INTRODUCTION

   Although the price/capacity gap between normal HDDs and SSDs still holds i think that we've all witnessed the quite impressive price hits SSDs have taken during this past year and so it may actually be sooner than later that we'll see that gap become a lot smaller. Of course with the upcoming SATA Express standard next generation SSDs will almost certainly get a significant boost in read/write performance which will widen the performance gap between them and regular mechanical HDDs even further so no one can really tell how things will turn out in the somewhat immediate future. That being said it wasn't until a couple of months back that we finally managed to receive the 840 EVO SSD by Samsung and they've already released its successor the 845DC EVO the 240GB variant of which we have here with us today.

   Samsung's Memory Business offers the industry's most advanced and extensive range of memory semiconductor products. As a leader in both the design and manufacture of memory semiconductor since 1993, the business provides key memory products including dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), NAND flash memory, Solid State Drives (SSD) and a range of green memory solutions for use in PC, server and mobile applications. Samsung is also leading the industry in advancements of next generation DRAM and NAND flash technologies while nurturing future memory technologies.

   Samsung aims the latest 845DC EVO SSD not towards home and office use but for datacenters (thus the DC at the end) since thanks to its 19nm Toggle 3bit (TLC) MLC NAND flash, 2 million hours MTBF and 5 year warranty it should feel right at home when dealing with enterprise workloads. When Samsung started using TLC NAND flash with their solutions (for example the 840 EVO) the lower P/E cycle ratings (lower write endurance with higher latencies) disappointed some people who rushed to judge it but after a full year later I’ve yet to hear a single complaint about the 840 EVO so when they announced the TLC based 845DC EVO which is basically enterprise-grade material i was quite intrigued. Features-wise the 845DC EVO is basically an improved 840 EVO (uses the same MEX 3-Core ARM Cortex-R4 (400Mhz) controller) that comes ready with tantalum capacitors (power loss protection) which in the event of power loss should keep the drive powered long enough to save your data, advanced signal processing used for error correction and advanced data protection integrated into the enterprise workload optimized firmware. Of course we can't really test the endurance of the drive (we probably would be able to if we were to deliver this review in let's say a year from now) but we can test its performance and since the 840 EVO is already a very fast drive i wonder what the 845DC EVO is capable of.