The Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA/M.2 Review
by Kristian Vättö on March 31, 2015 10:00 AM ESTIdle Power Consumption
Since we truncuate idle times to 25µs in our Storage Bench traces, they don't give a fully accurate picture of real world power consumption as idle power consumption is not taken properly into account. Hence I'm still reporting idle power consumption as a separate benchmark because it's one of the most critical metrics when it comes evaluating an SSD for mobile use.
Unfortunately I still don't have a way to test DevSleep power consumption due to lack of platform support, but my testbed supports HIPM+DIPM power commands (also referred to as Slumber power), so the results give a rather accurate picture of real-world idle power consumption.
All Samsung's recent SSDs have had excellent idle power consumption and the 850 EVO mSATA/M.2 is no exception.
TRIM Validation
The move from Windows 7 to 8.1 introduced some problems with the methodology we have previously used to test TRIM functionality, so I had to come up with a new way to test. I tested a couple of different methods, but ultimately I decided to go with the easiest one that can actually be used by anyone. The software is simply called trimcheck and it was made by a developer that goes by the name CyberShadow in GitHub.
Trimcheck tests TRIM by creating a small, unique file and then deleting it. Next the program will check whether the data is still accessible by reading the raw LBA locations. If the data that is returned by the drive is all zeros, it has received the TRIM command and TRIM is functional.
And TRIM appears to be working fine.
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nmm - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Uninteresting releases like this are the reason M.2 is having so much trouble gaining traction. Desktop users have no reason to choose the M.2 variant since they'll get similar performance out of a much more versatile SATA variant. The only obvious reason I can see to buy mSATA/M.2 versions of this drive is if you've got a laptop that can't slot a regular 2½" SATA drive. What a waste of shelf space.bricko - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
These are all way slow and almost outdated. INTEL and others coming out with NVMe and PCIe 3 stuff that are 2 to 4 times as fast. Big event from INTEL listed here.http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/PCPer-Live-...
Best to have an X99 mobo to make them bootable. Lots of these m.2 stuff is not bootable without lots of bios messing etc. Lots of info here
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/intel-ssd-...
http://hothardware.com/reviews/Intel-SolidState-Dr...
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Those drives will cost upwards of 0.8$/GB. So you can't really compare those drives with these ones.Not to mention, they would be HHHL cards instead of M.2 and they use 20nm NAND which is almost 2 generations old.
bricko - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Many of the m.2 sticks run very hot and manu are insertin g them into adapter cards to fit in pcie slot.Here is link to one....but its been removed from server and being sold before the consumer version is out. The cost is enormous because no other supply yet, but should be out to consumer in day or 2.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L0LFKQW/ref=wl_it_dp_o...
here is m.2 adapter card with heat sink for the samsung 941 ssd drive to put into pcie slot
http://www.amazon.com/Sintech-PCI-e-Adapter-Samsun...
but again, these early ones are difficult to make bootable, need x99 mobo and to get the nvme you need windows 8.1 which has native driver.
bricko - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Here is link to intels countdown clock for their big announcement on m.2 ssdhttp://www.intelgamingpromo.com/intel15b/ssd/notic...
bricko - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Mushkin Hyperion M.2 SSD Reaches 2.8GB/s and 350K IOPShttp://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz...
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
While I'm under NDA for that announcement, what I can tell you is that there's no M.2 coming tomorrow.bricko - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Good explanation on how and what these new m.2 drives are and what you need to get them to work.http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2468965/ssd...
SunLord - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
I was so hoping to see a m.2 42mm option from Samsung...WackyDan - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Same here... So these aren't available in 42mm?