I am a huge fan of SSD drives and have long since replaced my own primary boot disk as well as both my kids laptop hard drives with SSD drives, but until recently it was very difficult to find SSD drives in capacities larger than 480gb so therefore having a second drive with 750GB or 1TB capacity was typically needed for additional storage as an SSD alone may not have been enough to store all your data in one drive and all your data have the speedy access you expect from an SSD.  Well 2014 has brought us a few options when it comes to high capacity SSD drives and these 4 options would be a boon for any PC enthusiast.

Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD

First up is the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB which boasts the fastest read/write and operational speeds of all the 3 drives in this roundup.  Samsung boasts sequential Read Speeds of 540 MB, Sequential Write Speeds of 520 MB with Random Read Speeds of 98K IOPS and Random Write Speeds of 90K IOPS.  Combine this with the drive having AES 256-bit full-disk encryption as a standard plus the drive is only 7 millimeters thick and weighs just 2 ounces, the 840 EVO Series SSD features a sleek, lightweight design and is absolutely a BEAUTY of an SSD drive.  The Samsung 840 EVO boasts over 4200+ 5 star reviews on Amazon which is incredible!  The drive also comes with 1 GB Samsung LPDDR2 SDRAM for lightning fast fetches and caching on top of the SSD capacity.  We are talking about a full 1TB SSD drive here and the best part is the price is very reasonable for a 1TB SSD drive $399.99.

Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD

But Wait, Second is an even better SSD drive from Samsung but the only reason why I didn’t list it first is it costs $200 more, but with the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD drive you get unbelievable sequential read and write performance up to 550 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 520MB/s respectively, and random read and write input/output operations-per-second (IOPS) up to 100,000 and 90,000 each.  You also get the added benefit of Device Sleep mode for Ultra-notebooks and improves battery life by up to 45 minutes vs. standard hard drives.  As if that isn’t enough you also get Worry-free data security with AES 256-bit encryption, Microsoft Bitlocker and TCG / Opal 2.0 support.  In addition, buy this drive from Amazon right now and you get a bonus, receive a free download code for Assassin’s Creed Unity with purchase of select Samsung 850 PRO Solid State Drive capacities for a limited time.  If you need the best performing drive, then this one should do the trick and would be a HUGE benefit to any laptop.  The caveat is it is the most expensive SSD drive in our round up and this magnificent drive will set you back $599.99 but it is worth it if you got the loot and REALLY want to score points with your PC enthusiast partner.

Crucial M550 1TB SATA 2.5″ 7mm SSD

 

Crucial makes a fantastic 1TB SSD Drive option that has over 209 5 star reviews on Amazon.com and the M550 with 1TB capacity boasts 550 MB/s sequential reads, 500 MB/s sequential writes, 95k random reads, 85k random writes putting it closer in line to the boasted performance of the Samsung 840 EVO.  Also the Crucial M550 is one of the only drives on the market to meet the rigorous requirements of TCG Opal 2.0, IEEE-1667, and Microsoft eDrive.  The Crucial M550 1TB SSD right now is listed for $449 on Amazon which makes it more expensive than the Samsung 840 EVO.

Kingston Digital 960GB SSDNow V310 SATA 3 2.5 Solid State Drive Notebook Bundle Kit

Kingston sells a really nice 960GB SSD drive as a complete notebook bundle kit which also includes an HDD enclosure to turn any 2.5″ drive into a USB external drive, so really you get to swap out your primary HDD or smaller SSD, and repurpose your older drive as an external HDD with the enclosure too.  Kingston has speed rates listed as read/write speeds of 450/450 MB/s but offers a 3 year warranty on the product.  Just over 40 5 star reviews on Amazon.com and costing $499.99 this drive is in last place for our recommendations only because of the price and performance are rated lower than the other drives listed as well as slightly less capacity.  Though this is partially offset by it having an HDD enclosure and some extra components the other drives don’t have included.  Still we are big Kingston fans and I will be 100% honest, I only use Kingston SSD drives in all my laptops and hard drives, that is because Kingston has provided DragonBlogger.com with SSD drives to review, so while the specs look good for Samsung and Crucial and I have heard great things about them I only have actual hands on experience with Kingston SSD drives and I have been very happy with them for my own computers and my kids laptops so I have no trouble recommending them since I use them myself.  So I doubt you would go wrong with the Kingston Digital 960GB SSDNow V310.