Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW

I have been a loyal Samsung customer for years. I have dozens of their products and when I entered the market to buy a SSD for my computer I was pleased to be referred to them as one of the top names for SSD's.My headache began as soon as I started the drive and initialized the 'Data Migration' Software to copy my existing Hard Drive so that I would not have to reinstall OS and all my programs. ( I do not mind doing this, but prefer not to if I can help it ). Right after the drive cloning was complete and I had successfully restarted with what seemed like no problems I was thrilled with the boot speed ( roughly 3x faster than my old hard drive ) from powered off to loaded desktop in solid 20 seconds. Fantastic. Then I proceeded to launch a game and test out some load speeds. I started receiving blue screen windows crashes ( too this day I had NEVER had ONE on this computer) and could not pinpoint the cause. Since this was the only new piece of hardware in my machine I started with the drive. I was unable to confirm exactly what when wrong but within 3 days this drive had become the bane of my existence. Every program I would attempt to run would crash. Nothing could load on it and I started getting constant errors for any and everything under the sun. (I even got an error when I attempted to shutdown?!) finally the drive just stopped all together.I then began to get an error on my motherboard. After contacting EVGA customer support I was guided to reset my CMOS. Cleared my issue and then had to diagnose what the heck was up with this drive.This drive was inoperable after my reboot. Whatever the final straw was set this drive into what Samsung calls a 'frozen state'. This drive also came with another product called Samsung Magician which helps optimize to drive and customize certain settings but also allows the user to do a 'Secure Erase' on the drive to wipe it to factory defaults. Apparently for whatever reason you are not suppose to reformat the drive within any other program as it can wipe certain factory settings off the drive leaving you with a pricey paper weight.Since this drive was inoperable at this point I had to reformat and reinstall windows on my old hard drive and get to a working version of windows so I could fix my drive through Samsung Magician. --Skip ahead 3 hours -- (HEADACHE) Samsung Magician cannot secure erase the drive while it is in a frozen state. (figures!)There is a process it guides you through in order to 'unfreeze' the drive. While in windows the process did not succeed for me. The second option to unfreeze guides you to load a DOS program on a USB stick and restart the computer and boot from the USB stick. I changed all my options in my BIOS and for whatever reason this would not work. It was suppose to run the DOS program after exiting BIOS and would never work. (headache continuing). On to the third option of clearing frozen state! instead of USB stick you need a disk (CD or DVD) that is blank and burn the program onto. Thankfully my last option worked! but..... the DOS screen looked more like a garbled frozen screen of hieroglyphics. I had found a forum online that discussed how to reset it. It suggested that while at the garbled screen hit 'ESC' to pull up a DOS command line and enter SEGUI0.exe . well all that does is restart the program which is still garbled. after a call to Samsung's customer support they told me the issue is that with newer video cards the screen cannot display correctly unless you type SEGUI0.exe /s . IT WORKED. happy day. finally we are getting somewhere. The program that is running is just a DOS version of the secure erase function from windows. it runs before you computer has booted. you need to have the option in your BIOS turned on for 'hot plugging' whatever connection the drive is plugged in for the next step. it tells you exactly what to do and will guide you to PULL THE POWER CORD ON THE DRIVE WHILE THE COMPUTER STAYS ON. Then replug in the power connection after a few seconds. then restart the application with the previous command you entered. The drive FINALLY unfroze.I had to secure erase because there was no freaking way I was going to clone the drive again. (I am fairly certain the excessive amount of errors were coming from improper cloning of the system files for windows) Doing the old fashioned way with an OS disc install directly onto the drive.---PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE I MADE HERE AS IT WILL COST YOU SEVERAL HOURS OF YOUR TIME TO FIX---WHEN YOU GO TO INSTALL WINDOWS WITH THE OS DISK DISCONNECT ALL OTHER HARD DRIVESI did not do this and did get the drive working but after some testing realized that it was using the system reserved partition from my old hard drive to boot because windows did not make its own system reserved file on my new hard drive. And with several attempts I could not figure out how to clone the system partition over. Also when you are selecting the drive to install the new OS onto click on the drive and click the button at the bottom that says 'advanced options'. 3 or 4 more options should come up. CLICK NEW and it will tell you it has to secure part of the drive space for windows functions. It should create the partition right there in front of you that will read on the screen as 100mb in size. THIS IS THE SYSTEM RESERVED PARTITION YOU NEED TO BOOT THE DRIVE BY ITSELF. after you see that continue on installing the OS until you are all updated and have all your programs re downloaded. Then you can shut off your computer and reattach your other hard drives (if you have any). If you computer decides to start thinking for itself it may try to boot off of other drives, just goto BIOS and select the new drive the be the first in the BOOT priority.So after 2 re installs of windows and a lot of consideration for introducing my hammer to my SSD I did finally get a usable, NON ERROR forming drive that is fantastic. Perhaps some people did not have this much trouble but I certainly did.One note I would throw in. As of my current install I don't even run the Samsung Magician Software anymore. seemed to be more of a headache than anything else and my drive works fine without it after my old school OS install. All and all I am still happy with my purchase even with all the trouble shooting, in my opinion it shows the value and quality of this drive that It can recover from just about anything..... except maybe a smash from a hammer.I really doubt you should have any kind of compatibility issues but in case you specs are close to mine you may purchase without worries. My computer specs are:--Intel I5-2500K (Sandy) Processor--EVGA Z68 ATX DDR3 2133 Intel - LGA 1155 Motherboards 130-SB-E685-KR--EVGA GeForce GTX760 FTW with ACX Cooler 4GB GDDR5 256Bit Dual-Link DVI-I DVI-D HDMI DP SLI Ready 04G-P4-3768-KR--2x--Kingston Technology HyperX 8 GB (2x4 GB Modules) 1600 MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Kit (PC3 12800) 240-Pin SDRAM KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX--Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit (Full)--Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW--Western Digital 500GB and 1TB Blue HDD (7200rpm) SATA III--Pioneer Electronics USA 15x SATA Internal BD/DVD/CD Burner with 4 MB Buffer BDR-208DBK--Sony AD-7280S-0B 24x SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive (Black)

I finally believe - after years of holding off, I purchased a SSD and have never been happier.My first hard drive was a 20MB (that's Mega, not Giga) that cost me around $400. It was years ago and one of the "fastest" models on the street at the time. I was stoked, as it could hold tons of my old floppy (perhaps you've never seen one, so Google what they look like) disks and kept me from having to switch disks every few minutes to play a game or run a program.As hard drives grew in size, so did software, leading to a never-ending race between manufacturers and software developers. Thankfully, the drives kept up and constantly tweaked platter capacity and spindle speed to get more power, use, and efficiency from this technology. But that's the sticking point - old hard drives required rotating disks, that needed to be "read" in order to load a program. So, no matter how fast or big they got - you still had lag time between sending the command and the actual software loading.Solid-State Drives (SSDs) have alleviated most of this lag, because there are absolutely NO moving parts. None. The entire concept (in simple terms) is similar to the USB keys we've all grown accustomed to using. The drive is basically large memory capacity memory chips stuck inside a plastic case with an advanced controller (which is tweaked by the developers) to help direct the command from the computer to locate and execute the program/command you are sending. This all happens in near real time!Imagine your computer loading in just a few seconds, instead of nearly a minute or longer. Imagine software that you use often, loading within a second of clicking it, instead of clicking and waiting as the computer sends the command, but then sits and waits for the hard drive to spin up and find the actual code, process the code and send it to the CPU for processing. Imagine not hearing the spinning sound of your hard drive any longer. Seriously - there are no moving parts to hear. This thin little drives consist of a board, memory chips, a controller, and a sprinkle of magic (okay, the last part may be just my special model...or not).The one thing to remember about these drives is that they are smaller than regular 3.5" drives. They take up less room, but also require different connectors to fasten them to your machine. Make sure your machine can hold a drive like this or can be modified to hold a drive like this (you can also buy aftermarket brackets to assist). Some folks have left the drive just sitting in their machine (not connected/secured to anything) and while this may be okay if you never plan to move the computer, I am a bit hesitant to have something that can flop around inside my case and damage other parts. As an added bonus, these drives produce very little (read: not zero, but far less than old drives) heat. Since there are no moving parts - the only heat produced comes from the electricity running through the drive when under heavy use.There is lots of talk about these drives having "limited" shelf life, because the memory can only be rewritten so often before it locks the bit. While that is true - memory like this can only be erased and written so often - but that number is far higher than any average user will ever see in their lifetime of using this drive. And when the bit does finally lock - it locks with the data that is currently on it - not "blank", which means you won't lose your data, you just won't be able to write new data to that block any longer. Not a big deal, again, unless you write/delete/rewrite tons of data to your drive on a daily basis for years on end. I've seen estimates from reputable review sites that estimate it would take the average user 5-10yrs to kill a data bit on these drives. By then, you'll likely upgrade or acquire a new machine anyway.The one thing that annoys me is the cost of these little things per gigabyte. I know the memory isn't cheap and the technology is new, but you'd think that having no moving parts is cheaper than having expensive moving parts. The good thing is - prices are coming down. Also, these drives aren't huge. While they finally have 1TB drives and growing, you're still better off using an old hard drive that holds 2-3TB for data storage and use a drive like this for your operating system (Windows, Apple OS, or Linux) and software that you want to boost. My configuration has this 256GB drive running my OS and a 1TB drive for all my data (music, movies, games, etc). The benefit is that the software you are running is still enhanced by the speed of this drive and the data being pulled from the other drive is easy and fast enough that you won't notice any issues.Overall, I'm a big fan of this technology and now consider myself a true believer of the SSD technology hype. While I have not owned this drive for longer periods yet - so cannot speak to reliability - I know that this drive has been tested by countless expert reviewers and none have found any issues to date. Samsung has an excellent software suite that enhances this drive even further and keeps it updated with the latest fixes they develop. You wont' go wrong buying a EVO series drive from Samsung - your only real decision is what size you need to meet your needs.