Samsung 840 Evo SSD Upgrade

[That-Guy]

Some may remember when I first got my Late 2012 Mac Mini I added an SSD along side the standard 500gb Hard Drive and upgraded the Memory from 4gb to 16gb. Well now I have upgraded again!

The Original SSD was a SATA II OCZ Vertex Plus 120gb but after finding out that OCZ SSDs were not known for their reliability I was waiting for SSDs to come down in price and finally snagged the Samsung 840 Evo 250gb SSD for £73 which I think is pretty good!

I have moved the 500gb Hard Drive to the top bay and have the SSD in the bottom bay for easier access. I used SuperDuper to clone the old SSD to the new one which took about an hour.

The boot time has now halved from around 10sec to around 5sec, and the newer SSD is also SATA III and has double the cache.

Very pleased with the upgrade so recommend this to anyone running a Traditional Hard Drive or even a SATA II SSD.


Tools and Parts Used:

• SuperDuper! for Hard Drive Cloning.
  
• OWC Data Doubler Kit to allow two drives to be installed.
  
• Samsung 840 Evo SSD on Amazon or if in UK use Flubit for cheaper price.
  
• USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure to put new drive in for cloning.
  
• OWC Youtube Video explaining exactly how to dismantle your Mac Mini.

The great thing is my Mac Mini is now ready for Yosemite when it gets released which I am guessing is in October.

Just thought I would share this incase anyone else is thinking of doing the same, if you have any questions or comments please let me know.

 

[Crosscreek]

I run an 840 Evo too. Great SSD. I use SuperDuper for back up once a day instead of Time Machine.

 

[mvmanolov]

Very nice, i had 120 EVO in mine, then recently i changed that with a 128 850 PRO, but i think i should have bought the 256, so i might do that some time soon, and have a spare SSD yet again lol

 

[That-Guy]

Looked at the 840 Pro but couldn't see allot of performance gain for the money.

I had the choice of the 840 Evo or the Crucial MX100 which also seems to have great reviews. The MX100 is slightly newer than the 840 I believe and some people were saying the MX100 has a better controller.

I went with the 840 because so many people seem to be using them in their Macs and reliability seems to be amazing.

 

[nkawal]

I have a 2011 mid mac mini and right away a installed a Samsung 830 SSD then upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB and now it had 16GB. This thing is lightening quick. I also have another 830 SSD that i wanted to install to try out a RAID install but never got around to it. Also just picked up of the 840 SSD at $100. each. Not sure if its even worth it to swap the 830 with the 840 because its fast enough.

 

[nmodin]

Any performance numbers

Hi,

I'm just getting a Mini shipped for work and need to put an SSD in it ASAP. Do you by chance have any performance numbers to share in one way or another ?

I know the 840 EVO works well with macs (helped a buddy with a MBP a little while ago) but would be nice to have a summary of performance numbers from people who have pimped their minis with various SSDs.

Cheers,
Niklas

 

[That-Guy]

Hi,

I'm just getting a Mini shipped for work and need to put an SSD in it ASAP. Do you by chance have any performance numbers to share in one way or another ?

I know the 840 EVO works well with macs (helped a buddy with a MBP a little while ago) but would be nice to have a summary of performance numbers from people who have pimped their minis with various SSDs.

Cheers,
Niklas

Here we go, this is my 250gb Samsung 840 Evo in my Mac Mini:

Any questions please let me know

 

[nmodin]

Here we go, this is my 250gb Samsung 840 Evo in my Mac Mini:

Image

Any questions please let me know

Sweet. Since my corp pays the bills I think I'll go for the 850 Pro (256). I'll try to remember to post the results.

Ps.

Would be nice with a thread for just performance results on different platforms. I wouldn't expect any huge result differences, but would be nice still...

 

[drsox]

Here we go, this is my 250gb Samsung 840 Evo in my Mac Mini:

Image

Any questions please let me know

If you had gone with the Pro then the Write rate would also be >500. The Read rate would also have been higher. I get 530 or so on both with my 840Pro. What I considered, but decided against, was going with an 850Pro rather than an 840Pro. Too soon after launch for the price to be worth it. (IMO)

 

[ColdCase]

This is a recent Samsung 840 Pro 128GB in a recent mini.

 

[That-Guy]

This is a recent Samsung 840 Pro 128GB in a recent mini.

Should that not be faster than my 840 Evo?

 

[westrock2000]

Are you using in Fusion mode or separate drives? I set mine up in Fusion mode with a 256GB SSD and the stock 500GB HDD and I have been very impressed with it.

I will eventually upgrade the SSD to a 512.

I was hesitant to do the Fusion setup, but overall I am very pleased with it. It has been 100% seamless.

I will add that my Mini (current model 2012) would not allow me to format the SSD as a stand alone drive while inside the Mini if a normal hard drive was also present. It would always error while trying to remount after the format. It would do a Fusion setup no problem. In order to format the SSD as a stand alone drive I had to put it in a USB drive and format it. Only then could I put in the Mini and have two separate drives.

 

[That-Guy]

Are you using in Fusion mode or separate drives? I set mine up in Fusion mode with a 256GB SSD and the stock 500GB HDD and I have been very impressed with it.

I will eventually upgrade the SSD to a 512.

I was hesitant to do the Fusion setup, but overall I am very pleased with it. It has been 100% seamless.

I will add that my Mini (current model 2012) would not allow me to format the SSD as a stand alone drive while inside the Mini if a normal hard drive was also present. It would always error while trying to remount after the format. It would do a Fusion setup no problem. In order to format the SSD as a stand alone drive I had to put it in a USB drive and format it. Only then could I put in the Mini and have two separate drives.

I have my drives setup as separate drives.

Setting up as a fusion drive scares me a little

 

[westrock2000]

I have my drives setup as separate drives.

Setting up as a fusion drive scares me a little

Mine did it completely on it's own.

There was an issue during one of the iterations where I had to manually destroy it and partition off a piece of space for the recovery volume because of the previous install. But outside of that one instance, OSX did it all by itself. But I must have installed OSX 6 or 7 times before I finally settled on just having the Fusion drive.

Good learning experience

 

[drsox]

Here's my results with the 256GB 840 Pro as a fusion drive with the 500GB 5400rpm stock drive. Not as fast as the Pro by itself, but still good.

 

[ColdCase]

I noticed that trim was not enabled, so I enabled, restarted and then got this result, 128GB Samsung 840 pro. The test will often report 436MBs write speed but then varies. Drive is 40GB full, about 33%. Also note that the 128GB is not as fast out of the box as the 256GB. A 256+GB SSD would provide a bit better numbers.

 

[cmichaelb]

Image​

Some may remember when I first got my Late 2012 Mac Mini I added an SSD along side the standard 500gb Hard Drive and upgraded the Memory from 4gb to 16gb. Well now I have upgraded again!

The Original SSD was a SATA II OCZ Vertex Plus 120gb but after finding out that OCZ SSDs were not known for their reliability I was waiting for SSDs to come down in price and finally snagged the Samsung 840 Evo 250gb SSD for £73 which I think is pretty good!

I have moved the 500gb Hard Drive to the top bay and have the SSD in the bottom bay for easier access. I used SuperDuper to clone the old SSD to the new one which took about an hour.

The boot time has now halved from around 10sec to around 5sec, and the newer SSD is also SATA III and has double the cache.

Very pleased with the upgrade so recommend this to anyone running a Traditional Hard Drive or even a SATA II SSD.


Tools and Parts Used:

• SuperDuper! for Hard Drive Cloning.
  
• OWC Data Doubler Kit to allow two drives to be installed.
  
• Samsung 840 Evo SSD on Amazon or if in UK use Flubit for cheaper price.
  
• USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure to put new drive in for cloning.
  
• OWC Youtube Video explaining exactly how to dismantle your Mac Mini.

The great thing is my Mac Mini is now ready for Yosemite when it gets released which I am guessing is in October.

Just thought I would share this incase anyone else is thinking of doing the same, if you have any questions or comments please let me know.

I added a Samsung 840 SSD to my late 2012 Mac mini, but my boot time is about 20-22secs on average. I already had 16GB of RAM.
I wish I could get my down to that fast of a boot time- wow.

 

[That-Guy]

I added a Samsung 840 SSD to my late 2012 Mac mini, but my boot time is about 20-22secs on average. I already had 16GB of RAM.
I wish I could get my down to that fast of a boot time- wow.

Really? Can't think why it would take that long to boot.

Have you tried a fresh install?

 

[cmichaelb]

Really? Can't think why it would take that long to boot.

Have you tried a fresh install?

Yep, fresh install.

 

[Dwhite78]

I'm not seeing anywhere near those speeds. Granted it's installed into a 2010 Unibody Mini, I thought I would see better performance though.

Edit: Fresh install of mavericks and this thing boots in about 9 seconds. So thats nice at least. It's a bit overkill for an appliance connected to my TV to run Plex Home Theater though.

 

[That-Guy]

I'm not seeing anywhere near those speeds. Granted it's installed into a 2010 Unibody Mini, I thought I would see better performance though.

Judging by the age wouldn't that make your Mac Mini SATA II not SATA III? This would explain the slower speeds.

This is a total guess on my part

 

[Dwhite78]

Judging by the age wouldn't that make your Mac Mini SATA II not SATA III? This would explain the slower speeds.

This is a total guess on my part

You know, I don't have a clue, but I suspect you may be correct.

 

[andeify]

I got an 840 pro coz it was only 20 quid more than the evo. Just cloned the drive and using it in a USB 3 dock. Only getting 250 ish read and write which leads me to believe it only has a sata 2 controller in it.

Anyway, hopefully the kit will arrive tomorrow and I can install it in the mini

 

[That-Guy]

I got an 840 pro coz it was only 20 quid more than the evo. Just cloned the drive and using it in a USB 3 dock. Only getting 250 ish read and write which leads me to believe it only has a sata 2 controller in it.

Anyway, hopefully the kit will arrive tomorrow and I can install it in the mini

Post up your speeds when it's in there, should be a good comparison against my standard Evo

 

[andeify]

Post up your speeds when it's in there, should be a good comparison against my standard Evo

Will do

Btw fyi the Mac mini I have is the latest base i5