Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA Review

Name: Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA Review
Brand: Samsung

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, March 28, 2014, 11:45 AM EDT

Another interesting feature of the Samsung SSD 840 EVO series is dubbed RAPID. RAPID is an acronym for Real-Time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data. It is a feature of Samsung’s Magician software (v4.2 or newer) that can speed up the drive significantly. The feature can be enabled with a single-click (followed by a reboot), in the Samsung Magician utility.

Samsung Magician Utility

Samsung acquired NVELO a while back, which was a company known for its SSD caching technology. NVELO’s software was used to accelerate hard drive transfers by buffering the most commonly accessed bits of data from the hard drive onto a faster SSD. Well, RAPID works in a similar manner, but in the case of the Samsung's 840 EVO series of drives, RAPID caches the most commonly accessed bits of data on the SSD into faster system memory.

ATTO Transfer Test with RAPID Mode Enabled

The size of the cache will dynamically adjust based on available system resources, and it follows the cache flush commands of the OS, so the risk of losing data due to an unexpected power outage isn’t much higher than a typical system using write buffering. The algorithms for RAPID are specifically tuned for solid state transfers, however, and are far more effective than any current-gen OS cache. The performance benefits of RAPID will vary depending on the age and frequency of the data being accessed, but when RAPID is being used, effective transfer speeds can hover in the 4GB's+ range. Yes, that's a G, as in gigabytes.

Tags: Samsung, Storage, drive, mSATA, 840 EVO

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com