![Is Samsung 860 Pro Compatible For Mac? Is Samsung 860 Pro Compatible For Mac?](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125644087/661557706.jpg)
Sorry if this is a recurring question, but trying to get people's opinions rather than a 'solution'. I have an early 2011 MBP which is becoming increasingly slow (loading programmes, scrolling through large albums of photos, system struggling when carrying out larger tasks). I am assuming my HDD is becoming old and struggling, I was thinking of cloning my HDD on to a Samsung 860 Evo SSD and installing that. Do people think this will give my Mac a new lease of life? Or is the whole device getting old and it will be a wasted effort? Any opinions/experiences would be greatly appreciated. I've had an SSD in my 2011 for around 3-4 years now.
The Samsung 860 Pro has a much higher endurance rating then the Samsung 850 Pro but it's nullified by only having a 5 year Samsung Warranty verses the 850 Pro's 10 year Samsung warranty. Samsung 860 Pro is the best overall SATA III SSD sold & it's a 5 star SSD like it's predecessor despite the high price tag.
It's a huge improvement, but at this point even the 2011 + an SSD is quite slow. One other major pain point is that the intel HD3000 graphics are no longer supported by Chrome, so you'll be forced to use Safari or Firefox. (Chrome runs but abysmally slow and with the fans cranked because it handles graphics in the cpu instead of gpu) Other annoying limitations of the 2011 model that you may not be considering: - No retina screen - 802.11n only (450Mbps at 5ghz isn't so bad though) - USB 2.0 only - No bluetooth compatible with continuity / airdrop - Very quiet speakers At this point I'd probably just save my money and put it into a 2018 MBP model with 2 extra cores.
If you don't plan to sell the 2011 though and want to keep it for a backup you could just pickup a super cheap 256gb SSD to keep it alive. Just buy one that's on sale for $70 or so. Upgrading to an SSD will be a MAJOR improvement.
As in, 'big time'. You DON'T need the fanciest highest-speed Samsung drive, because the 2011 model's SATA2 bus can't take advantage of it. ANY SSD will do. I'd suggest a Crucial, and not the expensive ones. This is an easy repair - ANYONE can do it.
![Compatible Compatible](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125644087/735210836.jpg)
Go to ifixit.com to see what's involved, they have an illustrated guide. Use THE RIGHT TOOLS. You'll need a Phillips #00 driver and a TORX T-6 driver. Find these online, or at a hardware store.
Here's the most important tip you're going to get in this thread: Buy one of these, as well: (I have one myself, cheap and useful peripheral) Use it to 'prep and test' the new SSD BEFORE you attempt to install it. That way you'll know it works BEFORE you commit to it.
And if you have any problems, you'll STILL HAVE A MACBOOK THAT BOOTS AND RUNS so you can work things out. Afterwards, you can use the adapter/dongle with the original HDD as a backup drive, extra storage, etc. Again, the SSD will be a great improvement. Any problems, get back to us and we'll help.
Click to expand.Actually, I would stay away from the lowest end models because they are very slow. On example is the HP S700 that has a controller with no DRAM, as does the Sandisk SSD Plus. Be careful buying the lowest priced drives. Also, I'd avoid anything with a SandForce controller in a MacBook (Except an OWC drive), because they will often have link negotiation issues and stick at SATA 1 speeds.
Those drives aren't on the new market any more but they come up from time to time when buying a used drive. I've had an SSD in my 2011 for around 3-4 years now. It's a huge improvement, but at this point even the 2011 + an SSD is quite slow. One other major pain point is that the intel HD3000 graphics are no longer supported by Chrome, so you'll be forced to use Safari or Firefox. (Chrome runs but abysmally slow and with the fans cranked because it handles graphics in the cpu instead of gpu) Other annoying limitations of the 2011 model that you may not be considering: - No retina screen - 802.11n only (450Mbps at 5ghz isn't so bad though) - USB 2.0 only - No bluetooth compatible with continuity / airdrop - Very quiet speakers At this point I'd probably just save my money and put it into a 2018 MBP model with 2 extra cores. If you don't plan to sell the 2011 though and want to keep it for a backup you could just pickup a super cheap 256gb SSD to keep it alive.
Just buy one that's on sale for $70 or so. Click to expand.You can use Chrome, just not WebGL In order to provide the best user experience, browsers may selectively enable or disable support for WebGL and this is done to work around stability or conformance problems. You can find the blacklist and looking at that, it appears that the Intel HD Graphics 3000 driver on Mac crashes frequently, and that is why it is on the blacklist. You're not encouraged to override this, because certain graphics cards and drivers are known to contain serious bugs or cause crashes. In very severe cases, these can even cause your entire computer to freeze. You can use Chrome, just not WebGL In order to provide the best user experience, browsers may selectively enable or disable support for WebGL and this is done to work around stability or conformance problems. You can find the blacklist and looking at that, it appears that the Intel HD Graphics 3000 driver on Mac crashes frequently, and that is why it is on the blacklist.
You're not encouraged to override this, because certain graphics cards and drivers are known to contain serious bugs or cause crashes. In very severe cases, these can even cause your entire computer to freeze.
The Good The Samsung SSD 850 Pro has fast performance, high endurance - you can write a lot of data to it before it becomes unreliable - and its 2TB capacity is the highest on the market. The drive comes with a lot of useful features, including encryption, and a great performance-boosting mode called Rapid. The Bad The drive is expensive compared with competing solid-state drives. The Samsung Magician software only works with Windows.
The Bottom Line The Samsung SSD 850 Pro is one of the best standard consumer-grade solid-state drives on the market, but there are cheaper alternatives with similar performance. Editors' note: The review was updated on July 6, 2015, when the new 2TB version was released. There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the Samsung SSD 850 Pro. It's the first SSD on the market that uses the innovative 3D vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory for top performance and ultra-high endurance. It comes with a rarely seen 10-year warranty and, among other features, has a Rapid mode that further boosts its performance. What's more, it's one of the first drives available in the all-new 2TB capacity, along with its sibling the.
Naturally, though, all of that comes at a price. Depending on the capacities, the new Samsung drive is one of the most expensive among standard SSDs, currently costing $98, $152, $255, $489 and $1,000 for 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB respectively. (That's about £63 to £640 and AU$128 to AU$1,310 converted.) Note that the pricing for the newly released 2TB version is the suggested retail price, and its street price will likely be lower. If you don't mind paying the premium, the Samsung delivers the best performance, highest capacity and longest warranty time currently available on the market. It's especially great for those who regularly need to write a huge amount of data to the internal drive every day. But if you're on stricter budget, the 850 Evo is cheaper, with comparable performance in many tests. For more options on great internal drives,.
The 2TB SSD 850 Pro from Samsung Josh Miller/CNET 3D memory cell strings, ultra-high endurance The Samsung SSD 850 Pro is a standard internal drive that supports the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard and will work in any instance where a regular SATA hard drive is used. Similar to most SSDs, it's 7mm thick. Like most standard drives, it's a square device that's 2.5 inches diagonally, with the standard SATA port on one of its sides.
The new drive looks exactly the same as the. On the inside, however, the new drive is the first that brings 3D vertical NAND flash memory to SSDs, called Samsung second-gen 86-gigabit 40nm MLC V-NAND. Traditionally, NAND flash memory cells - the storage units on an SSD - are placed flat on the surface of the silicon wafer, limiting the number of cells you can cram into a square inch. In the case of the Samsung drive, cells are also stacked up to 32 layers. This allows for packing significantly more memory cells in the same amount of wafer bits, which greatly increases the density. That plus Samsung's customized firmware and the improved MEX controller, allow the drive to also offer great performance and ultra-high endurance. Endurance is the number of program-erase (P/E) cycles an SSD has before you can't write onto it any more -.
Samsung says you can write at least 150TB (on the 128GB and 256GB capacities) or 300TB (on the 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities) of data to the 850 Pro before it runs out of P/E cycles, almost twice that of the SanDisk Extreme Pro, which has an endurance of 80TB. This means most of us won't use up the drive's endurance in our lifetime. Samsung SSD 850 Pro specs. For example, you can use the software to turn on or off encryption, over-provisioning - a feature that uses part of an SSD's storage space to enhance the drive's performance - and Rapid mode.
Rapid mode is unique to Samsung SSDs and is the most interesting and appealing feature. Rapid is an acronym, standing for Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data. It basically means that it uses the available system memory (RAM) on the host computer as an input/output cache to boost the performance.
Since most new computers come with a large amount of RAM, Rapid is a welcome feature. Previously with the 840 Pro and 840 Evo, Rapid used up to 1GB of RAM for cache. Starting with the 850 Pro, Rapid now can use up to 4GB or 25 percent of the host computer's RAM, whichever is larger, as cache. More cache means better performance.
In my testing, I found no reason why you shouldn't use Rapid mode.