Have you ever taken your computer to bits?
It's a lot of fun. It's also quite terrifying - especially the first time.
Over the years I've had computers come and go and I've successfully managed to eek out a bit more life from most of them by performing a few simple upgrades.
And I do mean simple; I'm more than happy to unscrew the bottom of my laptop or slide off an access panel on a PC. But once you get into soldering or anything like that, I'm out.
Luckily, upgrades like storage, RAM and graphics cards are usually just a matter of undoing a few screws and slotting the new bit into place.
Well, if you're prepared to give it a go Samsung has a new bit that'll get you a lot more space and maybe even speed things up at the same time.
With the launch of the 9100 Pro, Samsung has unveiled its first 8TB SSD. That's not a typo. From the second half of this year, you'll be able to replace your existing SSD module with an unprecedented 8 terabytes - on a single card.
Of course, because I'm a total nerd, I couldn't wait that long so I got them to send me a 4TB one, which is available right now, along with the 1TB and 2TB versions.
Luckily, my test laptop can accomodate the PCIe 5.0 x 4 NVEMe M.2 model, although there are also heatsink options available for powerful gaming rigs and PS5 consoles.
A bigger internal drive also means your computer can work more efficiently because it's less likely to have to split data up to fit into whatever space there is available. This is especially important when manipulating large audio and video files.
I've just finished editing another year's radio award entries. Although the final mixdown is only ten minutes long, my Adobe Audition file contains hours and hours of audio. If you're trying to move dozens of large files like that around your computer, decent RAM certainly helps in terms of sheer power but the more empty space you have to scatter the files over, the less that RAM has to think about.
But all that's before we get to the fact the Samsung 9100 Pro reads and writes faster too. Much faster. Well, much faster than what I was currently using, anyway.
The SSD I was using in my test laptop was rated to read/write at about 3,000MB/s. Not too shabby. The Samsung 9100 Pro I've replaced it with is rated up to 14,800MB/s. That's one scorching upgrade.
The computer starts slightly quicker, games and apps launch much faster and the time spent on loading screens between levels on many games has reduced dramatically.
And I now have more actual storage than I know what to do with. Literally. I back up all the family photos I've ever taken on a couple of external hard drives for safety. They'd easily fit on 4TB. What's more, thanks to the colossal read-write speeds of the 9100 Pro and the much higher capacity of the recent Thunderbolt 4 and 5 USB cables and ports, such media backups take next to no time.
Samsung's Magician disk management software is also extremely efficient. By plugging in the new SSD via an external enclosure, I was able to migrate around 400GB on my test laptop in about two hours, which includes formatting the new drive and making it bootable.
There was a short period of unease when the laptop didn't start first time after I'd installed the 9100 Pro but that was due to operator error on my part. Like I say, I haven't done this in a while and I'm a bit rusty. Turns out you can push an SSD card too far in which might cause the locking screw to lose contact when it's tightened up. Rookie (or out-of-practice-geezer) mistake. I simply loosened things up a bit and everything started working again. And boy did it start working faster than ever before. It's like a whole new laptop. But a whole lot cheaper.
Click here for more information on the Samsung 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD.
