Let me start by pointing out the obvious, which is that pretty much any SSD is going to provide a huge performance improvement over a conventional hard drive. This one is no exception. If you're into gaming or have other ultra-high performance computing needs, you've probably researched which SSDs are the very fastest down to the last fraction of a second in benchmark tests. I don't get into that level of performance. All I can offer is that like any SSD, this one will make an old computer feel like a new one, and a new one feel like a much more expensive one.
I've only installed one of this particular make and model SSD so far, so I can't comment on how reliable it is compared to others. Again, SSDs as a class tend to be very reliable, far more so than conventional hard drives. I've had a couple SSDs fail, but both were from other brands, and the only pattern shown by two failures out of the dozens of SSD upgrades I've done indicates what I just said, which is that SSDs are very reliable.
The only real variable is the "Easy to install" rating. I'm not sure why Amazon put it here, because ease of installation isn't really a feature of a SSD. This type of SSD is a drop-in replacement for a conventional laptop hard drive. However, there are steps you must follow to do this replacement. First, you must know how to make a full image backup of your hard drive, if your intention is to simply upgrade your drive; otherwise, you must know how to do a fresh operating system installation on a new drive and, presumably, copy your data over. I'm not going to get into those procedures here, or the tools and software needed to do it, as this is a review, not a tutorial. Second, if you're upgrading a desktop computer's hard drive, you probably need a suitable adapter to fit a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" drive holder. Finally, some computer manufacturers make it easy to access and replace the hard drive, while others make it quite difficult. In the easiest cases, the drive simply slides out of a door on the side of the computer, allowing you to replace the drive wit no disassembly. On the complicated end, I've worked on some computers where you have to disassemble most of the machine, take out the system board and flip it over in order to replace the hard drive. And that's just the hardware -- I had one situation in which a laptop's storage driver didn't agree with the SSD, and I had to find a different storage driver to make it work properly. So, I gave 3 stars for "Easy to install", but it's necessary to acknowledge that I would give this same rating to any SSD, regardless of make and model, and that most of that is beyond the SSD manufacturer's control.
| Hard Drive | 960.00 Solid State Drive |
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