Samsung - 860 QVO 2TB Internal SATA Solid State Drive with V-NAND Technology

I use this in an external enclosure as a portable drive for photo storage (Lightroom catalog). I'm not quite able to get the maximum advertised speeds, but this could be due to the enclosure I'm using so I'm not going to knock it. Either way it's still plenty fast for me and much faster than a traditional hard drive. It's a great deal if you can find it on sale (I managed to get it for $180).

Hard drives are, like many PC components, are difficult to review. More appropriately, difficult to write a review that is not overly technical but captures the key points. There are plenty of reviews here and other sites that go into the nitty, gritty technical details. The truth is most readers do not care and I think most reviews should not be geared to the very technical. As such, this review is going to be geared towards the novice. First thing to understand, there are two technologies for hard drives - a mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive (SSD.) HDD’s were the most common type of storage because they're relatively inexpensive and offer huge capacities. HDD's are about 1/3rd of the price of an SSD. However, they generate both noise and heat. Traditional HDD's are also much slower and, while they have many of the same interfaces as SSD's, their data throughput is limited to how fast the disk spins. Solid state drives have no moving parts, are much faster than HDD's, smaller (usually) and silent. SSD's have more limitations on capacities and get cost prohibitive at the very large sizes. Next thing to understand is the interface. Since this review is going to be about an SSD, I will discuss only SSD moving forward. There are essentially two common types of interfaces for solid state drives (there are more.) The two types are SATA and PCI Express. The SATA interface is an older technology that is more affordable when compared to the PCI express However, the PCI Express is an order of magnitude more expensive. Keep in mind, I am generalizing and reducing here. The Samsung 860 QVO 2TB is an internal SATA SSD that is affordable yet offers a large capacity. Before you purchase, if you plan to use this for a laptop; be sure to make sure it is compatible. For my test, I chose to install it as an external drive using a SATA drive enclosure. Regardless of whether you chose an internal or external installation you should be aware that the drive will not show up in Windows out of the box. You must configure the drive via the Microsoft Disk Management. There are a few steps so plan on searching for how to do it. Don't get hung up on that, it is simple. Once configured, the drive is as advertised and significantly faster than a traditional hard drive. I've attached a picture of my speed test, it exceeded the read speed of 550MB/sec and the write speed of 520MB/sec. I ran multiple tests and the Samsung 860 QVO 2TB performed well every time. However, well is relative. This drive is designed to be affordable so there are faster SSD's on the market. Please note that SSD drive performance can vary according to how full the drive is. You are going to see a lot of terms in reviews and hard drive info - M.2, NVMe, . PCIe, don't get too hung up them. Samsung really started the SSD revolution. They developed or perfected many of the SSD drive technologies you see today. You really cannot go wrong with the Samsung 860 QVO 2TB. It offers a large capacity at value price with the Samsung reliability. It’s not the fastest SSD out there, you are limited by the interface in that respect. However, this will be much faster than traditional HDD and you will notice significant gain. In closing, there are several sizes available , 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. The speed does vary between the drives with the 1TB being slow in a lot of online test ( it’s sequential write speed is half that of the 2 and 4 TB. So if you made it all the way through my review, I recommend the drive completely. Just know what you are buying before you do.

Needed this for a dj controller and it was a easy set up, the price was amazing with my rewards!

SSDs have come far in the past couple years, getting larger, and faster, while targeting lower prices. With the advent of nVME, speeds hit the 2,000 - 3,000 MB/s mark, 6 times faster than SATA SSDs. The 860 QVO from Samsung was introduced to continue the trend of higher capacity at a lower price, and it targets budget conscious consumers who need space and speed, but don't want to break the bank. That said, if you're looking for the fastest options out there, I'll save you some time and tell you to look for an nVME drive. You'll pay about double or more for the same capacity, but greater speed comes at a greater cost, and this drive can't touch them. If you're not concerned about being the fastest kid on the block or have a tight budget where every $20-$50 saved matters, this drive might be a good option to consider. This drive is a typical SATA 2.5inch form factor, meaning it will fit almost anywhere you currently have a 2.5inch drive. I have a stack of laptops and a couple 2.5inch drive bays that this fit perfectly fine into. The use of newer V-NAND modules means that Samsung can crank up the capacity while maintaining a small profile, and it works well. Replacing a mechanical HD with this SSD is a straight forward and direct swap. Like most SSDs, it's also very lightweight, which goes over well for those looking to shed some ounces off a laptop that sees frequent travel. I purchased a newer Lenovo laptop that came with a 1TB mechanical HD, and as a first task I swapped out that HD with this SSD. The machine is powered by a Quad Core I7, with 16GB of ram supporting it, so it's perfectly suited for testing this drive. While I didn't do a boot time comparison between the included HD and this SSD, there is a noticeable difference in speed, both in loading to Windows from the press of the button, and then when logging in. It's definitely not as fast as my other machine with a nVME SSD as the boot drive, but it's still a big improvement over traditional mechanical drives. I ran some tests on that machine using CrysalDiskMark to compare against the claimed 550MB/s sequential read, and 520MB/s sequential write, along with testing out the random read/write speeds to figure out the best use of this drive. The sequential read/write tests came back strong, with consistent read speeds around 560-562 MB/s and write speeds around 528-530 MB/s, with the occasional dip into the 510 range. These results are expected given the maturity of SATA III and it's max speed up to 600 MB/s throughput. Modern SATA SSDs should be capable of hitting their claimed speeds, and this one is no different, consistently matching or besting. In the random speed tests, however, this drive revealed a little more, posting speeds in the ranges of 190-260 MB/s and 180 - 240 MB/s for read and write tests, respectively. More importantly, the highest IOPS I hit was 62,893 on read, and 58,461 on write, well below the claims. These numbers put it in the middle of the pack with other SSDs I have tried, and my assumption is it's because of the use of QLC, and the fact they haven't been able to optimize it to the degree that current NAND drives using TLC are. I expect that over time these numbers will get better, with new controllers, and firmware, but it could also be a limitation of QLC. One other area of concern that, again, might be reflective of the newer QLC technology, and possibly long-term reliability, is the QVO warranty period. It might not seem like much, but the 860 PRO and EVO both carry a 5-year warranty, where the QVO carries a 3 year. Both other 860 drives utilize SLC or TLC, which have seen major reliability improvements over their lifecycle, and have been proven. QLC is still very new, and current iterations have shown it to wear worse over time from writes than current SLC and TLC. This will hopefully improve as the technology matures, but it's something to consider with these new drives. Random speeds and warranty concern aside, this drive is still a solid performer, and well beyond what a spinning HD is going to give in performance. It also has sequential speeds that are consistently at the max of what the interface will support and because of this, I believe this is a good drive as a secondary drive in a machine, handling large storage files or libraries, or as a primary drive for someone coming from a mechanical HD on a budget in need of serious space. The biggest hurdle someone should consider when weighing this option, though, is price. In the 2TB space there are a couple options that perform better on the random speeds, have better warranties, and run about $50 or so more. For the speed conscious that aren't yet up to nVME, that might be a worthwhile spend. For the budget conscious, though, the space provided with that extra bit of savings might be a good enough option.

Installed this hard drive in my Xbox one X. Makes the OS run very smoothly. No more sluggish load times and menu navigation.

Samsung always delivers with their SSDs. From performance to speed you are always getting something not only good but reliable. This 860 is no exception, I used this SSD inside of a gaming rig and games booted up with quickness. GTA V and RE2: Remake booted faster than any HDD I’ve ever used. Nothing comes in the box besides the 2TB SSD. There isn’t much to say honestly because it’s just a really great SSD especially if you was like me late to the SSD years but they have became more affordable over the years. Once you finally installed Windows 10 into a SSD it’s a complete different computer. I know I was was instantly amazed at how quick files and Chrome open. Samsung made a beast of an SSD and thats what you get here. Has ample space for all of your PC needs. Samsung keep doing a great job.

So I was able to breath new life into an old 2011 Lenovo Ideapad laptop. I had at first connected this to my laptop using a Universal USB adapter, which was AC Powered and had an on/off switch, and it was all I had at the time vs a External Drive enclosure (which I’ll need to shop around for one soon). I did get a notification pop up saying the Samsung Drive was connected but, I couldn’t the drive icon mounted anywhere in the computer. Something I might be doing wrong perhaps? Anyhow, I connected it to my 2011 Mac mini, and it showed on the desktop I believe but a dialogue box says it’s uninitialized. I formatted it for DOS use, and then reconnected it to the Lenovo, and this time it was visible. I started the cloning process, (used Carbon Copy Cloner aka CCC) having everything copied from the stock 320GB Drive onto this new SSD. It took maybe about 1-2 hours (lost count), but I didn’t have much stuff on my laptop. Once all done, disconnected, powered off laptop and swapped internal drives and, booted up the laptop which amazingly was fast, under 10 seconds. I’m impressed and also the read and write speeds were amazing. However, I read other reviews where this drive was an excellent upgrade for their gaming console, or even their Mac computer. I have a PS4 Pro at the moment, and a Mac mini as I said earlier (that I have upgraded with a 500gb Samsung 860 EVO) Though my laptop is still running decent and not failing (much better with the new drive), I still feel a need someday to upgrade to a newer machine in the future, more compact (using the faster, smaller Nvme SSDs). I’ve had this laptop since late/ending 2010 being a low end type with an old generation i3 processor; I might just donate this soon (taking out the 1Tb Samsung of course, re-install the old HDD) within the next few years or sooner, and use this drive for other applications. One thing for sure, I’ll get a USB 3.0 external drive enclosure, and I can connect this to my Mac or PS4 no doubt. Or, find refurbished or used i7 laptops, like a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude, and swap out the drive with this one. Overall I’m very, very pleased with Samsungs new SSD addition and will benefit using this drive in the many years to come.

Easy and cost effective upgrade for your laptop or desktop! To test this new drive, I used a Lenovo T410 for my reference system. I first rebuild the computer with Windows 10 and its original drive, then ran a Passmark Performance testing tool to compare disk performance. Then, I removed the original disk and replaced it with the Samsumg 860 QVO drive and built the same Windows 10 image. Once built, I loaded the Passmark performance testing tool to make a direct comparison. I'm please to report that the new drive was 10 times faster than the old one - and was WAY bigger in capacity!' Sure, there are faster SSD drives available (like the Samsung EVO series), but they cost ALOT more. This drive loaded easily and performed well. If you are looking for a no-brainer upgrade - an SSD like this Samsung 860 QVO is an easy choice!