Choosing Samsung 830 Series SSD or not - MacBook Pro Mid 2010

[skunnykart]

Ifti,

Thanks for your reply.

Is the 830 SSD compatible with my Mac model? Do you have any experience on it?

Thanks.

I don't want to sound like I am bragging but I have currently a Samsung 830, OWC Mercury Enterprise 3G, OWC Mercury 6G, Crucial M4, OCZ vertex 2 all working fine in my various MBPs and iMac.

Samsung, OWC, Crucial are all really great drives.

OCZ vertex 2 is working now after 3 firmware upgrades but it was a nightmare getting to where I am now. Maybe OCZ has lifted it's game since but that experience has put me off OCZ.

I've arrived at the following non-scientific recommendations after 2-3 years of wasting a truck load of cash on SSDs:

1) 256 (or 240) seems to work better than smaller drives. I don't why but for some reason the larger drives seemed to work better. I found this out comparing a 120 v 240 OWC and 128 v 256 Samsung.

2) The advertised read and write speeds aren't really a good indicator of real life performance. The advertised read/write speeds for the Sandforce controlled OWC 6G drives are way faster than the Samsung and the Crucial 6G counterparts but in real life I found the Samsung and Crucial noticeably faster when it came to tasks such as video encoding, database searching and compiling, photoshop editing, and installing large apps and installing a clean install of Mountain Lion. Maybe it has something to do with the way data is handled by the different controllers in the drives. Sandforce for OWC, Samsung for Samsung and Marvell for Crucial.

3) Firmware upgrade is a pain on the mac. For both samsung and crucial I need do it through windows on bootcamp. OWC is by far the most mac friendly when it comes to firmware upgrades.

Personally I like the Samsung 830. It works great. No serious issues that require firmware upgrades. Crucial, OWC and OCZ all had problems that needed firmware upgrades (OCZ the worst by far).

I would like to try out an intel drive but no cash for it ATM.

 

[Freyqq]

i have a 2010 15" mbp and installed a samsung 830 256gb and 8 gb of crucial ram. Works great!

 

[lollerB]

I don't want to sound like I am bragging but I have currently a Samsung 830, OWC Mercury Enterprise 3G, OWC Mercury 6G, Crucial M4, OCZ vertex 2 all working fine in my various MBPs and iMac.

Samsung, OWC, Crucial are all really great drives.

OCZ vertex 2 is working now after 3 firmware upgrades but it was a nightmare getting to where I am now. Maybe OCZ has lifted it's game since but that experience has put me off OCZ.

I've arrived at the following non-scientific recommendations after 2-3 years of wasting a truck load of cash on SSDs:

1) 256 (or 240) seems to work better than smaller drives. I don't why but for some reason the larger drives seemed to work better. I found this out comparing a 120 v 240 OWC and 128 v 256 Samsung.

2) The advertised read and write speeds aren't really a good indicator of real life performance. The advertised read/write speeds for the Sandforce controlled OWC 6G drives are way faster than the Samsung and the Crucial 6G counterparts but in real life I found the Samsung and Crucial noticeably faster when it came to tasks such as video encoding, database searching and compiling, photoshop editing, and installing large apps and installing a clean install of Mountain Lion. Maybe it has something to do with the way data is handled by the different controllers in the drives. Sandforce for OWC, Samsung for Samsung and Marvell for Crucial.

3) Firmware upgrade is a pain on the mac. For both samsung and crucial I need do it through windows on bootcamp. OWC is by far the most mac friendly when it comes to firmware upgrades.

Personally I like the Samsung 830. It works great. No serious issues that require firmware upgrades. Crucial, OWC and OCZ all had problems that needed firmware upgrades (OCZ the worst by far).

I would like to try out an intel drive but no cash for it ATM.

Thanks for your reply. I think I'll buy a Samsung 830 but I'm not very sure about the model. I would like to buy the laptop kit version since the SATA/USB adapter could be useful in some way. My only doubt is the Year Model and latest firmware that it has. While the kit has been released in 2011, the no-kit version has been released in 2012.

Thanks.

@All

Thank you very much for your replies. I really appreciated your suggestions.

----------

i have a 2010 15" mbp and installed a samsung 830 256gb and 8 gb of crucial ram. Works great!

Thanks Freyqq. What version did you buy? The kit or the no-kit one?

 

[skunnykart]

Thanks for your reply. I think I'll buy a Samsung 830 but I'm not very sure about the model. I would like to buy the laptop kit version since the SATA/USB adapter could be useful in some way. My only doubt is the Year Model and latest firmware that it has. While the kit has been released in 2011, the no-kit version has been released in 2012.

Thanks.

@All

Thank you very much for your replies. I really appreciated your suggestions.

----------



Thanks Freyqq. What version did you buy? The kit or the no-kit one?

Yeah actually you might be on to something regarding the laptop kit, the ones with the laptop kit might be old stock. I would just get the one without the kit. You don't really need it.

But I would get a usb hdd enclosure for your old drive and make it into an external hdd.