dealssamsung 250gb (840 series) sata iii internal ssd…


This seems like a great deal. Can anybody tell me why I shouldn't buy this one over the 830? I hear a lot of people make that claim but I'm not sure why.


Because this one isn't as fast. The 840 Pro is the true successor to the 830, not the regular 840.

See here for proof:

(skip to page 4 to get right to the numbers)


If I'm going to shell out the money for a SSD I'm going to get a good one. I build computers with Samsung's 830s and they're fast. The write does matter... however if you're upgrading from an RPM there will still be a noticible difference.

830 read 437MB/s
840 read 457 MB/s

830 write 395 MB/s
840 write 247 MB/s


From the cited article - "the Pro also costs 50% more than the 840 Series". and " the 840 Series looks like a good option for anyone seeking an inexpensive path to solid-state storage." As an SSD, it will provide much better performance compared to a conventional drive. Unless you are constantly doing I/O intensive operations, you are unlikely to notice a big difference between this SSD and more expensive SSDs.


If you're looking for a quality, entry level SSD - this is a good one.

It's speed is slower than other models on the market, but most consumers won't have high data input, or output to press this drive's performance. The specifications Samsung uses to build these SSD's are pretty solid. Samsung's revised drive controller is vastly improved, ease to over provision is also a plus. Good deal.

In all honesty, the SSD technology is still fairly volatile and still being developed for consistent performance. Storage (NAND) cells can go bad, seemingly at any moment, the firmware to run these drives is often inconsistent, and read/ write times waver with prolonged use (something SSD's are not supposed to do, in theory).

New improvements have been made to prolong drive life and performance, but these are not always consistent.

Newer technology often has kinks that ironing out. SSD's need a lot of ironing.


Urgh.. I just bought this from MacMall for 168 because Newegg jacked their price up from the 169 that it WAS at to the price I see why. This was all in the span of 72 hours only to put it "on sale" via promo code. They have an "Iron Egg" price guarantee that protects the prices, but only after a submitting emails with links that may or may not change by the time they read your adjustment I just went with MacMall. Eh... -end of rant-

I have the 120GB model and it just flies. I like/need this series of SSD because of the low profile 7mm drive height, which is a must in my particular portable, so look no further if you have been trying to find a SSD that is thinner than the standard 9.5mm thick drives.

It you NEED faster write speeds and you actually have a SATA III controller to support it, go with the 830 series or 840 Pro, but this is more than sufficient for the average user.


Bought 3 for some work computers. Will be an upgrade coming from standard HDDs.


Better deal than you can get on ebay, I'll grab one. Should be a great improvement over my cheapo HDD.


Yep, after researching the bejesus out of SSDs, this is certainly one to not avoid, per se, but you can definitely get better bang for the buck elsewhere. This is coming in as a "third tier" drive, as opposed to a tier one, which the 830 was, and the 840 PRO is. (That said, the 840 Pro is currently $239.99 on Amazon, which is as low as I've seen it.)


My laptop has a SATA II interface. Is a SATA III interface backward compatable?


You guys shouldn't be looking at raw theoretical I/O numbers anyway. The difference in practical speeds between an entry level and an enthusiast level SSD is so minor as to make hardly a difference at all. If you're upgrading from a traditional HDD to a SSD, or need a larger capacity than the SSD you have currently, this is a damn good deal and in the latter case you aren't going to practically notice any difference, only on benchmarks.


Nice, kept the typo on the lmgtfy. Classy.


@dlecornu: A SATA III drive should work with a motherboard that only supports SATA II (I'm actually doing the same thing).


@duckythescientist: That's a very recent, and probably reactive, price change. I looked this morning, and it was considerably higher.


I'm in for 1.. going to use this one for my desktop machine.


@corhei: Most of the "ironing out" had been done by the time gen. 3 SSDs hit the market. Let's not forget that solid state technology has been around since at least the late 70s so, it's not exactly bleeding edge - it's only recently that new manufacturing processes have made it cost-effective for the consumer market.

These days, mean time to failure is virtually identical to modern HDs (hard drives aren't exactly immune to bad sectors) and performance degradation is a thing of the past.

The net improvement of an SSD over the fastest hard drive is undeniable.


What do you think of this drive for use in a Playstation 3? (I have the 85 GB "fat" model with 1/2 backward compatibility with PS2). I'm kind of filling up the drive with RockBand DLC and the performance while playing Skyrim ... well, that game needs all the help it can get on a PS3. I've been looking for a good deal on at least a 120 GB SSD....


@alessar: Would be just fine if you're really willing to spend $150 on a drive for your PS3.


The big issue with SSD is not moderate speed differences, they all are much much faster than a traditional spinny drive. The real issue is with reliability. Somebody that was burned by two faulty SSDs this year, the reliability thing has become a very big deal for me. This SSD uses a technology called TLC for the non-pro series. This allows 3 bytes to be stored per block instead of 2. This, of course, makes the drives cheaper but also more likely to have failed blocks.

I paid extra for PRO because that extra $100 is worth the drive lasting a little longer. A dead drive no matter how fast is of no use to anyone.


I have owned/used/installed a significant number of solid state drives, ranging the gamut from cheap 30GB MLC Synch-NAND drives to 256-512GB MLC(and SLC) Asynch-/Toggle-NAND to multi-Terabyte PCI-Express SLC/MLC NAND server drives...

Some are good, some are great, some are bad, and some are terrible. While I would love, and I mean LOVE, to have a 9.6TB PCI-e 3.0 x16 SLC NAND 3.6GBps drive, the five-figure price-tag is a bit off-putting.
So, I have found what I believe to be the absolute best "enthusiast-class" SSD: the 256GB Samsung 830!

The 830 uses Toggle-NAND, a triple-core controller developed in-house by Samsung, and has phenomenal firmware and support. The entire drive was developed and built 100% by Samsung, with nothing being outsourced to third-party manufacturers (something that every other manufacturer now does, including, sadly, Intel).
It was at the very top of benchmark charts for a while, too.