSD 860 EVO | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | 2,4 PB |
Samsung 970 PRO | — | 600 TB | 1,2 PB | — | — |
Corsair MP510 | 400 TB | 800 TB | 1,7 PB | 3. |
— |
We recommend that you read our SSD selection guide. When choosing an SSD for a computer, you will have to deal with many technical subtleties: the specifications indicate the controller, interface, type of flash memory, reliability characteristics, and much more. Therefore, inexperienced users can easily get confused in such information. In our guide, we will look at the most important characteristics and differences, talk about current technologies, interfaces and form factors. We also provide expert advice.
We’ve put together a guide to choosing the best SSD for your money for the current quarter. It will help you navigate the whole variety of drives and choose the best option.
<>Test and review: Samsung SSD 980 — another failure of the Korean manufacturer
Test configuration and test method
You have bought a large capacity SSD. What to do next
This content was written by a site visitor and has been rewarded.
It would seem that starting to use a new large-capacity SSD is as easy as shelling pears: plug it in, mark it up and use it, but there are a few nuances that you should know about right away.
I recently became the owner of a SSD Samsung 860 EVO Series (MZ-76E1T0BW) with a capacity of 1 TB and using its example I will show how to solve such issues as: cooling, updating firmware, partitioning under the OS, transferring programs and data.
recommendations
In a previous blog about SSD Why not buy a 120 GB SSD in 2020, I was surprised by the reaction of some readers who clearly expected more from the blog.
But unfortunately I am not I.N. and my blogs are for beginners. But, if it weren’t for that blog, I wouldn’t have a brand new SSD Samsung 860 EVO Series (MZ-76E1T0BW) for 1 TB now and, accordingly, there wouldn’t be this blog, much more serious and useful.
Location and cooling
So, you bought a brand new SSD, and the first desire of course will be to stick it into the case as soon as possible and start «installing all games», deploying virtual machines or rendering, but do not rush and first you need to solve a few issues .
The first question is the placement of the SSD in the case and its cooling. Many people think that SATA SSDs do not heat up and you can safely put it behind the back cover of the case, where manufacturers often make seats for 2.5 «drives, and forget about it. But do not rush.
The place behind the back cover is one of the worst places for SSD, and the higher it is located, the worse its temperature will be.
The space behind the processor socket is very hot, sometimes even up to 90-100 degrees and behind the back cover, the SSD will simply roast like in an oven.
Here is an example of such a place in Zalman Z11 Plus .
Therefore, even if you put an SSD there, check its temperature regime under long loads.
I put MZ-76E1T0BW in place of the hard drive, under the air stream from the case fan and I will show its temperature regime further.
Firmware update
The next question is the firmware update. It is desirable to update it, in new firmware they fix serious errors and increase performance, but it’s better to do it until when the SSD fills up with important information.
In the case of MZ-76E1T0BW , you need to go to the Samsung website, find your SSD and download the utility for it. In my case Samsung Magician .
After installation, run the utility and wait for the SSD scan to finish.
It shows the status of all drives and their fullness.
Pay attention to the temperature difference — Samsung 850 EVO 120 GB SSD is in a 5.25″ bay without airflow.
See section Drive detail for more information and firmware updates.
In my case, the firmware was RVT03B6Q and the utility offered to update the firmware. After the update, I received firmware RVT04B6Q.
Now you can run tests, in particular CrystalDiskMark.
SSD partitioning for the second OS
SSD can be filled with information very quickly, so you need to decide right away whether you will install an operating system on it and whether it is worth allocating a separate disk partition for it. Then it will be problematic to repartition the disk. I immediately decided to allocate a small department of 48 GB for spare Windows. Core Windows will be on a 120GB SSD.
Even if you do not plan to install the OS now, a separate small partition will not hurt.
I marked the disk in Disk Management and did not assign a letter to the partition under the OS so that it would not appear in the explorer.
Transferring games and applications
Now you can start transferring games and applications. I had an impressive number of games on the HDD and reinstalling them would have taken a whole working day, so I did this trick: I copied all the games from the HDD to the SSD in the same folders, and assigned the letter D:\ to the SSD, which the HDD used to have.
This allowed me to avoid reinstalling almost 500 gigabytes of games.
Copying from HDD to SSD is not a fast process, everything depends on the speed of the HDD.
It’s time to see the temperature regime under continuous load.
MZ-76E1T0BW warmed up to 43 degrees , but it is worth considering that it is winter now and the fan is blowing it. In summer and behind the back cover will be much higher.
But I had a couple of games on a 120 GB SSD and now it will be more difficult to transfer them. But here NTFS symbolic links and command 9 come to the rescue0073 mklink .
I copy The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from C:\games to D:\games and run command prompt as administrator.
It remains to configure some software that remains on the hard drive. I changed the hard drive letter from D:\ to Q:\ and now it’s quite simple to change D:\ to Q:\ in the properties of the program shortcut.