Samsung SSD 830: SATA 3 and 512GB

Samsung has just introduced a new line of consumer-oriented solid-state drives (SSD) called SSD 830. Unlike the SSD 470 (read our Samsung SSD 470 review) which uses SATA-2, the SSD 830 uses SATA-3, the latest bus interface for computer mass storage. This should give peak performance a boost, and we expect the SSD 830 to deliver peak performance of about 500Mbps when reading data, and 350MBps during write operations. If/when those numbers are confirmed by independent reviews , they would be considered impressive, even by “Enterprise” standards. The capacity of the SSD 830 Series starts at 64GB and goes up to 512GB.Because the Samsung SSD 830 is aimed at the consumer market, it also has a very sleek design. The casing is made of dark aluminum, and the 830 Series looks even better than the SSD 470 in my opinion. This is the kind of component that makes people want to use translucent PC cases, especially if they are fortunate enough to afford a RAID setup.

On the software side, Samsung will provide Norton Ghost, a popular utility that lets users do a full copy of their existing hard drive. This is extremely handy if you don’t want to re-install everything (OS, apps, etc).  Samsung also has a other utilities to optimize the drive’s performance, or delete files in a secure (unrecoverable) way.

In terms of performance, there’s no question that SSDs are one of the most helpful things that you can add. Did you already make the jump? If not, what’s holding you back (if anything)?

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers
Tags: Samsung, ssd, Storage