@Christopher

The Samsung 830 is quite interesting... I've been holding off from the 830 512GB since I've seen your posts regarding the drop of performance (which is yet recovered) and the write-amplification calculated by Ao1. What worries me most is the sudden and severe change of the MWI-like SMART attribute since the power cycle. Back to Intel 320 Series for now and I don't plan to touch new controllers for a laptop used for production.

Just curious, have you verified that the motherboard, the SATA controller and the cables are still working correctly, i.e. you could reproduce SATA-III speed with a "good" SSD?