New Samsung EVO 850

[FluorideInMyWater]

so i broke down and bought this drive to speed up my system...let hope!
disc comes w/ CD rom for migration assistant as well as "magician" software.

it installs the software on the old c:drive and really doesn't look like there is anything there of value.

i'm not sure if im doing something wrong....
i always like to do fresh installs...don't like cloning or migrating, but is there anything worth installing from these seemingly useless tools? i'm i supposed to install this AFTER i do a fresh install on the SSD? i have no idea. there instructions are Cr@p!!!

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w137/jd7890/samsung.png

[oldsmoboat]

I never could get their software to work. I ended up doing a fresh install.

[Mute]

If you're doing a fresh install there's no point in using this software. Skip it.

[the86d]

From what I was told it flips some switches that favor SSDs in Windows, such as enabling trim... if you are migrating from a platter drive that Windows didn't enable it for, as it was unneeded (unused) with a platter drive...

A clean install of an OS that detects SSDs and enables SSD optimizations (and correct partition alignment) makes it useless AFAIK.

[SMR510]

Clean install, perfect time to do it. I ran their tool afterward but IIRC everything was already optimized so you can run it just to see but I don't think it is necessary on a fresh install.

[the86d]

[Here is what I have done on some boxes with small SSDs:
Have Windows installer create your partitions (for partition alignment, or if you know how, do alignment in Linux).
Reboot and create an NTFS volume with smaller cluster sizes than 4k in Linux.
Reboot to install Windows and don't format, just install.
Enjoy more free space due to all the small files Windows (and installers, and temp files, and ...) dumps on the drive (install log files, etc).

Sometimes Win thinks it's smarter than you are, when it's not, and this will not work with all rev's of Windows DVDs...]

[oldsmoboat]

If you're doing a fresh install there's no point in using this software. Skip it.

In my case, I didn't have the OS, it came pre-installed. So I had to buy an OS.

[SMR510]

In my case, I didn't have the OS, it came pre-installed. So I had to buy an OS.

No you didn't. You can legally download all windows versions and install them with the included key that came with your computer.

[crufflers]

I've been upgrading old PC's to SSD recently. I have had the Samsung migration utility work once and had to use something else or do a fresh install other times. IIRC what determined whether it worked or not was if it recognized the OLD DRIVE or not. Sometimes it will not. These upgrades were to 840 PRO's.

I used EASUS and it worked great for cloning old drives. I have a desktop where I am using the Magician software, but I'm not sure how much difference it makes.

It will tell you if you need to install a SATAIII card to get full performance, which I found valuable. I have a desktop where I did install a new SATAIII card and performance increased quite a bit over the outdated integrated mobo controller.

I grabbed a few of the 850 PRO 512's last time I saw a great sale price and I will give the Samsung migration software one more try with the first one, and then just use EASUS if there's issues.

[high_revs]

i have the 840 too. too bad stupid dell removed the ability to support sata III with the new firmwares. when i downloaded to an old one where sata III worked, it was unstable and crashes here and there. many have complained but dell isn't listening.

but even at sata ii, it's pretty impressive. i did a fresh install too since i went msata on my laptop. supposedly the oem dell install (dbar) cannot work unless you have a small msata for irst.

[Bryansix]

Has anybody had any experience running these as just a swap file and readyboost partition and having data still on a normal HD?

[crufflers]

Has anybody had any experience running these as just a swap file and readyboost partition and having data still on a normal HD?

No, nothing that large. I used to run a 30 gig Sandisk ReadyCache SSD like that with a 2Tb main drive and it was faster once the cache was built up. It wasn't running SATA3, so I guess it could have been faster. I saw a big performance boost when I went from that setup to just a couple of large SSD drives (not striped) even before I installed a new SATA3 card.