Samsung MZ5PA256 256 GB,Internal,2.5" (MZ5PA256/US) (SSD) Solid State Drive

Over the recent Christmas holidays, I finally purchased myself a new laptop. Loved everything about the laptop, but its use is limited to traveling, away from home, etc. The laptop came with a 640gB hard drive.

After reading about SSD hard drives and comparing prices, I settled on this one. To be honest, the price was so much better then all the other places I considered buying from (including other AMAZON vendors), that I dove in and purchased.

Fortunately, it was easy to replace the standard hard drive that came with my laptop (an HP model) that the hardware exchange was very east. But first, I checked the Samsung website for any firmware updates (there was one for the drive the I purchased) and made the firmware update first; second, I used Acronis True Image home software to clone my existing hardware. To clone the hard drive, I purchased a USB 3.0 enclosure which was remarkably inexpensive at the local Micro Center store (I live in Columbus, Ohio). My plan was to use the enclosure for cloning the SSD drive then afterwards use the enclosure to permanently house my old laptop hard drive so I could use it between my different computers.

The cloning went flawlessly and I swapped out the SSD with HHD drive and rebooted. The performance and speedy boot time is amazing. Make sure you use the utility that comes with the SSD to manage it in the future. For example, SSD should not be defragmented like regular hard drives. The utility helps identify your SSD hard drive and instructs you on how to set it up. For example, if you have the Microsoft built-in defragmentor scheduled to do automatic defrags, it will tell you to turn it off, etc.

Some of you might wonder why I wanted to exchange a 640gb hard drive for a 256gb SSD. My laptop is not my principal computer (although it is a VERY good laptop). I do not have the need for massive storage on my laptop. Right now, with Windows 7 installed, my laptop is only using about 25% of the capacity of the SSD. I feel personally, this size drive will be more then enough for my needs. I did buy the optional hard drive kit for my laptop from HP and if I ever need additional storage, I always can install a second hard drive in the second laptop bay.

I am impatient and when you begin to install software on your computer, you know how much of a lag will develop when booting, switching between programs, etc. An SSD drive is wonderful and eliminates the waits we all have become accustomed to when using our laptops.

Good buy. Great customer service from the seller. I know SSD are a little pricey based upon traditional hard drive prices,but this was quite a bargain and I love it for the convenience.

The computer has significantly increased its speed. Some computationally intensive processes running on this hard drive had decreased the time required to a fifth. And there are some cases (when there is read-only activity) that performance increased 25 times.
Quite easy to install on my Dell M6400, I am using this as a secondary hard drive.
This kind of update seems to work better than ram increase, I will explain myself below.
Of course RAM memory upgrade is important when you are under 2 GB. In my case, I did not notice almost any difference when I increased RAM from 8 to 16 GB (I am running windows 7 ultimate 64 bits). But after changing the conventional hard drive to this solid state drive made a quite significant difference.
If you are thinking in an upgrade of ram consider if you have a OS running on 64 bits. If you are in a 32 bit system or if you already have over 4 GB better consider replacing your hard drive(s). It is 5-10 times the price but it makes the worth: your computer will become 5-25 times faster. :)

This ssd rocks. A lot faster than the sata drive that I had in my laptop. However, the version that I bought off ebay from DellParts, is not the official Samsung MZ5PA256. It shows up as a Samsung PM810, an OEM hardrive from Dell, so SSD Magician from Samsung's website won't work on it. Instead there are tweaks through Google that you can make on your Win 7 computer to bring it up to par. It comes with the latest firmware, as Dell has no updates for it (one reason I don't own a Dell pc), and the Samsung firmware update aren't recognized. I bought this drive though, for like 200 bucks less than the official one from Samsung, so I can not complain at all. I am very satisfied with this hardrive.

Great product. Got it at a good price, its fast... Only one complaint, but its my fault because I should of researched it before hand..

You CAN NOT UPDATE FIRMWARE ON A MAC! There is just absolutely no way possible, their firmware update is only made for Dos Bootable BIOS systems, and onto of that you have to have the ability to make BIOS changes in order to allow it to update correctly which even on my windows computer it is not possible because it uses HP's EFI (not BIOS).

OS booting faster than ever. Computer is flying now. File transfer rate very fast. Capacity is enough for OS and other programs. I'm using for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and simulator going fast for opening, rendering and also flying :)