Best value high performance SATA 3 SSD?

[macmesser]

I need an SSD to partition in to a couple of boot volumes and I'm looking at OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 480 or Samsung 850 Pro 512. The Samsung was named best ssd of 2015 by a reviewer and is the first consumer drive to feature vertical 3D nand (whatever that means). It's said to reduce footprint and make for cooler, more reliable operation. There's a 10 year limited guarantee. The OWC drive has some cool sounding specs too, at a 10% higher price. Their web site goes in to more detail:

The Mercury SSD line features:

• DuraWrite™ extends the endurance of your Solid State Drive (SSD).
• Intelligent Block Management & Wear Leveling automatically distributes data evenly across the entire SSD.
• Intelligent Read Disturb Management spreads the active read/write across the flash components eliminating data corruption caused by constant use.
• Intelligent "Recycling" for advanced free space management gradually re-writes data across the SSD over time to ensure data never gets corrupted.
• RAISE™ (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) protects the data on your drive similar to having a RAID setup.
• Best-in-Class ECC Protection for longest data retention and drive life.

The drive is actually a 512GB drive with around 7% reserved for data management with the above technologies. I have used a 240GB version of this drive for several years as boot drive for a CMP 5,1 without problems and have upgraded firmware, which OWC makes an easy process. It has been reliable and is fast to boot and run.

I would like to hear from anyone with experience with the Samsung drives. Also, are the features of the OWC Extreme drive NOT commonly found in one form or another on other drives, or are these more proprietary names rather than technologies?

 

[scott.n]

The OWC features are just marketing speak. Don't waste your time. Buy the Samsung.

 

[h9826790]

850 Evo has the better value vs performance ratio for general use.

 

[Weaselboy]

The OWC features are just marketing speak. Don't waste your time. Buy the Samsung.

Exactly. The OWC drive also uses a Sandforce controller, and those have poor performance on incompressible data. Don't fall for OWC's marketing BS. Get the Samsung.

 

[DPUser]

...and enable TRIM.

 

[Synchro3]

I need an SSD to partition in to a couple of boot volumes and I'm looking at OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 480 or Samsung 850 Pro 512. The Samsung was named best ssd of 2015 by a reviewer and is the first consumer drive to feature vertical 3D nand (whatever that means). It's said to reduce footprint and make for cooler, more reliable operation. There's a 10 year limited guarantee. The OWC drive has some cool sounding specs too, at a 10% higher price. Their web site goes in to more detail: xxxx

I would like to hear from anyone with experience with the Samsung drives. Also, are the features of the OWC Extreme drive NOT commonly found in one form or another on other drives, or are these more proprietary names rather than technologies?

My Samsung 850 Pro 2 TB works perfect. It is connected to a FASTA-6GU3pro http://www.caldigit.com/Fasta-6GU3pro/ (each of the 4 SATA-Ports are bootable).

Don't forget to enable TRIM: http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/29/use-trimforce-trim-ssd-mac-os-x/

 

[satinsilverem2]

Ive used both the OWC line and Samsung EVO's. My choice is the Samsung drives. They are faster and just as reliable as the OWC drives. Ive never had an issue with any of the 830, 840, 850 EVO lines.

 

[macmesser]

...and enable TRIM.

I'll be using 10.8.5 for the SSD boot drive and will enable trim. Isn't trim automatically enabled in El Capitan for all ssds. (OWC says it's not necessary for their drives.)

 

[\-V-/]

OWC is crap. Get the Samsung.

I'll be using 10.8.5 for the SSD boot drive and will enable trim. Isn't trim automatically enabled in El Capitan for all ssds. (OWC says it's not necessary for their drives.)

No, it's enabled by default for the factory drives that come with the Mac, not third-party drives you install yourself. But, El Capitan ... for the first time ... lets you enable TRIM for third-party drives. I used to use TRIM Enabler for this particular use case.

Did I also mention OWC is crap?

 

[macmesser]

My Samsung 850 Pro 2 TB works perfect. It is connected to a FASTA-6GU3pro http://www.caldigit.com/Fasta-6GU3pro/ (each of the 4 SATA-Ports are bootable).

Don't forget to enable TRIM: http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/29/use-trimforce-trim-ssd-mac-os-x/

Thanks. I have a newertech 6G card that supports port multiplier and raid. Haven't tried it with a ssd yet but wasn't as fast as I'd hoped with an sshd. I heard the eSATA cards were basically not designed originally for Mac and required drivers, resulting in a speed hit.
[doublepost=1460666594][/doublepost]

OWC is crap. Get the Samsung.


No, it's enabled by default for the factory drives that come with the Mac, not third-party drives you install yourself. But, El Capitan ... for the first time ... lets you enable TRIM for third-party drives. I used to use TRIM Enabler for this particular use case.

Did I also mention OWC is crap?

Thanks. Just looked for a way to do it on my Mac mini (one internal fusion drive) and didn't see anything. Can trim be enabled on an external ssd?
[doublepost=1460666922][/doublepost]

Ive used both the OWC line and Samsung EVO's. My choice is the Samsung drives. They are faster and just as reliable as the OWC drives. Ive never had an issue with any of the 830, 840, 850 EVO lines.

Thanks. Samsung is the unanimous consensus.

 

[h9826790]

Can trim be enabled on an external ssd?

Depends, via eSATA, Yes. Via USB, No.

OWC says it's not necessary for their drives.

They are correct, but purely BS. None of the SSD "require" TRIM, therefore, it's not necessary for ALL SSD (not just OWC SSD). However, TRIM will make SSD run better INCLUDING OWC's SSD. Because GC will work better with TRIM regardless if that's OWC's SSD or not. It's one of the example that how OWC do their marketing, try to mislead their customers but not really providing the best hardware.

 

[pastrychef]

i don't think I've ever associated "best value" with OWC.

 

[elleana]

My Samsung 850 Pro 2 TB works perfect. It is connected to a FASTA-6GU3pro http://www.caldigit.com/Fasta-6GU3pro/ (each of the 4 SATA-Ports are bootable).

Don't forget to enable TRIM: http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/29/use-trimforce-trim-ssd-mac-os-x/

Where did you get the Caldigit adapter? Its not available at Amazon and on Caldigit's website it says Pre-Order.

 

[Synchro3]

Yes, the old FASTA-6GU3 pro is no more available, and the new FASTA-6GU3 plus is not yet released.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

OWC is crap. Get the Samsung.

Agreed, I have the 840 EVO's and have had ZERO issues for the last two years! BTW I run them on an Apricorn Velocity DUO x2. Perfect marriage!

No, it's enabled by default for the factory drives that come with the Mac, not third-party drives you install yourself. But, El Capitan ... for the first time ... lets you enable TRIM for third-party drives. I used to use TRIM Enabler for this particular use case.

Not quite so, from OS X 10.10.4 (Yosemite) the use of the OS native trim force command (terminal) is also available! Works great...

Cheers

 

[zoomfinder]

Yes, the old FASTA-6GU3 pro is no more available, and the new FASTA-6GU3 plus is not yet released.

I have FASTA-6GU3 Pro installed in my MacPro3,1 as well but what I like about it is that these eSATA ports are about the only ones which let external drives to boot. I have an OWC 6G Pro SSD as my external disk but this thing boots really fast at 5G on FASTA-6GU3 Pro in slot 2.

I hear this bootability from an external disk will not be available in the next FASTA-6GU3 Plus and I'm really disappointed.

BTW nobody seems to mention SanDisk SSDs but are they any good?

 

[Weaselboy]

BTW nobody seems to mention SanDisk SSDs but are they any good?

Some of their older models (I think is was the Extreme) used a Sandforce controller that I am not a fan of, but there is nothing at all wrong with their newer models that use Marvell controllers and others.

 

[Synchro3]

I hear this bootability from an external disk will not be available in the next FASTA-6GU3 Plus and I'm really disappointed.

Good to know. Thanks.

Meanwhile, using the older FASTA-6GU3 Pro with four bootable SATA SSD's: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...upgrade-options-advice.1908109/#post-22092409

 

[pastrychef]

I've been using Crucial SSDs almost exclusively for the last few years and have never had any problems with them.

 

[\-V-/]

Agreed, I have the 840 EVO's and have had ZERO issues for the last two years! BTW I run them on an Apricorn Velocity DUO x2. Perfect marriage!

Same. The EVO line has been a joy to use.

 

[KenniJH]

Samsung
Have great experience with 830 Pro and 840 Evo.
4 all together, 830 in a Mac mini and a Lenovo laptop (w. Windows 7).

840 in another Lenovo laptop (w. Windows 8.1) and ind a home build server (w. Hyper-V srv).
All SSDs are still running and are running 24/7 for the Mac mini and Hyper-V srv and for the Laptops are running approx. 8 to 10 hours Daily all weekdays

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Samsung
Have great experience with 830 Pro and 840 Evo.
4 all together, 830 in a Mac mini and a Lenovo laptop (w. Windows 7).

840 in another Lenovo laptop (w. Windows 8.1) and ind a home build server (w. Hyper-V srv).
All SSDs are still running and are running 24/7 for the Mac mini and Hyper-V srv and for the Laptops are running approx. 8 to 10 hours Daily all weekdays

SAMSUNG SSD rulezzzzzz (imho)

 

[zoomfinder]

I've been using Crucial SSDs almost exclusively for the last few years and have never had any problems with them.

My Crucial MX200 1TB died after one month in use. I had it partitioned in two volumes and all of a sudden I couldn't get none of them to mount. The lamp on the case was blinking fast hopelessly and no data has been recovered to this date.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Got a replacement or refund?

Cheers

 

[pastrychef]

My Crucial MX200 1TB died after one month in use. I had it partitioned in two volumes and all of a sudden I couldn't get none of them to mount. The lamp on the case was blinking fast hopelessly and no data has been recovered to this date.

What lamp?

Yeah, contact support and get a replacement if it's really dead.