Data Backup Digest

As SSDs become more and more mainstream, we are beginning to see an increasing amount of them being offered with higher amounts of space to offer. The real question is though, are these larger options worth the seemingly exponential increase in price? In order to help answer this question, this overview will be focusing on the latest in Samsung's line of high capacity SSDs, the Samsung 1TB 840 EVO.

In order to set their sights on other competitors, Samsung have competitively price the drive at $650 MSRP. This does however mean concessions had to be made, and the most obvious is the lower 3 year warranty compared to previous releases that offered 5 years. A main forte of the Evo is that it offers a new caching technology known as "TurboWrite". The technology treats what is known as the drives "MLC NAND" as if it were the more expensive and faster "SLC NAND" for buffered writes, bizarrely allowing for a significant speed boost if enabled. As well as this, there is also the new and excitingly named "Rapid Mode". When enabled, it utilizes the power of the User's CPU and DRAM for caching purposes. Frequently used files are cached which significantly improves both read and write speeds. The option can be enabled through the "Samsung Magician" software. Once running, rapid mode only requires 50MB ram so users worried about it eating up usage can rest easy.

Those who have been fortunate enough to test the drive have noted that it is indeed the fastest drive they have ever tested, with review websites giving it 9s and 10s. However, many of the sites are testing purely the hardware aspects and are not taking into account the price. If users are really looking to invest in this sort of kit, it would be wise to do so on a system that can take full advantage of these speeds - one that reads and writes all the time. With a read speed of 855MB/s and 1GB/s for writes, it is a titan that is truly unmatched. With these sorts of speeds, users can expect an entire format in a matter of seconds, with virtually instantaneous program installations and loading times.

It is not just the speed of the drive that has attracted such attention in the market. It is the huge breakthrough that is seemingly the 1TB barrier - it wasn't so many years ago when the first SSDs with a 10th of the space were at the same asking price. Users in possession of the EVO no longer have to manage convoluted split systems with operating systems and their favourite program on the SSD and the documents and the rest on the old hard drive.

With economies of scale and a few more years of the technology, many technophiles are looking to a future with cheaper more readily available SSDs, allowing for a greater number of desktop PCs to rely on SSD technology alone. For now, many of us have to settle with what we have or risk the expensive option. It does not come, it appears, without its rewards however.