Samsung 850 EVO 250GB vs Crucial BX100 250GB SSD's. which one?


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Looking around online it appears my choices pretty much boil down to one of these two it seems...

 

-Samsung 850 EVO 250GB = $119.99 + Free Ship (5 year warranty)

 

or...

 

-Crucial BX100 250GB = $99.99 + $2.99 shipping (basically $102.98) (3 year warranty)

 

i just want to get the general thoughts of the users around here who are experienced with SSD in general. this is my first SSD drive as i am still using a typical HDD which i heard is a big performance gap from HDD to SSD in general.

 

i only have SATA 3Gbps ports on my ASUS P8H61-M LX Plus motherboard which i know from looking around online (i.e. 3Gbps vs 6Gbps) will impact the performance but not much in real world unless you do SSD to SSD transfers and some other things i am unlikely to do as if i did that the performance gap is quite noticeable then. but for general windows programs etc (i.e. real world use) they seem to be pretty much the same.

 

also, from what i seemed to have found online when it comes to SSD's in general is you want to stick to Samsung/Crucial/Intel brands as a general guideline. any truth to that?

 

but since i won't be able to max out either drive when it comes to Read/Write performance (since the drives exceed the SATA II (3Gbps) bandwidth they should be pretty much the same in overall performance, correct?) i guess that would mean that the #1 factor here would be is it worth the extra $17 for an additional 2 year warranty? (anything else i am missing?). i heard Samsung's returns are more of a pain than returns with Crucial (in case the SSD fails) but i don't know if that's true or not.

 

i liked Crucial RAM in the past as it's always been rock solid in my experience which is kind of why i am leaning towards the Crucial drive at the moment. but i want to get the opinions of others around here before i make any decisions as i always heard the Samsung EVO series (besides that performance bug in the 840 series) is one of the best all around choices in general and that 5 year warranty is always nice which usually anything in that 5+ year warranty range seems to suggest quality product when most computer stuff is 3 years or less in general.

 

Thanks for your time.

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I think its worth the extra money partly because of the warranty, but also because you may upgrade your system in the next couple of years, and you can keep the SSD and benefit from a little bit more throughput via Sata 3 when you do.

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I have an 850 EVO and love it. Can't compare it to another SSD sorry but I like the 5 year warranty on it and the speeds are insane compared to what I was on before :yes:

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Having had two Crucial MX100 512GB drives and dealt with their appalling firmware dev team I would steer clear of Crucial. I know Samsung have had a blip on their record with the 840 EVO but at least they've acknowledged it and worked hard to fix.

 

Just have a quick read through the Crucial SSD forums and you'll make your mind up pretty quickly to steer clear.

I've installed over 100x 850 EVO drives in my office with not one single problem.

Our older HP desktops with Crucial M500 and M550 drives are a disaster. Disappearing drives, BSODs, you name it.

 

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=crucial+mx100+bsod&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/bd-p/ssd

 

Crucial RAM on the other hand is excellent.

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+1 for Samsung Evo 850 (Y)

 

Just because I have no experience with Crucial but have used and built in lots of the Samsung ones and everybody is happy with them.

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I've had drives from both manufacturers (although not the drives you mention) - and both have been flawless. I've had Crucial M4, M500 and MX100, as well Samsung 830 and 840 EVO.

Even on a SATA2 interface, SSDs provide a significant boost over a mechanical drive. The performance numbers are somewhat meaningless because even a 'slow' moderrn SSD will let much saturate your interface.

My advice: buy the cheaper one.

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Having had two Crucial MX100 512GB drives and dealt with their appalling firmware dev team I would steer clear of Crucial. I know Samsung have had a blip on their record with the 840 EVO but at least they've acknowledged it and worked hard to fix.

 

Just have a quick read through the Crucial SSD forums and you'll make your mind up pretty quickly to steer clear.

I've installed over 100x 850 EVO drives in my office with not one single problem.

Our older HP desktops with Crucial M500 and M550 drives are a disaster. Disappearing drives, BSODs, you name it.

 

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=crucial+mx100+bsod&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/bd-p/ssd

 

Crucial RAM on the other hand is excellent.

 

Ironically, my experience with Crucial RAM has been met with the same experiences as your SSD's. So far I've not had any issues with 3x MX100 256GB in RAID-0 for our Hyper-V VM dev box at work. They do all have firmware updates available for them but as I'm not having any issues with it (and their reputation for upgrade reliability), I'll stay well clear. The host OS is on an Intel 520 Series and the Crucial is just for VM storage.

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I've had a MX100 in this desktop for almost 2 years and it's been great. No issues at all.

 

I'm considering a SSD for my laptop right now and will probably try the BX as it's a bit cheaper than the MX.

 

Personally, I'd steer clear of Samsung's TLC SSDs until they work out the kinks.

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sorry if hijack this thread, but could someone answer a quick question for this noob. I just bought an SSD like this one in (samsung 850) here. Do I need to reformat my HDD or can I have the SSD and HDD with the same os, but aslong as I boot from SSD i'll be fine?

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I have a Samsung 830, 840, and a Corsair MX100. All 120/128 versions. I found no difference in either.

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Well i think you guys swayed me to go with the Samsung 850 EVO SSD as i think it's just cheap enough to go with it as if it where $10 more (which would have put a $27 gap in between the two drives) i might have went with the Crucial one and you guys seem to have installed many of the Samsung SSD's without issue.

 

ill probably just lay it somewhere inside my case, which i heard is fine, but ill have to organize it around as i got 4 SATA ports on motherboard (which ill use one of those to connect to the SSD) and have to disconnect one of my DVD burners so i don't lose any hard drive space as i got a total of 6 SATA ports (4 on mobo, 2 in add-on card) and they are all currently in use (4 hard drives(250GB Western Digital/400GB Seagate/1TB Samsung/2TB Samsung(and another 200GB IDE connected to the add-on card)), 2 dvd burners).

 

if anything acts up (or maybe a quick reply to say how it is) ill probably make another post here in the next week or so.

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I think you'll be pleased with the Samsung EVO. Personally, I like the Samsung Magician program that comes with it. It has some cool features to it. It's also nice in that it comes with HDD to SSD cloning software. You'll notice a nice difference in your computers bootup time with an SSD compared to a HDD. Happy buying!:-)

 

BTW, if you look around a bit you can find the Samsung 850 EVO for a few bucks less than the $119.99. I know you were crunching numbers so I figured I'd mention it;-)

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I did some quick searching and found it for $97.99 at Adorama on Ebay. Price doesn't show until you click on Buy It Now. I checked it out and it is $97.99 + Free Shipping. Says it ships from New Jersey. Adorama has a 99.5% rating as well. Just a FYI.

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+1 for Samsung Evo 850 (Y)

Just because I have no experience with Crucial but have used and built in lots of the Samsung ones and everybody is happy with them.

Except for the defect where they slow down to just 25 megs a second very qyickly. Go Google them?

I refuse to buy any Evo aftet this

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BTW, if you look around a bit you can find the Samsung 850 EVO for a few bucks less than the $119.99. I know you were crunching numbers so I figured I'd mention it;-)

 

if it's not much less i would probably rather stick to Newegg as i trust that place more than other places in general as they got a good rep for returns the last i checked and i only had to send back one thing in the past (back in 2006) and the process went smoothly even though i had to pay a shipping fee but thankfully it was just some RAM chips which kept shipping cost minimal.

 

either way, i placed the order already on Newegg about 4-5 hours ago now for the $119.99.

 

Thanks for the price tip though.

 

 

 

It's also nice in that it comes with HDD to SSD cloning software.

 

yeah, that will be nice as ill have to do that as i would rather not reinstall Windows 7 as i did that from scratch May 2012 (back when i got a new CPU/Mobo/RAM) as that would be time consuming not just in the basic format/reinstall but reconfiguring everything would be a pain/time consuming as i only do that when i really have to nowadays which boils down to major upgrades on the PC like a mobo swap or something which i nearly never do.

 

but with all of the drive shuffling (because of the clone of HDD to SSD and then merging the current C/F back into a single drive) ill likely have to do have to reconfigure some stuff after it's up and running like transferring the small amount of games i got on my PC (currently on other hard drives to the SSD and some other odds and ends) and i would not be surprised if some of my programs get messed with especially if my drive letters change on the hard drives/partitions which i suspect they might. i got some apps i don't launch from the C partition currently which ill have to transfer every little thing, besides anything that requires lots of space, to the SSD.

 

but it will be easy to clone my main C partition to the SSD thankfully since i got it running on my 400GB seagate which is my C and F partitions currently and my C partition is only about 45GB (about 10GB free) with the rest going to the F partition. but even once i get this fixed ill have to figure out how to merge the C and F partitions back into a single 400GB partition which i don't think will be too difficult.

 

but with the SSD ill get an additional 250GB of space than i currently got as ill just have to sacrifice running one of my DVD burners to do it which ill likely do.

 

 

 

You'll notice a nice difference in your computers bootup time with an SSD compared to a HDD.

 

Yeah, from what i see it appears it will be significant on either SATA II or SATA III as when it comes to loading basic programs and windows itself it don't appear that SATA II or SATA III matters as it appears there is a difference but it's very minimal to where i doubt it's noticeable in real world use from what i have read on reviews of it. it's only when you do certain things is when the gap gets noticeable like say transferring from a fast SSD to a fast SSD is when the SATA II really bottlenecks the SSD's. but even as my system as is it should still be able to do around 280MB/s on the SSD's in read/write if i recall correctly from the reviewer i seen test it.

 

but it will be nice though loading windows 7 up along with the programs i usually have running as i figure that will be much quicker as right now there is quite a bit of time spent on initial boot up to where everything is up and running smoothly which i know is all because of the hard drive especially given i got 8GB of RAM which RAM is clearly a non issue.

 

but in your experience... do most programs (web browser and most basic windows programs etc) generally load up near instantly on SSD? (or say no more than a few seconds?)

 

also, i imagine ill notice a big difference in my browser after i load it up from a reboot and then click the 'restore previous session' option in Pale Moon x64 as i think there is noticeable hard drive usage during this time, due to i generally have many tabs open, which will see a significant boost with the SSD.

 

i have a feeling after i use the SSD that ill wonder why i waited so long to jump on board but i guess now seems about right as it seems the general rule is don't get a SSD with less than about 250GB of space as those 120GB and less drives just don't leave much room to breathe (could run out of space) and prices for them are getting to that point that are fair as my general rule when buying anything hard drive-ish is don't spend more than around $120(maybe $130-ish if i want to push it) as that's pretty much the sweet spot if you ask me. those that got a bit more money might opt to the 500GB SSD's though as their prices ain't too bad but are still a bit steep for storage space if you ask me as i would rather just get the cheaper 250GB SSD and save that extra $50-100 saved and put it towards a regular hard drive.

 

 

 

250gb 850 Evo is in route to me now that was 99 plus ship $103.57 total.

 

is that new? (taking a quick look around i could not find anything in that price range, especially NEW)

 

but either way, i already ordered it from Newegg already.

 

thanks anyways.

 

 

 

Except for the defect where they slow down to just 25 megs a second very qyickly. Go Google them?

I refuse to buy any Evo aftet this

 

that's only a issue discovered in the 840's, NOT the 850's. but at least, like someone said, Samsung recognized the fault and fixed it. but it does look bad on them for that. but if they are rock solid outside of that, i can't complain too much in the long run.

 

hopefully the 850's are rock solid ;) ; as i am more concerned with longevity of PC components than anything else nowadays as i had my previous PC from March 2006 til May 2012 (i just swaped out mobo/ram/cpu in that March 2006 PC though). i plan on using my current PC for AT LEAST another few years as i imagine for general use it should be good enough for at least that long.

 

but on that March 2006 PC... it's main fault was lack of RAM was really killing it's general use performance and buying that old RAM just was not worth it due to cost as it was just flat out all around better to swap the mobo/cpu/ram for not much over what the ram costs on that old PC. i think i paid around $200 if i recall correctly for the CPU/RAM/mobo swap which is not bad as it pumped new life into my computer and at a cheap enough price to.

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Except for the defect where they slow down to just 25 megs a second very qyickly. Go Google them?

I refuse to buy any Evo aftet this

 

A firmware update fixed that issue. I have the 840 EVO and have had no problems with it since I bought it.

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Except for the defect where they slow down to just 25 megs a second very qyickly. Go Google them?

I refuse to buy any Evo aftet this

As others have said... that affected only the 840... not the 850.

 

The 850 EVO uses a completely different kind of flash memory.  

 

I don't think anything will happen to the 850. Plus... I would hope Samsung learned learned their lesson :)

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if it's not much less i would probably rather stick to Newegg as i trust that place more than other places in general as they got a good rep for returns the last i checked and i only had to send back one thing in the past (back in 2006) and the process went smoothly even though i had to pay a shipping fee but thankfully it was just some RAM chips which kept shipping cost minimal.

 

either way, i placed the order already on Newegg about 4-5 hours ago now for the $119.99.

 

Thanks for the price tip though.

 

 

 

 

yeah, that will be nice as ill have to do that as i would rather not reinstall Windows 7 as i did that from scratch May 2012 (back when i got a new CPU/Mobo/RAM) as that would be time consuming not just in the basic format/reinstall but reconfiguring everything would be a pain/time consuming as i only do that when i really have to nowadays which boils down to major upgrades on the PC like a mobo swap or something which i nearly never do.

 

but with all of the drive shuffling (because of the clone of HDD to SSD and then merging the current C/F back into a single drive) ill likely have to do have to reconfigure some stuff after it's up and running like transferring the small amount of games i got on my PC (currently on other hard drives to the SSD and some other odds and ends) and i would not be surprised if some of my programs get messed with especially if my drive letters change on the hard drives/partitions which i suspect they might. i got some apps i don't launch from the C partition currently which ill have to transfer every little thing, besides anything that requires lots of space, to the SSD.

 

but it will be easy to clone my main C partition to the SSD thankfully since i got it running on my 400GB seagate which is my C and F partitions currently and my C partition is only about 45GB (about 10GB free) with the rest going to the F partition. but even once i get this fixed ill have to figure out how to merge the C and F partitions back into a single 400GB partition which i don't think will be too difficult.

 

but with the SSD ill get an additional 250GB of space than i currently got as ill just have to sacrifice running one of my DVD burners to do it which ill likely do.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, from what i see it appears it will be significant on either SATA II or SATA III as when it comes to loading basic programs and windows itself it don't appear that SATA II or SATA III matters as it appears there is a difference but it's very minimal to where i doubt it's noticeable in real world use from what i have read on reviews of it. it's only when you do certain things is when the gap gets noticeable like say transferring from a fast SSD to a fast SSD is when the SATA II really bottlenecks the SSD's. but even as my system as is it should still be able to do around 280MB/s on the SSD's in read/write if i recall correctly from the reviewer i seen test it.

 

but it will be nice though loading windows 7 up along with the programs i usually have running as i figure that will be much quicker as right now there is quite a bit of time spent on initial boot up to where everything is up and running smoothly which i know is all because of the hard drive especially given i got 8GB of RAM which RAM is clearly a non issue.

 

but in your experience... do most programs (web browser and most basic windows programs etc) generally load up near instantly on SSD? (or say no more than a few seconds?)

 

also, i imagine ill notice a big difference in my browser after i load it up from a reboot and then click the 'restore previous session' option in Pale Moon x64 as i think there is noticeable hard drive usage during this time, due to i generally have many tabs open, which will see a significant boost with the SSD.

 

i have a feeling after i use the SSD that ill wonder why i waited so long to jump on board but i guess now seems about right as it seems the general rule is don't get a SSD with less than about 250GB of space as those 120GB and less drives just don't leave much room to breathe (could run out of space) and prices for them are getting to that point that are fair as my general rule when buying anything hard drive-ish is don't spend more than around $120(maybe $130-ish if i want to push it) as that's pretty much the sweet spot if you ask me. those that got a bit more money might opt to the 500GB SSD's though as their prices ain't too bad but are still a bit steep for storage space if you ask me as i would rather just get the cheaper 250GB SSD and save that extra $50-100 saved and put it towards a regular hard drive.

 

 

 

 

is that new? (taking a quick look around i could not find anything in that price range, especially NEW)

 

but either way, i already ordered it from Newegg already.

 

thanks anyways.

 

 

 

 

that's only a issue discovered in the 840's, NOT the 850's. but at least, like someone said, Samsung recognized the fault and fixed it. but it does look bad on them for that. but if they are rock solid outside of that, i can't complain too much in the long run.

 

hopefully the 850's are rock solid ;) ; as i am more concerned with longevity of PC components than anything else nowadays as i had my previous PC from March 2006 til May 2012 (i just swaped out mobo/ram/cpu in that March 2006 PC though). i plan on using my current PC for AT LEAST another few years as i imagine for general use it should be good enough for at least that long.

 

but on that March 2006 PC... it's main fault was lack of RAM was really killing it's general use performance and buying that old RAM just was not worth it due to cost as it was just flat out all around better to swap the mobo/cpu/ram for not much over what the ram costs on that old PC. i think i paid around $200 if i recall correctly for the CPU/RAM/mobo swap which is not bad as it pumped new life into my computer and at a cheap enough price to.

 

Make sure that you don't have more on the partition your are going to clone than what the SSD can take. I had to trim some of my drive and offload some things to another drive before cloning. Nothing major and no big deal for me though.

 

There is a program that I have used and it does a good job for partitioning hard drives. You can actually get a free copy of it right now at a site. There is a free version of it as well. It's called MiniTool Partition Wizard. It will help you to merge the two partitions back into one. I don't know if the free version offers that or not but I know the Pro version does. I don't recall if we can link to outside sites so I won't do it just to be safe. If you do a Google search for "MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Giveaway" and look at the results you will find it. It was the first result when I just did the search. Some of the results are already expired but the first result is still active. You have to sign up for a newsletter but you can go in and unsubscribe from it after you get your code if you want to do so.

 

As for your drive letters changing when you install the new SSD, you can change your drive letters. I have done it in the past without any problems occurring. Not to say they can't, just that I haven't ran into any by doing so.

 

There's definitely a faster response time when opening programs and such. It just depends on the program as to how long it takes for it to start. None of mine take more than a couple seconds to load. There are other variables that factor into how fast a program responds upon being clicked as well. But yeah, the SSD will definitely help.

 

After seeing how fast my computer booted I wondered why I waited for so long to get an SSD! All the other perks were just icing on the cake, lol;-)

 

 
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Well i just got the Samsung SSD in the mail earlier today (Friday) but i still got to install it. the thing is lighter than i expected. it feels damn near hallow in that 2.5" case it's enclosed in. it's a fraction of a typical 2.5" HDD in weight.

 

ill probably install it within the next day or two though and then make some more comments in here. hopefully positive ;)

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Well after finally getting the drive installed, i just said the hell with it and clean installed Windows 7 (x64) from scratch, and updating my video card drivers along with motherboard drivers etc it's finally working well. i also has to turn on AHCI in the BIOS to as that gave a big boost to the performance of it when checking it with the Samsung Magician software when it was initially OFF and the Samsung software was telling me to turn it on so i went in BIOS and did that and got the following (i only ran the test twice as i imagine there will be some fluctuations from test to test)...

AHCI ON (on the motherboard)...

285MB/s / 51.5k IOPS read

272MB/s / 48.5k IOPS write

AHCI OFF (on the motherboard)...

215MB/s / 8,402 IOPS read

235MB/s / 15,251 IOPS write

i also made sure the drive is aligned etc, which it is.

it appears i am pretty much getting about what's expected of the drive considering i am limited by the SATA II 3Gbps spec. but it's a non issue though for the most part as the 6Gbps vs 3Gbps don't seem to have much real world effect when it comes to loading Windows and general programs from what i have read online.

but anyways, with that said... the computer just loads everything fast. there is basically minimal to no wait times when testing it the little bit that i have with the web browser and some basic programs/windows functions. even web browsing is all around smoother to it seems and i only got a 230-250KB/s download speed max to so it can't be my internet connection doing it.

 

even running a quick scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (not that i needed to), just to test that out, the scan completed fast around 3min45sec which running that not long ago on a regular hard drive was much longer than that.

hell, even running that mass amount of windows updates (i.e. about 1-1.2GB) while installing the computer seems to run quite smooth.

also, deleted the old boot drive and merged it back into a single 400GB drive, which that went pretty quick.

 

also, i changed the swap file on the drive to 200MB-2GB as i think the Samsung software suggested that somewhere.

p.s. only bad thing.... fricking Newegg dropped price from $119.99 to $99.99 not even a week later :( (o well, ill just deal with it as it will be worth it as long as this drive is nice and reliable)

 

side note: the Samsung Magician software says i have written 0.08TB of data to the drive so far.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

with all of that said... any tips or suggestions with the SSD?

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Okay, i am wondering what others around here think about this quote which i seen on a website testing the Samsung 840 EVO etc drives...

 

The Samsung 840 Series started reporting reallocated sectors after just 100TB, likely because its TLC NAND is more sensitive to voltage-window shrinkage than the MLC flash in the other SSDs. The 840 Series went on to log thousands of reallocated sectors before veering into a ditch on the last stretch before the petabyte threshold. There was no warning before it died, and the SMART attributes said ample spare flash lay in reserve. The SMART stats also showed two batches of uncorrectable errors, one of which hit after only 300TB of writes. Even though the 840 Series technically made it past 900TB, its reliability was compromised long before that.

 

I just wonder how the 850 EVO fairs (being it's technology is a bit different(supposedly better) then the 840 EVO i think) against the 840 EVO in terms of TB written. it safe to assume it's higher?

 

even if it's similar, i would figure a 'safe' (as in fully functioning/no data corruption) written TB would be 150-200TB? (like where you will have no issues with the drive and have full reliability (i know that's only one drive so it's hard to see how they are over thousands of them but lets just say that's a good ball park figure on how long they last before it acts up)) ; if that's true then i should be able to get at least 10 years out of my drive even if i written an average of 40GB a day to it over the long run as that would take about 10 years to hit 145-150TB of written data. just in the first four days i am right around 40GB a day currently (i imagine that will decline a bit as time goes by though).

 

i guess i am mostly debating if i want it use the SSD for a download drive or not as while i don't have to it will help speed up extraction of data and i figure if it's not going to really hurt the drive in the long run then i would rather use the SSD instead of a regular hard drive (even though i generally put all my video files on a regular hard drive for storage).

 

p.s. i also read it's best not to use more than 75% MAX of the drives capacity to keep it's speed going well etc. but ill likely not use more than half-ish of it anytime soon.

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