Initially I was looking for a tried and true Samsung EVO mSATA, but being older technology I did not have a lot of choices and the Samsung’s I found were marked up pretty high.  So I tried out a ORICO mSATA that had no reviews on it yet, so thought I would add my own review and include a little benchmarking in case others find it useful.

ORICO M200 mSATA Review.

The packaging

Here is how it showed up. It appeared to be well packaged, but it did have a rattling sound inside like something was moving around. It almost seemed to be to much noise for the mSATA drive to be moving.

What’s rattling inside?

So I opened it up to see what was inside and found a pleasant surprise. Not only did the ORICO mSATA drive include screws, they also INCLUDED A SCREWDRIVER! With all the drives I have bought lately that can not even bother to include screws, here is a drive that not only includes 3 screws but also includes a screwdriver. It almost seems absurd and I have to say at first I wondered if it was by accident. This was a little above and beyond. Great job ORICO!

Here is a closeup front shot of the ORICO M200 mSATA drive.

Here is a closeup of the back of the ORICO M200 mSATA drive.

So I went ahead and removed the drive ORICO mSATA drive from its static packaging and popped it onto my Dell XPS 2720 motherboard. Loaded up Windows 10 onto it and decided to run a few benchmark tests on it. Here is a quick shot of it installed on my motherboard of my DELL XPS 2720.

Benchmarking

One of the things I was looking at when deciding on a mSATA was the read/write specs. This drive was being listed as 560MB/s Read, and 516MB/s Write on a retailer website, but when I went and checked the ORICO website for this drive size its listed at 550MBs/489MBs.  Not a big difference, but thought I would mention it. Since I was looking for a smaller 128GB sized drive as it would only be used for the windows OS and a single program I was focused on speeds in that drive range. I noticed that drive speeds varied between the sizes for the same models.

I also noticed this one was advertised as 3D NAND while some others were not. This drive is listed as being mSATA 3.0 6Gbps and is using TLC Flash. I ended up going with this 128GB drive as it was cheap and since this was just being used for a DVR I really didn’t think I would need a larger boot drive. I have the 3.5″ mechanical drive that will be used to store the videos.

Here are the results I got doing a drive test with CrystalDiskMark.

As you can see it scored really well. Pretty close to what was advertised a t the retailer I had checked and above what the ORICO website listed. For reference you can find specs on the ORICO website here.  Needless to say I was very pleased.

SUMMARY

What can I say besides this drive has exceeded my expectations so far. My boot time on this PC is now under 15 seconds. It has fast drive speeds. It came with a free screwdriver and also included not 2 but 3 screws. (I guess in case I lost one?) The price point of this drive was right in line with a lot of cheaper drives so I feel it was a good value. The only thing so far is that this is my first ORICO drive. I am hoping it has some good longevity and lasts me the life of this pc.

Speaking of longevity, I should have mentioned that I saw it stated it has a 5 year warranty or a certain amount of total bytes written, whichever comes first. In the case of this smaller drive that looks to be 50TBW while the larger 1TB drive would be 400TBW.  You can find that info on their website. After all is said and done, I am happy with this purchase and have no buyers remorse.

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As computers age we tend to see that they run slower. This can be due to hardware or software issues. While we would all probably like to upgrade to the latest and greatest computer each year, that is just not feasible for most. This article is mainly written for windows 10, but some of the tips can help other operating systems as well.

Here are my 5 favorite tips that can help to speed up your Windows computer and help make your computer faster.

Disclaimer: This post is just some things I do on my computers to speed them up. I am not responsible if you damage your computer or files, or injure yourself trying these. If you do not know what you are doing seek a professional to look at your PC.  

1. Run Performance Monitor.

I like to start off with this as its a great tool built into Windows 10. This might help you find an issue your computer may be having. There is a lot of detailed information in this report. To run Performance Monitor just type “perfmon /report” in your search box at the bottom in your taskbar and it should show up. It takes a few minutes to run, but you should end up with a report that looks like this with much more detail. If you would like to learn more about performance monitor you can check out this Microsoft article.

2. Switch from a mechanical hard drive to a SSD drive for your boot disk.

This one I debated putting in here as it requires you to by some new hardware. but I am always amazed when I install a new SSD hard drive when replacing a typical old platter mechanical style harddrive.  I have seem boot times go from 1.5 minutes to under 15 seconds. The speed of an SSD drive is amazing. The downside to this is that this requires you to buy some new hardware. While they do cost more than a platter drive, the prices have been dropping dramatically. I like to get a 250GB or 500GB drive and just use it for the operating system and then re-use the older drive for data storage.

You can find 250GB SSD drives for under $30 on sale. Some drives come with free migration software so you can copy everything over from your old drive to your new drive. Most SSD drives are 2.5″ so if replacing it in a desktop PC, you may need a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adaptor.

Here is a mechanical HD I swapped out for a new SSD in a laptop. 

3. Background Program cleanup.

Sometimes you have programs running automatically in the background that you do not care about and never use. Or maybe you want to keep the program but just do not want it running automatically wasting resources. You can either uninstall these programs, or disable them so they do not auto start by going into “TASK MANAGER” (Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open Task Manager). Click the Startup tab and see which programs are starting automatically. You can right click on the ones you do not want to start up automatically at bootup and disable them. If you see a program and do not know what the program is try googling its name for more info.

4. Turn off transparency effects.

I tend to do this with all my PC’s. I right-click on the desktop and go into Personalize. Then turn off transparency effects. For me its just a waste of processing to render these effects. Once they are turned off i don’t even tend to notice they are gone.

5. File Cleanup.

Running Disk Cleanup can help free up available disk space. You can also do this by running Storage Sense. Storage Sense is like the new version of Disk Cleanup that became available in Windows 10 (Version 1809). To run disk cleanup, you can just type “Disk Cleanup” in the search bar at the bottom of the screen. To run Storage Sense you can just type “Storage Settings” to get into the storage settings where storage sense is located. I tend to use Disk Cleanup as it has been around for a while. But here is what both options look like. Just be careful to not delete anything you need.

Disk Cleanup. 

Storage Sense. 

Summary

That’s my 5 tips for speeding up your computer. I hope you found one or two of the tips helpful. If you end up deciding to swap out a mechanical Hard drive for an SSD, I recomend checking youtube as there are lots of videos on it. Especially if you are doing it on a laptop as some laptops are easier then others to access the hard drives. There are other things you can do to speed up your computer such as overclocking and processor upgrades. But i really think these tips above are a good place to start. Good luck! I love to see people make their computers last longer and not be so quick to switch them out.

If you would like to see an example of a HD swap to SSD you can see this post I did here.

The post How to make your computer faster appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only, and shows how I replaced my drive. I am not responsible if you try this and void your warranty, injure yourself or damage your property. If you do not know what you are doing please seek a professional. 

Types of M.2 SSD drives

To start of I want to mention the Dell XPS 13 uses a M.2 SSD instead of a standard 2.5″ SSD or standard platter hard drive in the laptop. The m.2 SSD is a much smaller drive which makes it well suited for the Dell XPS 9350.

M.2 FORM FACTOR

The Dell XPS 13  9350 uses a 2280 form factor M.2 SSD.  This is a very common form factor, but you would want to verify your replacemnt drive matches this. What does 2280 form factor mean? Basically that the SSD drive is 22mm wide by 80mm long. Pretty simple. You can find M.2 drives that range between 16. and 110 mm in length, and 12mm to 30mm wide.

NVMe/PCIe vs SATA

The other option when purchasing a drive is NVMe/PCIe or SATA interface. Basically the NVMe uses PCIe and the advantage is that it will be faster then the SATA model M.2 drives. This is due to PCIe using 4 lanes for data while a SATA drive only uses 1 lane. So a NVMe drive can send more data at once. Since the Dell XPS 13 9350 is capable of using a NVMe drive, I went with that option.  One other thing to mention is that NVMe drives also cost more than a SATA drive. So that may play into your decision.

Samsung EVO 970 plus

I chose to buy the Samsung 970 EVO plus as it does state it has the 2280 form factor. Plus they are pretty well known for being reliable drives. It is also an NVMe drive which should be faster then a SATA drive. As for the size, I went with a 500GB model. 

Replace the Dell 9350 SSD (M.2)

I was pretty happy with how easy it was to replace the Dell 9350 SSD (M.2) drive. Basically you just need to remove the screws on the back that use a very small torx bit. It was the same one I have used for cell phone repair and a small Philips head screwdriver. The torx screwdriver will be used for all the outside screws on the case with the exception of the screw under the XPS flap. That will use the Philips head. You will also use the Philips screwdriver to remove the M.2 screw holding the drive in place.

Once the screws were removed I used an old credit card to pry the back away and being careful not stick the card in to far. slowly moving from one side of the laptop to the other side. All in all it was a pretty easy process.

Here is the inside of the Dell XPS 13 9350 and the 128GB M.2 SSD I am going to replace.  I highlighted the screw that is holding it in place.

And that is it, I swapped it out with a new Samsung EVO 970 plus 2280 500GB M.2 Drive.

Final steps

Now to just snap the cover back on , replace all the screws I removed and reload windows onto this new drive. To reload windows from scratch I used a Windows media creation USB drive I had previously created. Here is a link to Microsoft for creating a Windows 10 install USB through Microsoft’s Windows media creation tool.  When I did this windows re-install my windows was already activated and I did not need to enter a activation code. I think it must be tied to my bios in the Dell XPS 9350.

If you start seeing add in your windows start menu, you can see this post on how to remove them, Here is that link

Hope you found something in this post helpful.

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I just recently purchased a Samsung 860EVO 500GB drive so thought I would run the benchmarks and compare it to my Adata SU800 1TB drive I have been using. This is my first Samsung SSD drive and I have heard great things about the 860EVO for performance and reliability. So I thought I would try one out for myself and compare benchmarks with my Adata SU800. So here is my 860EVO vs SU800 comparison.

Both drives come nicely protected in a box instead, I doubt they would get damaged in shipment being jostled around. No real winner in this department.

Software

Both drives come with a software toolbox. Here is a screenshot from both. I will do some side by side comparisons of the software and update this post. But offhand I can not find any faults with either. I did use the Samsung software to update the firmware of my drive and it went without a hitch. No need to download a separate file from the website. It was all done from the tool. Very easy.

Drive Migration software

Both drives are listed as coming with Drive Migration software. But I did not try out the Adata version. The Samsung drive migration software was incredibly simple and easy. I just plugged in the new drive and ran the software and picked the drive to clone and followed the prompts.

Since both drives have migration software and toolbox software, no real winner here either for me.

Warranty and Website Specs.

Here are some specs I compared from the website. The seem to be speeds they can reach “up to”.  Not sure if companies cherry pick these numbers or if they are truly the average peak speeds. What was interesting was the MTBF was listed as higher for the Adata SU800 then the 860EVO.

Benchmark test

For benchmark testing I used Crystal Disk mark.  As I expected the Samsung 860EVO was faster in almost every test. But the SU800 was really close. Since the SU800 was so close I thought it would be better to throw a couple other hard drives in the chart for comparison. This way you can see how close they really are.

Read Speeds

Write Speeds

Summary:

Well, there is no debate in my mind that the Samsung is faster after running the test. The Samsung 860EVO also has a better warranty of 5 years. But that extra warranty and speed difference come with a premium price.  I have heard great things about the reliability of Samsung drives. But I have never had any issues with my Adata 2.5″ SSD’s.  So for me since the SU800 is so close to the 860EVO in speed, I think my next purchase will also depend on the price. At a same or close price, I will probably go with the Samsung 860EVO. If the SU800 is a lot cheaper, I will probably choose the SU800 and from what I have seen lately the SU800 can be purchased much cheaper.

If you are thinking of going with Adata you may want to see my SU650 vs SU800 comparison.

Here are the links for the specs of the drives on Adata’s and Samsung’s website :

• Adata SU800
• Samsung 860EVO

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