# Warning: Samsung 840 EVO Performance Degradation on Old Files



## mohurwitzmusic

Hello All
I wanted to reach out to the community with a warning about Samsung 840 EVO SSDs. These drives suffer from performance degradation on old files. I am not the only one experiencing this problem: 

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/commen ... rious_for/

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/12296 ... gradation/

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/214 ... gradation/

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/ ... -data.html


It has caused serious problems for me. Loading a simple Battery 3 kit that I never use reads at 10mb/s. I run into voice stealing problems with VSL sometimes at 2000 voices, sometimes at 1000 voices, and sometimes as low as 500 voices-- when playing the same sequence. As has been noted, erasing the sample libraries and reinstalling them fixes the problem...but for how long?

I really hope Samsung fixes this issue because I have 5 of these drives.

Cheers
MOH


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## jcs88

Thanks for pointing this out. There's a small saving vs the crucial 540's but seemingly not worth it now.


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## studioj

Oh geez. I'm just about finished configuring a brand new system with 4 of these guys. [email protected]#$

I wonder what recourse we have.


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## uselessmind

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way

Until then, defrag should help as well.


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## Neifion

uselessmind @ Fri Sep 19 said:


> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/samsung-acknowledges-the-ssd-840-evo-read-performance-bug-fix-is-on-the-way
> 
> Until then, defrag should help as well.



Doesn't defrag only work for traditional disk hard drives? I thought there's nothing to defrag on an SSD since it's all circuitry.


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## uselessmind

> Doesn't defrag only work for traditional disk hard drives? I thought there's nothing to defrag on an SSD since it's all circuitry.



Usually it doesn't do anything for SSDs. The idea here is that the SSD sees them as new again so that this bug isn't affecting them.
Haven't checked yet it that works though.


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## Guy Rowland

Thanks for this thread. Just checking the original basic 840 isn't affected?


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## Tanuj Tiku

Wow! Thanks for that post. 

Finally, I know what is wrong with my SSD. Its giving an average read of about 44 Mb/s. This is a second replacement drive from Samsung. 

After about a month it becomes useless. 

It works really well when you first install it. After a while it just becomes useless. 

Very annoyed with Samsung at the moment. This is the second drive and I thought they were supposed to be really good. I cannot understand why companies let such bugs go unnoticed. Its not exactly cheap or strictly speaking consumer grade stuff.

Funny thing is ASSD, Samsung Magician and a couple of other HD test software do not detect this problem.

The only software that has been fantastic and truthful is HD speed. Its a free little application and reports the true average read speed.

Download and run it. It will surely report the actual speed. 


Tanuj.


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## Tanuj Tiku

No wonder Samsung just dropped $200 off the 1TB EVO's in India. Amazon (India) is selling them a lot cheaper suddenly. 


Tanuj.


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## Cat

Hey Tanuj - could you please provide a link to a tester/benchmark that I can use to test my 840 EVO's (I have a couple in Raid-0) on Windows 7 x6?

I am worried that I might have this problem.

thanks,

Cat



vibrato @ Fri Sep 19 said:


> Wow! Thanks for that post.
> 
> Finally, I know what is wrong with my SSD. Its giving an average read of about 44 Mb/s. This is a second replacement drive from Samsung.
> 
> After about a month it becomes useless.
> 
> It works really well when you first install it. After a while it just becomes useless.
> 
> Very annoyed with Samsung at the moment. This is the second drive and I thought they were supposed to be really good. I cannot understand why companies let such bugs go unnoticed. Its not exactly cheap or strictly speaking consumer grade stuff.
> 
> Funny thing is ASSD, Samsung Magician and a couple of other HD test software do not detect this problem.
> 
> The only software that has been fantastic and truthful is HD speed. Its a free little application and reports the true average read speed.
> 
> Download and run it. It will surely report the actual speed.
> 
> 
> Tanuj.


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## karmadharma

it should be pretty straightforward for a sample drive to create an application that goes through each file on the drive, rename it, copy it to the original name and remove the original renamed file, this would restore performance without dealing with defrags (which might or might not change the blocks you are interested).

Run this once a month and you should be golden, now if you have an EVO as a system drive with windows installed it's a different kettle of fish... luckily I have a (small) 840 pro as my system drive and have the EVO just for samples and home directory


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## karmadharma

Cat @ Fri Sep 19 said:


> Hey Tanuj - could you please provide a link to a tester/benchmark that I can use to test my 840 EVO's (I have a couple in Raid-0) on Windows 7 x6?



this thread on ocforum has an ad-hoc speed tester

http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/read ... ected-ssds

you can also use various others that are more established like hdtach etc. if you don't trust an ad-hoc program of course, or you can simply look on your drive for a larger file that's old and copy it and see what read performance you get.

I recently got a 1tb evo myself (hah, good timing) and was copying files off my old 840 (non evo) and was noticing how it was a lot slower than it should be (things I haven't touched in a year+ like omnisphere etc.) and chalked it up to windows being weird but I guess it was the drive, fascinating, I guess I will have to copy the libraries over every month or so to keep the performance up until the firmware is fixed.


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## synergy543

Quote from Overclockers article p.6
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally Posted by eXXon View Post

Cheers. And from my limited understanding, Defragging solves the slow-down of old files, but that would shorten the life-span of the SSD (at least in theory), correct?

Where's Sammy in all of this ? Do we have rep here on OCN ?

*It's not a normal defrag that people are using. They chose the "sort files by date" option of the defrag program, and that causes every single file to be moved around on the drive, meaning every single file gets written fresh to the drive.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So does anyone know how to do such a "sort files by date" defrag on a Mac? 
Which defrag program does this? 
I'm running an 840 as a system drive and need an answer quickly before I fade from existance. :(


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## trumpoz

I hope this doesn't apply to the 850 as well....... I've just installed one.


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## AR

Well, didn't you guys read about the "leave about 20% of ssd space empty"??


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## Guy Rowland

AR @ Sat Sep 20 said:


> Well, didn't you guys read about the "leave about 20% of ssd space empty"??



Isn't that a myth? I remember asking around a few years ago, and wisdom at that time was that the old hdd issue doesn't apply to SSDs. (Sorry for the OT)


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## karmadharma

Guy Rowland @ Sat Sep 20 said:


> AR @ Sat Sep 20 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well, didn't you guys read about the "leave about 20% of ssd space empty"??
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Isn't that a myth? I remember asking around a few years ago, and wisdom at that time was that the old hdd issue doesn't apply to SSDs. (Sorry for the OT)
Click to expand...


it is not a myth, leaving 20% of the space empty (meaning, unpartitioned) is quite valid for SSDs for longevity reasons since it gives the controller extra blocks to wear level on (these days it's not as much of a performance differential as it used to be, some controllers used to perform quite badly once the SSD was full). On the other hand the 'leave 20% empty' is usually for folks that actually write to the drive quite a bit, so for drives where you mostly only read (i.e. sample drives) it should not be needed but given this current issue it might still be, who knows.

This issue is a lot more serious, on the forum one user had a single file taking up about half his ssd that he never touched for a year+ (a windows backup) he went to read it and it read around 10 meg/second (!!! that's like usb2 speed) which is crazy.

It will be interesting what Samsung's answer will be, the leading hypotheses at the moment are either that the wear leveling algorithm has a bug and when wear leveling it rearranges the blocks in such a way that parallel reads are not possible anymore and therefore they nuke the speed or that somehow MLC cells 'lose' charge over time and so when reading there are more hits on the ECC circuitry which cause the slowdown. 

I guess we'll see in the next while what Samsung says, either way as long as you have enough free space space it's easy to 'fix' this issue every month by copying your files over and deleting the old ones, if your drive is close to 100% full you might have to copy to a usb hd, and copy back, all very easy if it's your sample drive, if it's your OS drive then you'll have to do a backup/restore with macrium or ghost or whatever instead... somebody simply mounted it on linux and did a dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sda and it was fine, not sure I'd try that with something important before backing it up though!

And BTW as per Anand Samsung is aware of this and should have a fix ready (or at least updates) by next week, we'll see!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/sams ... on-the-way


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## mohurwitzmusic

Just want to say that defragging hasn't really fixed my issue. It's a *little* better, but my voice counts still red-line sometimes at 500, sometimes at 1200. I also tried erasing and recopying all my libraries off these drives. Didn't work. I also tried using Puran's Disk Fresh. Didn't work.

Unless this bug fix corrects this issue, I would advise staying away from these drives. When I first bought these drives I was able to stream 3000+ samples with no problems. Now, sometimes I can't past 500.


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## JW

Thank you for posting this issue! I'm just in the market for ssd drives for my samples and was looking to pull the trigger on the 840 EVO. I'll wait for Samsung's response. Does anyone know if this same issue is happening on the PRO series SSD from Samsung...840 Pro or 850 Pro? Any feedback is welcome. Thanks

JW


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## karmadharma

JW @ Sat Sep 20 said:


> Thank you for posting this issue! I'm just in the market for ssd drives for my samples and was looking to pull the trigger on the 840 EVO. I'll wait for Samsung's response. Does anyone know if this same issue is happening on the PRO series SSD from Samsung...840 Pro or 850 Pro? Any feedback is welcome. Thanks



as far as the forums post go the PRO series is not affected (this is why folks were wondering about MLC vs TLC NAND having an impact)


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## Tanuj Tiku

This utility reports the true read speed of any drive: http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20

I am sure there are others but this one works for me. 

Samsung Magician and ASSD cannot detect any problems with Samsung EVO's with the bug.

Leaving space on its own in an SSD does not give you performance boost. I believe its only better for its long life.

For better performance you must set a specific space via Over Provisioning. However, after having Over Provisioned the affected SSD by 130 GB, the performance only becomes better marginally. In any case as more time passes, the drive becomes worse.

Currently I think there is nothing that makes this any better. 

I am trying defragmentation as I am typing this.


Tanuj.


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## karmadharma

the vast majority of disk speed software will be useless to diagnose this problem, because the vast majority will create a file that it then tries to read (and newly created files are totally ok, it's the old ones that have problems), you have to use one of the utilities linked in the thread I mentioned *or* you can simply find an old file and try to copy it somewhere, you will see it will be fairly slow if you are affected by this.

Not sure about the utility you linked, it does seem to give you the speed your disk is going at, but unless you find a file affected it won't help, that's why those programs in the other thread just read *all* files on the disk and do the average transfer rate for each, easy to see in that case which files have the problem

Defragging in general does not help, the only reason why that defragger was recommended it was because if you use that 'monthly data' option it will reorder pretty much all files on the disk which means it will move all of them around: normal defraggers will change only the blocks that are fragmented and so won't help much with this.


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## mohurwitzmusic

Using mydefrag (http://www.mydefrag.com/) seems to have fixed the issue. Just to be safe I ordered a Crucial MX100 to move some of my more demanding libs.


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## rgames

Sounds a lot like a wear leveling issue. The good news is that's an easy fix with a firmware update.

If that is the issue, I wouldn't expect it to make much difference with a sample drive. A sample drive typically writes once then does only read operations. A working disk that has continuous read/write operations would show the wear leveling problem but not one where the data are written only once.

So I'd be careful drawing conclusions about the drive for sample streaming. Unless you're moving your samples around a bunch you might not have a problem. Of course, the firmware might be creating the problem - the wear leveling algorithm might be doing that in anticipation of a general-use scenario when it's not necessary for a sample drive.

rgames


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## mohurwitzmusic

Nope. It worked for about 10 minutes then the problem happened again.


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## karmadharma

rgames @ Sat Sep 20 said:


> If that is the issue, I wouldn't expect it to make much difference with a sample drive. A sample drive typically writes once then does only read operations. A working disk that has continuous read/write operations would show the wear leveling problem but not one where the data are written only once.



you have to remember that the wear leveling behind the scenes will still move things around even if you never write to the disk (I think that's the problem here), if you have a drive where you write stuff to 80% of it (say) and you never change it, as far as I understand the wear leveller will still move that around the drive to different cells in the drive so if you end up writing something it will not always write to the same cells.

It could simply be a case that this leveling has placement issues as files get older they get moved around to inefficient configurations for read (say all on one internal flash chip vs spread over 16 or 32 or however many where they can be read in parallel to give you full speed) or it might be that possibly this leveling is too aggressive and should happen only when you do write to the drive on a regular basis and not only when you read without ever writing, it will be really interesting if we hear the details of the fix and what the issue was.


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## kgdrum

i bought the evo 1tb drive just last week,I never opened it or used it so I'm trying to return it thru Amazon, it was to be used as a boot drive.
If i stay with a 1 tb SSD will most people say go with Crucial? If so which series and model would be considered the most reliable ?
I already have a new 1tb WD Black and I'm almost leaning towards not going with the SSD for a boot drive and staying with the WD until the SSD's get more reliable and come down in price. 
Am I wrong in thinking SSD is more beneficial as a sample drive than a boot drive for DAW useage?
thanks
KG


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## proxima

kgdrum @ Sat Sep 20 said:


> Am I wrong in thinking SSD is more beneficial as a sample drive than a boot drive for DAW useage?
> thanks
> KG


No, you are right: you want to use SSD for samples first and other stuff second, if the idea is to maximize DAW performance.

An SSD on your boot drive will speed up loading the operating system and applications, but once they're loaded they basically stay in RAM and a faster disk will be of no further benefit. Your samples are never fully loaded in RAM (just the preload buffer), and so you want a fast disk from which to read.

Back to the topic, though: this is pretty disappointing news about the 840 EVO, as I have a 750 GB model. I just copied everything off my drive and back on (took a long while), and I hope they have a firmware fix before I ought to do it again in a month or so.


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## mohurwitzmusic

There must be going on with something in real time because if I play a passage of music repeatedly the drive performance improves; leave it alone and it suffers again.


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## TGV

mohurwitzmusic @ Sun Sep 21 said:


> There must be going on with something in real time because if I play a passage of music repeatedly the drive performance improves; leave it alone and it suffers again.


That's probably your computer's file cache. While reading a file, the OS stores all of the contents in memory. It stays there, until the memory is needed for something else. So if you've got a few GB free, quite a few sample files will fit in there.


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## Scrianinoff

I am a bit surprised nobody mentioned "*secure erase*" yet.

This is an option in the Samsung Magician software that *completely got rid of the problem for me, for now*. Here: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5638/ ... ndex5.html

I bought two Samsung EVO 1TB drives for use in my Windows laptop a year ago. The problem only surfaced here about four week ago, on both drives simultaneously, for almost all sample data simultaneously! That's because I copied over most of the 2TB of sample data a year ago, newer libs indeed did not have the issue. That's why I assume there is a time/clock issue in the algorithm that should establish the correct cell voltage level thresholds for reading flash cells. These thresholds are changing on how long ago a flash cell was written and are closer together which makes the reading process more sensitive since TLC flash has more voltage levels per cell than MLC or SLC flash.

The good news is that it only took a couple of minutes to delete the volume, and to secure erase both SSDs. After that, it only took a night of sleep to copy over the 2 TB of sample data from my HD backup to the SSD again. *No problems since, running without problems for 3 weeks now.*

It took a full day however to check for any read errors on the SSD and bit differences between the sample libs on the SSDs and the HD backup before doing the secure erase. I wanted to do this to see whether there was any data corruption on the SSDs. Surprisingly, there were *no read errors or bit differences found*. I was, and still am, very pleased with the Raid performance they give using the Striped Volume option in Windows Disk Management. I am awaiting the firmware update with anticipation however.


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## karmadharma

A program that was just mentioned that seems to work to fix the issue temporarily appears to be

http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

it basically reads every file and rewrites it in the same place, which is what causes files to get (temporarily) fast again, if you need the speed to go back up before samsung comes out with the firmware fix (more and more sites are writing articles on this, so the pressure must be building) this could be an easier option than secure erasing and recopying everything


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## chimuelo

This was Samsungs first read optimized drive for consumers, and after reading the reviews months back I asked here if anyone was using this yet and got no replies.

Thanks for not replying as I based my decision on a lack of response.


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## Scrianinoff

chimuelo @ Mon 22 Sep said:


> This was Samsungs first read optimized drive for consumers, and after reading the reviews months back I asked here if anyone was using this yet and got no replies.
> 
> Thanks for not replying as I based my decision on a lack of response.


Hahaha, you're cracking me up. I know you better than that, you're not taking into account responses of people here in narrowing down your tech shopping lists, let alone that you would be swayed by having no responses, you're far too knowledgeable for that in these matters.


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## Scrianinoff

karmadharma @ Mon 22 Sep said:


> A program that was just mentioned that seems to work to fix the issue temporarily appears to be
> 
> http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html
> 
> it basically reads every file and rewrites it in the same place, which is what causes files to get (temporarily) fast again, if you need the speed to go back up before samsung comes out with the firmware fix (more and more sites are writing articles on this, so the pressure must be building) this could be an easier option than secure erasing and recopying everything


That was exactly my thinking four weeks ago. It didn't however yield the results I was hoping for. When more people began reporting that a secure erase was bringing the SSDs back to brand new performance I took the same measure. To rule out any interference from a Raid configuration, I ran the drives separately. Today I switched back to Raid again. Another useful utility is the SSDreadspeedtester. See the screenshot below: average read speed when reading all the files on the Windows Raid0 array: 1013 MB/s. Not shabby for 2xsata3 SSDs.


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## karmadharma

very comprehensive video on this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSrfOkr5hCc

according to a German site Samsung has promised an updated firmware for this in mid-october, however the video is a bit skeptical (also interesting this might be an issue with TLC flash error rates, not with wear leveling or anything, see the drive left unpowered for months that has the issue) on various forums it seems that running the diskrefresh utility does restore performance for anybody who tried it, so if you really need the performance and are ok with losing some endurance that seems to be the way forward for now.


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## JT3_Jon

karmadharma @ Wed Sep 24 said:


> various forums it seems that running the diskrefresh utility does restore performance for anybody who tried it, so if you really need the performance and are ok with losing some endurance that seems to be the way forward for now.



Anything similar for someone who uses an Evo as their system drive + some sample libs (transferred more than a month ago) in their macbook?

edit: I think I'll just manually re-copy the small amount of samples I do stream and hope that a firmware update fixes the problem. If not, I hope Samsung offers some sort of upgrade program to the 840 Pro or a different MLC drive which does not have this problem. 

Good eye opener though. I think I will avoid TLC drives from now on - and depending on how Samsung handles this, might become a Crucial user.


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## Mike Marino

> I think I will avoid TLC drives from now on - and depending on how Samsung handles this, might become a Crucial user.



+1


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## Rob Elliott

Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:


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## jleckie

Read the posts and links? Defrag or copy over.


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## Rob Elliott

jleckie @ Thu Sep 25 said:


> Read the posts and links? Defrag or copy over.



Thanks.


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## OLB

Rob Elliott @ 25/9/2014 said:


> Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:



I read that Samsung confirmed that they will release the firmware fix on Oct 15. Let's see. (source)


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## synthic

Geez…I'm lucky today..
I was just about to order one of those Samsung EVO SSD's when I discovered this thread. Do you guys have any idea of what would be a better buy?


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## doubleattack

Rob Elliott @ Fri 26 Sep said:


> Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:



15. October seems confirmed.


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## karmadharma

doubleattack @ Fri Sep 26 said:


> Rob Elliott @ Fri 26 Sep said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 15. October seems confirmed.
Click to expand...


are you sure? I still haven't seen anything official from Samsung themselves, it's all sites linking to each other and it goes back to the German site that said they "spoke on the phone" with Samsung about it.

Until I see an official statement by Samsung on, say, anandtech or something I wouldn't count on it. This said it's quite easy to "fix" this temporarily with the diskrefresh utility once a month or so so it's not as big of a deal, I just hope that more details come out on exactly what this is/was, if it's an issue with TLC NAND itself or if it's a bug in Samsung's error correction code or what.


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## Stephen Rees

Anyone know of the best way to 'refresh' the drive on a Mac? I can easily delete all the files on the EVO then recopy them back but I'm wondering if there is a smarter way to do it….


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## Rob Elliott

karmadharma @ Fri Sep 26 said:


> doubleattack @ Fri Sep 26 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rob Elliott @ Fri 26 Sep said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 15. October seems confirmed.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> are you sure? I still haven't seen anything official from Samsung themselves, it's all sites linking to each other and it goes back to the German site that said they "spoke on the phone" with Samsung about it.
> 
> Until I see an official statement by Samsung on, say, anandtech or something I wouldn't count on it. This said it's quite easy to "fix" this temporarily with the diskrefresh utility once a month or so so it's not as big of a deal, I just hope that more details come out on exactly what this is/was, if it's an issue with TLC NAND itself or if it's a bug in Samsung's error correction code or what.
Click to expand...



Hey there - opened up Samsung's "Magician" software (to manage EVO) and do not see a specific 'diskrefresh' - can you tell where that utility is? Many thanks.


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## doubleattack

karmadharma @ Fri 26 Sep said:


> doubleattack @ Fri Sep 26 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rob Elliott @ Fri 26 Sep said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wow this is alarming. Short of reading all the posts and links - any suggestions until a firmware is released (Oct??) :evil:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 15. October seems confirmed.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> are you sure? I still haven't seen anything official from Samsung themselves, it's all sites linking to each other and it goes back to the German site that said they "spoke on the phone" with Samsung about it.
> 
> Until I see an official statement by Samsung on, say, anandtech or something I wouldn't count on it. This said it's quite easy to "fix" this temporarily with the diskrefresh utility once a month or so so it's not as big of a deal, I just hope that more details come out on exactly what this is/was, if it's an issue with TLC NAND itself or if it's a bug in Samsung's error correction code or what.
Click to expand...


Translation of the German "ComputerBase" side: (Statementquote by Samsung) 

"The update is expected to be provided on the Samsung SSD website from October 15 to download". The Group "regret any inconvenience" and working "flat out on a solution."

I think, the problem with this SSD is quite obvious and wide spreaded. So they will work on a solution, I'm confident.


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## JT3_Jon

synthic @ Fri Sep 26 said:


> Geez…I'm lucky today..
> I was just about to order one of those Samsung EVO SSD's when I discovered this thread. Do you guys have any idea of what would be a better buy?



The Samsung 840 Pro or 850 are MLC, so those are safe (note the regular Samsung 840 is TLC and as the same issues as the EVO). I also hear good things about Crucial M550 drives, and it looks like the Crucial MX100's are often on sale. In fact they are on sale today at newegg: http://slickdeals.net/f/7224060-crucial-mx100-ct512mx100ssd1-2-5-512gb-sata-iii-mlc-internal-solid-state-drive-ssd-188-99-ac-fs-from-newegg (http://slickdeals.net/f/7224060-crucial ... rom-newegg)


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## karmadharma

Rob Elliott @ Fri Sep 26 said:


> Hey there - opened up Samsung's "Magician" software (to manage EVO) and do not see a specific 'diskrefresh' - can you tell where that utility is? Many thanks.



it's not a samsung utility, and sorry it's called DiskFresh

http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

not diskrefresh, I haven't personally used it yet, there are also linux utilities you can use booting from them, but for sample usage if your ssd is not super full it's probably easier to just copy/paste your sample dirs one at a time and remove the old one


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## Rob Elliott

karmadharma @ Fri Sep 26 said:


> Rob Elliott @ Fri Sep 26 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hey there - opened up Samsung's "Magician" software (to manage EVO) and do not see a specific 'diskrefresh' - can you tell where that utility is? Many thanks.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> it's not a samsung utility, and sorry it's called DiskFresh
> 
> http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html
> 
> not diskrefresh, I haven't personally used it yet, there are also linux utilities you can use booting from them, but for sample usage if your ssd is not super full it's probably easier to just copy/paste your sample dirs one at a time and remove the old one
Click to expand...



Ok thanks a ton


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## jleckie

Will be very interesting to see how Samsung satisfies its MAC consumers considering (To my knowledge) Magician software will not run on a MAC. They will have to make a standalone application for Mac to run the firmware update.


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## phil_wc

I had just ordered 840 EVO an hour ago, and I read this... So I suddenly cancelled order, and going to buy crucial or plextor instead. :twisted:


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## kgdrum

2 weeks ago I bought the evo 1tb drive ,I never opened or used it so I returned the drive. Today I ordered the Samsung 840 Pro (512 gb).
I found what I think is a good price($269) @ New Egg.
Hopefully this drive is reliable.


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## nutotech

Having annoying spinning beach ball issues with my EVO 1 TB boot drive. It works, just slowly. No issues (thus far) with SSD sample drives. Looks like a fix may be coming in two weeks. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/firm ... tober-15th


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## Jonathan Moray

nutotech @ Tue Sep 30 said:


> Having annoying spinning beach ball issues with my EVO 1 TB boot drive. It works, just slowly. No issues (thus far) with SSD sample drives. Looks like a fix may be coming in two weeks. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/firm ... tober-15th



Great news! I have two 840s in my system right now and I love them! I'm also planning on adding two more 1tb drive in raid 0 soon. Just gonna have to wait and see if they fix this problem. Although I'm probably one of the few that haven't suffered terrible from this problem. I do notice the problem but in my experience it's been minimal. (Fingers crossed it doesn't get worse/that they fix the problem)


----------



## maraskandi

Had noticed for a few weeks some sporadic performance decreases, like one ensemble string patch would crackle and pop in a totally empty project, I figured drive issue, and there you go, that's what it was.


Can confirm recopy operation improved speeds from 71Meg up to under 300.

Realising in the process that I hadn't successfully put ACHI mode into action. Had missed one option in BIOS for it to be engaged. Switched properly to AHCI and now up to speed.

This is the guide I followed:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61 ... html?ltr=A

I will not be responsible for any problems encountered due to following that guide. Worked great for me though. Just posting in case it is of use.


----------



## chimuelo

The fix is in for October 15th via new firmware.

I am reading from Taiwanese reports that the new firmware was actually a future upgrade to make all Samsung devices read optimized.
To save face they are modifying it to release earlier so EVO users should be real happy as they will have 100k Random IOps, which IMO is what gives us guys better performance. 

Samsung fell in the toilet and came out smelling like a rose, but 840 EVO owners are the real winners here.


----------



## NYC Composer

Hopefully it's for Mac users as well......


----------



## Jonathan Moray

@chimuelo
I agree. At least for sample disks I believe the random OIps is what matters the most.

@NYC Composer
From what I've gathered the software used to upgrade the SSDs are not Mac compatible. But I do believe they will find a solutions even for Mac user, or they will just be shooting themselves in the foot.


----------



## NYC Composer

Yikes.


----------



## kfirpr

Guys! I have a good deal on slightly used Samsung EVO 840 500gb, Should I go for it?


----------



## Jonathan Moray

How good of a deal? I would probably go for it. But you might want to wait till at least the 15 of October so that the problem is properly dealt with.


----------



## kfirpr

Its about 200$ almost new the guy used it for only couple of days


----------



## Jonathan Moray

That's not a very good deal imo. You can get brand new from amazon for around 160-170$ if I'm not mistaking.

Edit: I just looked it up and I'm not mistaking. It's 169.99 right now on amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E3W19MO/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1412168938&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E3W19M ... SY200_QL40)


----------



## kfirpr

It's says $234


----------



## Jonathan Moray

Haha what the hell... It *was* 169.99. Not directly from amazon but from a third party. Well okey then. :(
Then it's a pretty good deal. Is there any hurry for you to buy it? Otherwise maybe you should wait and see if they get the problem fixed. Also the 850 Evo seems to be on their way out soon-ish. Might lower the prices on the 840s even more. :D 

I'm doing this on my iPhone and this site is not very phone friendly so I might have linked the wrong page...


----------



## aaronnt1

Wow, so it wasn't just me, I bought two of the 1tb EVO's for sample drives when they first came out and have noticed terrible slowdowns on two occasions, like drastic speed reductions. A secure erase helped return speeds to normal and was planning on doing it again this week as they've slowed down drastically again until luckily I saw this thread! Let's see what the firmware update brings....


----------



## EastWest Lurker

I have a 750 GB Samsung Evo and 240 GB OCZ Agility.

After performing a firmware update for the Evo and using Samsung Magician I ran a Benchmark test on them. 

What are these telling me? Herei s the Evo.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

And the Agility.


----------



## Jonathan Moray

I'm no expert at reading theses thing so you might want to wait and see if someone more qualified shows up to answer, but I will gladly try and shed some light on what I (think I) know.

Your drives seems fine. Around 250 - 350mb/s is standard for the 840 Evo I believe. But as you can see when the drive reads/writes smaller files/the transfer size is smaller the drives performance decrease *a lot*... But that's totally normal.

It also tells you that the Evo performs better than the Agillity. :wink: Especially when it read and that what matters for most of us here.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Jonathan Moray @ Fri Oct 03 said:


> I'm no expert at reading theses thing so you might want to wait and see if someone more qualified shows up to answer, but I will gladly try and shed some light on what I (think I) know.
> 
> Your drives seems fine. Around 250 - 350mb/s is standard for the 840 Evo I believe. But as you can see when the drive reads/writes smaller files/the transfer size is smaller the drives performance decrease *a lot*... But that's totally normal.
> 
> It also tells you that the Evo performs better than the Agillity. :wink: Especially when it read and that what matters for most of us here.



So you believe the Evo is functioning as it should? Thanks.


----------



## Jonathan Moray

But I don't think this test will test the problem that we are talking about in this thread. Since the files that the program writes are newly created they are not degraded and haven't been on the drive for very long so theses tests will not show that problem. I don't think. :?


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

The way I understand it is hard drives have two categories of read speeds: 

1) Sequential: How fast the drive can load large, sequential chunks of data. In other words, how quick your template loads. When my 840 EVO is working in peak performance (connected to a native Intel SATA 3 port) I get read speeds of 450 mb/s.

2) 4K Random Read: How quickly the drive can access and read small, randomly distributed files. In other words, how fast it can stream samples (i.e. voice count). Usually measured in IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second). The EVO should put up 90,000 IOPS. Harder to quantify in real world scenarios.

Jonathan correctly points out that this benchmark won't show you the performance bug since the bug affects files that are not newly written. This is why the bug doesn't show up on most HD benchmarking tests because such tests write new files to the drive and then attempt to read them.

So far the reports about the bug have mainly talked about the sequential read speeds, but I am also interested in how 4K random read speeds are affected. I get wildly inconsistent voice counts.


----------



## karmadharma

Jonathan Moray @ Fri Oct 03 said:


> But I don't think this test will test the problem that we are talking about in this thread. Since the files that the program writes are newly created they are not degraded and haven't been on the drive for very long so theses tests will not show that problem. I don't think. :?



this, the test you have done does not prove anything regarding this issue (a firmware fix for it is planned for oct 15 btw), the issue is that *old* files will read slow, most of these tests will write something new to the drive and test that so they will not show the issue.

You need to use one of the test programs mentioned earlier in the thread, or more simply find a file you've had on the evo for a long time (say one of the first libs you installed) and copy it somewhere else, you should see it copy quite slowly


----------



## karmadharma

mohurwitzmusic @ Fri Oct 03 said:


> So far the reports about the bug have mainly talked about the sequential read speeds, but I am also interested in how 4K random read speeds are affected. I get wildly inconsistent voice counts.



if this is a MLC cell issue it should read slow whether it's a sequential or a 4k read, if it's a placement issue then this wouldn't show as much on 4k, however given that the 4k read speed is so much slower than sequential I think it's a lot more difficult to test unfortunately, you'd have to write an ad-hoc tester that finds an old large file and tries to read it sequentially or its blocks at 4k and compare.

Given that somebody earlier in the thread mentioned their kontakt polyphony went down it seems 4k might be affected as well (as I doubt kontakt does large sequential reads when buffering samples) but not sure


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Oh well, 10/15 is not so far away.


----------



## Sovereign

Meh, I have several EVO drives. I sincerely hope Samsung will release a utility for the Mac also to update these drives.


----------



## maraskandi

Hi Jay,

Running Atto, these are my benchmarks, AHCI is on. Without AHCI engaged I get no more than about 300 meg benchmarks.

EVO 1 has RAPID mode engaged

EVO 2 is normal

OCZ Vertex 3 is third image.

[/img]


----------



## maraskandi

Second EVO drive


----------



## maraskandi

OCZ Vertex 3

The three drives are in my main machine, Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87x-d3h Processor: i7 4770K

Hi speed on first drive is RPID mode which as I understand it is using RAM cleverly. I am testing to see if it's worth going with.


----------



## Soundhound

I have 4 of these drives. Anyone know of a utility that can test their speed on Macs? And is the reported October 15 fix only going to be for PC? I had noticed loading times slowing down significantly. Arg.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

karmadharma @ Mon Sep 22 said:


> A program that was just mentioned that seems to work to fix the issue temporarily appears to be
> 
> http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html
> 
> it basically reads every file and rewrites it in the same place, which is what causes files to get (temporarily) fast again, if you need the speed to go back up before samsung comes out with the firmware fix (more and more sites are writing articles on this, so the pressure must be building) this could be an easier option than secure erasing and recopying everything



Thanks for recommending this. I ran it yesterday and it made a big difference in bringing my template loading speed back.

Hopefully the firmware update will fix this but if not, how often should we riun DiskFresh?


----------



## karmadharma

EastWest Lurker @ Wed Oct 08 said:


> Thanks for recommending this. I ran it yesterday and it made a big difference in bringing my template loading speed back.
> 
> Hopefully the firmware update will fix this but if not, how often should we riun DiskFresh?



glad diskfresh worked for you; from what the various people are reporting in benchmarks the speed drops off very gradually, if I were you I would time how long it takes to load your template every few days and see when the slowdown starts bothering you: I'd think diskfresh every month or month-and-a-half would be plenty, this said if the firmware update comes out next week and it works well (I would wait to install it for a week or two in case there are issues) you might not need to run it again.


----------



## Jonathan Moray

If I understand what that utility does then I would try not to use it too often. From what I gather it rewrites the whole hard drive which means that it will shave off a few "years"/writes of the disk. But if you don't write to it too often, for example if it's a sample drive, it doesn't really matter. But sooner or later (Most likely later on with today's SSDs) the ssd will go into read mode only if all the writes have been used up. :?


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Jonathan Moray @ Wed Oct 08 said:


> If I understand what that utility does then I would try not to use it too often. From what I gather it rewrites the whole hard drive which means that it will shave off a few "years"/writes of the disk. But if you don't write to it too often, for example if it's a sample drive, it doesn't really matter. But sooner or later (Most likely later on with today's SSDs) the ssd will go into read mode only if all the writes have been used up. :?



I can live with that.


----------



## Jonathan Moray

Then great Jay! :D Hopefully they will get this problem fixed with the next upgrade, but even then utilities like this are always good to have. With the next upgrade you might just have to use it once a year to keep your drives in trim. :wink:


----------



## karmadharma

hot off the presses a review on the firmware updating process, the tools should be released tomorrow

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Sa ... back-speed

I would wait for more people to try this out as it does seem risky, also given the above I would strongly suggest backing up before doing it *and* doing it on a different system if the affected drive is your system drive (to avoid issues with windows trying to write things, meaning taking your system drive out and doing the updating on a different system if you can)

Not sure how mac users will be able to do this, not to mention folks with the 840 non-evo which also reported issues. We'll see if more info will come out, personally I will just DiskFresh as needed for a few more months things are completely settled and the fix is final, but if you want to be on the bleeding edge here's the current info


----------



## synergy543

Samsung says it will release a fix for Mac users at the end of Oct. but it says it will be a DOS version for the Mac. What does that mean? Sounds like a spooky halloween trick. Does anyone have any idea what they mean? Does this require Windows on the Mac or would it be something that might be run in the terminal?

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... loads.html


----------



## Dracarys

I'll have to run a bench tomorrow, haven't noticed any issues with my 250evo, I have had to batch resave several libraries to get the speeds up, before that some would take forever to load up.


----------



## Pingu

karmadharma @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> doing it on a different system if the affected drive is your system drive (to avoid issues with windows trying to write things, meaning taking your system drive out and doing the updating on a different system if you can)



The pdf seems to be suggesting that this won't be possible (point 17). I'm not entirely sure, as the English isn't great, but it seems to be suggesting that Windows won't boot if you put in another drive that contains Windows.


----------



## Jetzer

I will wait for some user feedback first. With my track record things are destined to get messed up.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

The firmware update is out but do I want to do it? It requires that the SSD was formatted as NTFS while mine is ExFat. This means I would have to reformat the drive, run this, and then re-copy my HS and HB libraries, which would take quite a while.

Since using DishFresh I now get what you see in the picture?

So is the firmware update worth doing for me?


----------



## Virharmonic

Hi Guys and Girls 

Just wanted to let you know that I took the dive and used the Performance update by Samsung. From my early tests it is like having back my brand new EVOs and the performance is as would one expect from SSD. Time will tell if it truly resolved the issue, but I'm good for now. Just thought to let you know for those who run EVOs. PS this was on Win7 machine.

Ondrej


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

Install worked fine for me too. 

Jay,
Your speeds look quite off. I'm assuming this is a Samsung 840 EVO, so it is a 6G drive, yes? Is it not plugged into a SATA 3 port? Furthermore, is it not plugged into the _native _Intel SATA port?

The drive is capable of 200mbps more sequential read, and a good 70,000 IOPS more random read. Something is definitely holding back drive performance.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

mohurwitzmusic @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> Install worked fine for me too.
> 
> Jay,
> Your speeds look quite off. I'm assuming this is a Samsung 840 EVO, so it is a 6G drive, yes? Is it not plugged into a SATA 3 port? Furthermore, is it not plugged into the _native _Intel SATA port?
> 
> The drive is capable of 200mbps more sequential read, and a good 70,000 IOPS more random read. Something is definitely holding back drive performance.



Yes, SATA 3 to what Judson said was the fastest controller. Guess I will have to bite the bullet.


----------



## Rob Elliott

Virharmonic @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> Hi Guys and Girls
> 
> Just wanted to let you know that I took the dive and used the Performance update by Samsung. From my early tests it is like having back my brand new EVOs and the performance is as would one expect from SSD. Time will tell if it truly resolved the issue, but I'm good for now. Just thought to let you know for those who run EVOs. PS this was on Win7 machine.
> 
> Ondrej




Thanks for this. Slaves using these drives are W7 as well (no OS EVO drives - only samples). So is the process 'painless'? I have a couple days break between projects. May muster the courage and give it a shot. Are there any lessons learned on the update process?


----------



## Virharmonic

Rob Elliott @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> Virharmonic @ Wed Oct 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Guys and Girls
> 
> Just wanted to let you know that I took the dive and used the Performance update by Samsung. From my early tests it is like having back my brand new EVOs and the performance is as would one expect from SSD. Time will tell if it truly resolved the issue, but I'm good for now. Just thought to let you know for those who run EVOs. PS this was on Win7 machine.
> 
> Ondrej
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for this. Slaves using these drives are W7 as well (no OS EVO drives - only samples). So is the process 'painless'? I have a couple days break between projects. May muster the courage and give it a shot. Are there any lessons learned on the update process?
Click to expand...


I found it to be rather painless. I would back up the libraries onto a separate drive though (I did just in case) as there were couple reports I've read that in some cases one can loose all data on the drive, but I haven't witnessed this problem myself. 
Process - Downloaded the Performance Restoration tool, installed and then I chose the SDD I wanted it to correct - one by one. Took 2 or 3 hours.

Cheers Ondrej


----------



## Rob Elliott

Virharmonic @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> Rob Elliott @ Wed Oct 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Virharmonic @ Wed Oct 15 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Guys and Girls
> 
> Just wanted to let you know that I took the dive and used the Performance update by Samsung. From my early tests it is like having back my brand new EVOs and the performance is as would one expect from SSD. Time will tell if it truly resolved the issue, but I'm good for now. Just thought to let you know for those who run EVOs. PS this was on Win7 machine.
> 
> Ondrej
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for this. Slaves using these drives are W7 as well (no OS EVO drives - only samples). So is the process 'painless'? I have a couple days break between projects. May muster the courage and give it a shot. Are there any lessons learned on the update process?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I found it to be rather painless. I would back up the libraries onto a separate drive though (I did just in case) as there were couple reports I've read that in some cases one can loose all data on the drive, but I haven't witnessed this problem myself.
> Process - Downloaded the Performance Restoration tool, installed and then I chose the SDD I wanted it to correct - one by one. Took 2 or 3 hours.
> 
> Cheers Ondrej
Click to expand...


Thanks for the report back Ondrej.


----------



## Pingu

Has anyone tried it on an OS drive, whilst the OS was running?


----------



## Virharmonic

Yep. I've tried it on my OS disk as well. Win 7 64bit running of EVO840. I've made sure all unnecessary soft was off and I've made a back up of my OS for just in case (wasn't needed) Then I run the app same as for the my sample disk. Worked fine for me.

Cheers Ondrej


----------



## Pingu

Thanks Ondrej - I think I'll bite the bullet tomorrow morning.


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

Just tried it on a 750 GB drive. It went through fine, but then it froze my mouse at the end and I had to use cmd shutdown/r. FWIW I am mouse sharing via Mouse Without Borders.

:roll:


----------



## EastWest Lurker

I had to re-format the drive to NTFS as I had it formatted to ExFat and Window 7 wouldn't let me. But Jose' Herring suggested I boot into Safe mode and try it and that worked. 

So I ran it and apparently it is working. 

Then I will have to copy HS HB, and HOP back to it (sigh).


----------



## Pingu

mohurwitzmusic @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> but then it froze my mouse at the end and I had to use cmd shutdown/r. FWIW I am mouse sharing via Mouse Without Borders.
> 
> :roll:



Were the EVO drives on the machine that owns the mouse, or were you formatting them on a slave? I'm using Synergy, and my slaves quite often lose the mouse if I open anything at the heart of Windows, such as the Device Manager, or Network Management Center. Not a problem, since I have another mouse, and simply put the dongle in the machine that's lost connection - but I'm a bit more nervous to proceed if this freezes the mouse on your main machine.


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

Sorry I should have been more specific. Mouse movement was working but I couldn't click on anything. Typing was fine, which is why I could access the command prompt. This was on a slave.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

So is this what it should be?


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

=o


----------



## José Herring

Jay you can check this article for real world performance on the drive: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2455429,00.asp


----------



## EastWest Lurker

So it looks like mine is now performing better than it should.


----------



## José Herring

You might want to crack open the case and just make sure it's on the Intel controller.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

If I can figure out how


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

Jay
How did you get your Magician benchmarks so high? Are your drives RAID'ed? My max score is 99300 IOPS and 552 mbps sequential. Native Intel SATA 3 ports, AHCI enabled.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

mohurwitzmusic @ Wed Oct 15 said:


> Jay
> How did you get your Magician benchmarks so high? Are your drives RAID'ed? My max score is 99300 IOPS and 552 mbps sequential. Native Intel SATA 3 ports, AHCI enabled.



No Raid. I turned on Rapid Mode. But I have no idea if what Magician is showing is anywhere close to accurate.

But maybe it is because here is what Atto Benchmark shows:


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

Awesome. Thank you. I will have to try that. Unfortunately it only works on one SSD.
MOH


----------



## samphony

Guys I'm running two EVO 840s in a BlackMagic Multidock thunderbolt v2 chassis. I've contacted samsung business customer support.
I'm a Mac user. I don't own any windows hard or software. I also don't have the time to install windows via boot camp. Any idea about a Mac solution other than buying a set of replacement drives?

Thanks


----------



## Pingu

Is there a way to find out whether a drive is on a SATA II or SATA III connection from within Windows?

I swapped a HD for an EVO SSD some time ago, because the HD died. Now I realise I never checked which controller the old drive was connected to (my motherboard has two SATA III controllers, and a bunch of SATA II) - I simply took it out, put the leads in the back of the new drive, and started. So I'd like to figure out whether I put it on the wrong connection, but the machine is really awkward to get out of its place, so I'd prefer to only get it out if I have to swap leads around. If it's possible to investigate the connections from inside Windows, or the BIOS, it would really help.


----------



## chimuelo

I am still having difficulty understanding how more MBps can overcome the 590MBps choke point of the SATA III Bus.
RAID guys say they are getting killer IOps, which might be what we benefit from the most, but at what point on the SATA III bus does that figure get choked...?

When I went from SATA III to the PCI-e bus I saw my polyphony jump up 1500 voices in Kontakt to over 3000. Last time I saw that kind of increase is when I retired my Raptors and went to SSDs.

Don't get me wrong I love 335k Random IOps, and if the polyphony scales to the benchmark, I will have to use new Samsungs. 
When I read about them acquiring the software caching company I was interested then, and now after seeing these benchmarks, I am really interested in seeing if this scales, or just looks good. 

Anyone else here using the PCI-e bus?


----------



## Jonathan Moray

@Jay be careful. If I remember correctly there's some small risks to using RAPID mode. I think RAPID mode makes the SSD cach it's writes in DRAM which would make the SSD faster but also if power goes out for example you will lose the writes (data loss). But I think most of the fears of using RAPID mode is if you write a lot to the drive and since you basically just read from it I don't think you have to worry. But just something to keep in mind. RAPID mode also uses up more RAM since it's where it stores the information.
Please someone correct me on this because I'm not totally sure.

@samphony someone here said that they are working on a fix for Mac so just hold on. I think it was supposed to come at the end of October.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Thanks Jonathan, I think the risk is acceptable because as you say I will pretty much using it as read only, not much writing and also there is nothing on it that I do not have on other drives.


----------



## karmadharma

note two posters on a Swedish forum reported read errors on the drives after updating the firmware (meaning, drive worked fine, albeit slow, before, update the firmware, drive worked fine, fast, the next day however it started having read errors), so depending on your level of squeamishness you might want to hold off on updating. 

I just hope Samsung's "fix" is not just doing a diskfresh + changing the microcode to be more cavalier with the error correction (for more speed but possibly less reliability), we'll see as time goes on I guess.


----------



## Rob Elliott

karmadharma @ Thu Oct 16 said:


> note two posters on a Swedish forum reported read errors on the drives after updating the firmware (meaning, drive worked fine, albeit slow, before, update the firmware, drive worked fine, fast, the next day however it started having read errors), so depending on your level of squeamishness you might want to hold off on updating.
> 
> I just hope Samsung's "fix" is not just doing a diskfresh + changing the microcode to be more cavalier with the error correction (for more speed but possibly less reliability), we'll see as time goes on I guess.




Thanks for this heads up - Diskfresh it is for a month or so.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

Samsung is really loading fast now. Huge difference.


----------



## Dracarys

chimuelo @ Thu Oct 16 said:


> Anyone else here using the PCI-e bus?



Right now I have four 250mb drives on my sata bay, as well as one 3tb HD for small samples. 

I'm planning on two of these for 512 crucial M5's or EVO's, I want to bypass the sata bay completely for larger samples, I'm hoping it will greatly increase voice and track count.

Let me know your thoughts!


----------



## markstyles

Yeah,, you really have to leave space.. I try to leave 25 - 30 gig.. but it's almost impossible on a 240 gig SSD, unless you're only using it for one purpose.. Every month or so, I have to go thru and toss files and applications off..

Once I was downloading something large, and completely ran out of SSD space. Computer completely locked up.. Only way out was to re-install a new operating system.. 

Don't let space on SSD get low.. I've even heard some people quote 25%..


----------



## Dracarys

You installed your OS and DAW on a 250gb ssd?


----------



## Jonathan Moray

@Casalena whats wrong with that? I to run my OS and DAW from the same hard drive. (250gb SSD) And I don't have too much problems and the problems I do have are most certainly software related.
But if you were to run your OS, DAW *and* samples from the same drive then I would agree - that's less then optimal. But the most optimal would probably be to separate each to it's own drive, although separating your OS and DAW would give you any extremely noticeable difference.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Again, I don't see a reason for leaving massive amounts of space. Filling up beyond the brim on your OS drive is obviously not a good idea, but 25%? Nah.

Also have OS and DAW on a 240gb drive. Bags of room. All the samples and projects are elsewhere of course.


----------



## mk282

For SSDs, it is definitely a good idea to leave 15-20% of free space to ensure maximum performance of the drive.


----------



## EastWest Lurker

mk282 @ Sun Oct 19 said:


> For SSDs, it is definitely a good idea to leave 15-20% of free space to ensure maximum performance of the drive.



Easy to write that but can you or anyone else point to some tests that confirm that? It seems counter-intuitive considering that SSDs have no spinning platter to negotiate.


----------



## Pingu

EastWest Lurker @ Sun Oct 19 said:


> mk282 @ Sun Oct 19 said:
> 
> 
> 
> For SSDs, it is definitely a good idea to leave 15-20% of free space to ensure maximum performance of the drive.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Easy to write that but can you or anyone else point to some tests that confirm that? It seems counter-intuitive considering that SSDs have no spinning platter to negotiate.
Click to expand...


Does the page file not need some empty space?


----------



## Guy Rowland

I've just done yet another net trawl on the free space issue. It's surprising that there's no definitive article from a reputable source that I can find, just loads of forum posts exactly like this one, only on computer-specific forums. And all the answers are carbon copies of this, with some claiming its not an SSD issue at all, and some giving the magic 20% figure without any real info to back that up. Here's a link to what looked like a rational well informed response - http://www.overclock.net/t/1434244/do-w ... t_20987333 

Taking ALL the replies I think it's fair to say that if there is an issue, it's to do with writing only, although opinion seems to differ on whether or not its important. In our case, it makes sense to be a little careful with the OS drive, which will have lots of activity and naturally expand and contract fairly frequently. I'd keep it nice and clear from the red zone in Windows (which I think is 10%). However, I've found no evidence whatsoever that a sample drive, which is 99.9% write use, can't be filled pretty much to the brim.


----------



## nutotech

Believe the fix can be found here. Gonna check out the Mac version in a minute. Please post results, especially Mac folk.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... tAodanEAIg


----------



## jleckie

I don't think the Mac version is up yet. All of the Mac software/firmware updates Mac related are old ones (March 2014 as far as I can tell)


----------



## nutotech

Thanks, Jay. My EVO 840 boot drive is sooo slow right now! Not so much running apps as going from a program to Desktop. Sure hope the Mac fix works!


----------



## jleckie

Good luck. I hope 
1.) The Mac fix is SOON and
2.) It is easy to do. But I think its going to be a DOS fix launch type so it will take some hoop jumping. What I was hoping for was a .dmg download/installer that one could run on ones system like any other installer.


----------



## samphony

jleckie @ Wed Oct 22 said:


> Good luck. I hope
> 1.) The Mac fix is SOON and
> 2.) It is easy to do. But I think its going to be a DOS fix launch type so it will take some hoop jumping. What I was hoping for was a .dmg download/installer that one could run on ones system like any other installer.



I'm running the latest Mac Pro and don't have a DVD drive. A .dmg would indeed be helpful.


----------



## NYC Composer

samphony @ Tue Oct 21 said:


> jleckie @ Wed Oct 22 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Good luck. I hope
> 1.) The Mac fix is SOON and
> 2.) It is easy to do. But I think its going to be a DOS fix launch type so it will take some hoop jumping. What I was hoping for was a .dmg download/installer that one could run on ones system like any other installer.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm running the latest Mac Pro and don't have a DVD drive. A .dmg would indeed be helpful.
Click to expand...


I ended up buying one for my Mini just for convenience. They're down to $25 or so, just FYI.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

I downloaded the fix for PC, including a firmware update. Not out yet for Mac. 

The drive is back to stock speed and is working well as of now. I will try and report back later for consistency.

Very happy that Samsung released an update! 


Tanuj.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Also remember, if you are testing your drive speed via Samsung Magician or ASSD type apps, they will not show anything. 

Samsung magician just shows that the drive is working really well. In fact, it is the opposite. At least in my case. Not all EVO drives have been affected. 

So far only HD Speed (free app) has been the best for me. It shows consistent average read speeds. www.steelbytes.com



I have been using HD Speed for years and its a great little app. Shows the true performance. My DAW builders were very impressed when this problem was unknown. A lot of other major SSD benchmarking tools could not detect any problems. 


Tanuj.


----------



## Rob Elliott

vibrato @ Tue Oct 21 said:


> I downloaded the fix for PC, including a firmware update. Not out yet for Mac.
> 
> The drive is back to stock speed and is working well as of now. I will try and report back later for consistency.
> 
> Very happy that Samsung released an update!
> 
> 
> Tanuj.



Thanks Tanuj for the report on PC (assume this SSD is your data drive on W7 - 64 bit?). Great to hear no 'data loss' or other issues - as soon as this current project is delivered I'll update. Thanks again.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Rob,
I am using the Samsung EVO 1TB as a sample drive for mainly Berlin Strings, Hollywood Strings and Brass + HZ Percussion and few other things. 

It would be impossible to run the system at 30mb/sec read speeds. Thankfully, it was not my system drive. I have OCZ for that. 

Yes, there is no data loss. It will take a lot of time if there is more data on it. 

But it was smooth for me without any data loss or disk errors as of now. 

Although, they do recommend to back up the drive as data loss may be possible. Well, they always do but these things usually work fine. 

I would back up just in case. All my samples are on two separate back up drives
anyway. 

End of day 2 - Drive running perfectly fine here. 


Tanuj.


----------



## Rob Elliott

vibrato @ Wed Oct 22 said:


> Rob,
> I am using the Samsung EVO 1TB as a sample drive for mainly Berlin Strings, Hollywood Strings and Brass + HZ Percussion and few other things.
> 
> It would be impossible to run the system at 30mb/sec read speeds. Thankfully, it was not my system drive. I have OCZ for that.
> 
> Yes, there is no data loss. It will take a lot of time if there is more data on it.
> 
> But it was smooth for me without any data loss or disk errors as of now.
> 
> Although, they do recommend to back up the drive as data loss may be possible. Well, they always do but these things usually work fine.
> 
> I would back up just in case. All my samples are on two separate back up drives
> anyway.
> 
> End of day 2 - Drive running perfectly fine here.
> 
> 
> Tanuj.



Super - thanks. Yea - everything is on a network back up and an off-site as well. Thanks again Tanuj.


----------



## evilantal

Anyone took a chance on doing the update on a system drive that's IN the pc at the time of running?


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

evilantal,


I dont know how severe the problem is in your drive. But my EVO dropped to 30mb/sec. It keeps getting worse over time. My performance dropped from 480 to 80-90 and then eventually 30mb/sec read speed. So if not already, eventually the drive will become useless if it is showing the symptoms. 

At 30-40mb/sec, the drive is pretty much useless. 

So, you will have to apply the update after a back up and hope for the best!

Always, back up!

Try Acronis and make an image file. 


Tanuj.


----------



## evilantal

Thanks vibrato,

So it's inescapable when the drive is showing the symptoms. I haven't checked yet, but will soon.

Yeah, backing up would be essential. I use Macrium Reflect to make an image on an external drive.


----------



## chimuelo

Damn my last Raptor was 85MBps....can't imagine the pain of 30MBps.


----------



## Mahlon

Does this slowdown happen with all 840 EVO drives? ATTO is showing about 540 MB/s read speed and haven't seen a drop in speed since I installed the drive a few months ago. 
Drive is used for streaming Berlin Strings and Sample Modeling and a few other libraries.

Thanks,
Mahlon


----------



## scarred bunny

I have an EVO 840. Just ran the HD Speed diagnostics. Read speed hovers between 5-30 MB/s. Glorious. 

This explains some things... 

Guess I know what I'm doing tonight.


----------



## nutotech

Mahlon @ Thu Oct 23 said:


> Does this slowdown happen with all 840 EVO drives? ATTO is showing about 540 MB/s read speed and haven't seen a drop in speed since I installed the drive a few months ago.
> Drive is used for streaming Berlin Strings and Sample Modeling and a few other libraries.



I also installed two EVO 840 1 TB drives for samples and DP files a couple months ago without (knock on wood) any issues thus far. Installed all at same time as EVO 840 for Mac boot drive. THAT'S the drive giving me fits. Wonder if it's got something to do with all the read/write of the boot drive vs. just streaming? Are you using SSD for boot drive as well Mahlon?


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

There is no response from Samsung regarding this matter. There is no information on all drives experiencing this problem.

It only shows after a month and upwards of installation. 

My first EVO drive had this problem. At the time nobody knew what the problem was so even my DAW builder thought that the drive was simply dying.

So, I got a new one from Samsung in 24 hours (not easy!) because I was working on a film.

After about 20 days, the new drive did the same thing. Finally, I saw a post here and got to know this was a known issue and Samsung had owned up.

The fix is working for me very well. I tested the drive for hours. I guess, we will really know after about a month!

But, please back up your drive specially if it has your OS on it. For me, it was simple and smooth but mine was a sample drive which was backed up anyway.


Tanuj.


----------



## Mahlon

nutotech @ Thu Oct 23 said:


> I also installed two EVO 840 1 TB drives for samples and DP files a couple months ago without (knock on wood) any issues thus far. Installed all at same time as EVO 840 for Mac boot drive. THAT'S the drive giving me fits. Wonder if it's got something to do with all the read/write of the boot drive vs. just streaming? Are you using SSD for boot drive as well Mahlon?



No, just for sample streaming. Boot drive is WD Black.

Mahlon


----------



## Mahlon

vibrato @ Sat Oct 25 said:


> After about 20 days, the new drive did the same thing. Finally, I saw a post here and got to know this was a known issue and Samsung had owned up.
> Tanuj.



I'll keep an eye on mine. What program are you guys using to test? I'm using ATTO at the moment, and would think that would be fine.

Mahlon


----------



## BoulderBrow

Oh bugger.. just got a new system using EVOs for program and sample drives.. thankfully this fix looks promising - what are peoples' opinions on installing the fix pre-emptively on new systems? I haven't started migrating all my samples/software so it wouldn't take as long but I'm concerned I'd affect the hard drives adversely.


----------



## nutotech

According to their website, the Mac/Linux version will be available next week. Oh, I so hope it's true! 
[/img]


----------



## jleckie

Thanks for posting this. I hope the Mac fix is relatively painless.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Mahlon @ Sat Oct 25 said:


> vibrato @ Sat Oct 25 said:
> 
> 
> 
> After about 20 days, the new drive did the same thing. Finally, I saw a post here and got to know this was a known issue and Samsung had owned up.
> Tanuj.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll keep an eye on mine. What program are you guys using to test? I'm using ATTO at the moment, and would think that would be fine.
> 
> Mahlon
Click to expand...



Mahlon,
I don't know of all the programs out there. We tried a few, they did not show any problems. ASSD, Samsung Magician and my DAW builders tried a few more. 

The only one that showed a problem consistently was a program called HD Speed from Steel Bytes.

Its a small app and does not look like much but I have been using it for years with very reliable results. Also, its not a one-shot type test. It keeps testing till you stop. So you get a sustained average speed test result.


Tanuj.


----------



## Mahlon

Thanks, Tanuj. I'll try some different programs to see if my setup is consistent.

Mahlon


----------



## mosso

OSX fix now available...

https://www.samsung.com/global/business ... loads.html

Any brave souls out there?


----------



## Stephen Rees

Well, for fun, I thought I'd try it.

I have a Samsung 840 EVO on a Sonnet Tempo PCIE card inside my MacPro.

Created a bootable disk from the ISO and then booted from the disk....

Currently the process has been hung for about 15 minutes at the point where it says...
'Scanning for Samsung SSD 840 EVO drives........'.

The utility has neither found my EVO drive, nor confirmed it is unable to find any EVO drives in my machine. Unsure how to proceed I shall just leave it alone for an hour or two and see what happens......

EDIT: So the process hanged for so long I decided to interrupt it. I removed the EVO from the Sonnet and then put it in a regular MacPro drive bay instead (using an Icy Dock adapter). This time the Samsung utility DID find the EVO and is now in the process of performing its updating task. I will post when it has completed and I've done a few tests.....

EDIT 2: The updater seems to run a two stage process...

1). The firmware update. This is very quick.
2). Data restoration. I imagine this means rewriting all the data you have on the drive to 'refresh' it. The time it takes to do this part of the process presumably varies dependent on how much data you have on your drive. I have about 200GB samples on the drive and it has going for half and hour so far....

EDIT 3: Process has completed. It took an hour and a half in total. The drive performance appears restored.


----------



## nutotech

Stephen, you are the Columbus, Lewis & Clark and Admiral Byrd of this forum. Please post any further observations. Read through the pdf and it does seem to require a number of steps. Bravo! o-[][]-o


----------



## Stephen Rees

nutotech @ Tue Oct 28 said:


> Stephen, you are the Columbus, Lewis & Clark and Admiral Byrd of this forum. Please post any further observations. Read through the pdf and it does seem to require a number of steps. Bravo! o-[][]-o





It is really not too bad. Here's what I did.....

1). Downloaded the ISO file.
2). Created a bootable disk using the ISO file. I burnt to a DVD using this method....

http://www.techiesparks.com/2013/05/12/ ... on-mac/449

3). Restarted my Mac holding down the 'C' key (which tells your Mac to boot from the disk).

4). Followed the onscreen prompts.

I just had the extra complication that the utility stalled when my EVO was attached to the Sonnet Tempo. Removing the Sonnet Tempo card, and putting the EVO in a regular drive bay solved that problem.

I'm just updating a second EVO in another machine. This one has more data on it and is taking much longer (2 hours and counting so far!).


----------



## Stephen Rees

Just a last piece of information. I have been using a piece of software called 'Parkdale' to measure the read speed of individual files.

Before the update, some old files were readable at speeds as low as 30 MBytes/s.

Since the updates, ALL files I have tested read at exactly the same speed, namely…

188 MByte/s when the EVO is in a drive bay.
272 MByte/s when the EVO is back on the Sonnet Tempo and plugged into a PCIE slot.

I think this is normal for the old MacPros (mine is a 2010 3.33gHz Hexacore) because of the restrictions of SATA2 and the bandwidth that the old motherboards can take.

So, from 30 MByte/s to 272 MByte/s, a 9 fold improvement. I consider that very satisfactory 

It remains to be seen what happens to the drive over the coming months. Let's hope Samsung have really fixed this problem for good.


----------



## nutotech

Well my EVO 840's have the latest firmware updates. So guessing this problem must have been around awhile. Now running the Performance update. Why does a black screen with white lettering seem so frightening? 

UPDATE: Ran the Performance firmware. About three hours total for a 1 TB. Still having the same issue--slow response from one window to another. :-( There's 235 GB of free space which is more than 20%. Open to any ideas on what else might be the culprit? 

For you Mac guys fearing the firmware update: After you make the DVD image disc, startup holding down "C" takes a LONG time. Once it's launched however, it's simple. Had to do a hard restart after it was done b/c there's no "click here to restart"--just fyi.


----------



## JT3_Jon

Anyone try it yet on a mac system drive?


----------



## gpax

Stephen's Mac-specific post is very helpful, and I'm in almost exactly the same boat (SSD on Sonnet card as well). But at the risk of asking the obvious, why wouldn't the Samsung warranty cover a replacement, in which case I would simply clone the drive and move everything to a newer one? 

The cartwheels of creating a DOS bootable, and relocating the card (and investing in a dock for my MP's bay), all place the burden on me, whereas it is their EVO SSD's that have had this flaw. Either way, I would still have to copy and/or backup the entire SSD.


----------



## jleckie

Stephen, thanks for your very informative post. Very helpful. Always nice to have one place for all info.

I DO agree with the ^ post regarding replacement. I wonder if writing SAMSUNG would bare any fruit?


----------



## nutotech

Thanks Stephen for the Parkdale tip. All three of my EVO 840s are running nearly identical--270 Mps/read and 260 Mps/write. So believe I can eliminate the SSD as the culprit. That's a handy little app!

EDIT: Doh! Wasn't EVOs after all. Had too many external drives plugged in. Ejected all except Time Machine drive and everything is like a bright sunny day in Happyland. Whew!


----------



## Kevin Smithers

Stephen, is there a way to mount the iso to a drive instead of a DVD? My desktop doesn't have a DVD/CD drive.

I have no idea about this and have never done it, any info/link on how to do it?


----------



## rpaillot

Mac fix is painless.

This thing really saved my Samsung 840 evo.

The reading speed was all over the place ( min speed : 40 mb, average 180, some files reading at 500, other at 280 mb ... some at 10 mb ) 
Now it reads at an average of 450 mb/s for all the "surface" of the disk


----------



## Stephen Rees

Kevin Smithers @ Wed Oct 29 said:


> Stephen, is there a way to mount the iso to a drive instead of a DVD? My desktop doesn't have a DVD/CD drive.
> 
> I have no idea about this and have never done it, any info/link on how to do it?



I think it may be possible to create a bootable USB stick but how to do that is beyond my meagre computing skills. I've never tried it myself and don't know how to do it that way.

Here's one place I found with a bit of googling that might be of use.....

http://borgstrom.ca/2010/10/14/os-x-bootable-usb.html

EDIT: From what I have read online creating a bootable USB stick from an ISO file that will boot on Macs is a bit hit and miss (mostly miss). I really don't know what to suggest Kevin. Sorry. Hope you find a solution.


----------



## Kevin Smithers

Yeah, tried and failed haha.
Thanks Stephen, I'll just try to borrow someone's laptop and use it as an optical drive.


----------



## mosso

Kevin Smithers @ 29/10/2014 said:


> Stephen, is there a way to mount the iso to a drive instead of a DVD? My desktop doesn't have a DVD/CD drive.
> 
> I have no idea about this and have never done it, any info/link on how to do it?



The file to the left of the ISO (on the Samsung support page) is a bootable USB installer.


----------



## samphony

mosso @ Thu Oct 30 said:


> Kevin Smithers @ 29/10/2014 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Stephen, is there a way to mount the iso to a drive instead of a DVD? My desktop doesn't have a DVD/CD drive.
> 
> I have no idea about this and have never done it, any info/link on how to do it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The file to the left of the ISO (on the Samsung support page) is a bootable USB installer.
Click to expand...



Which one is it?


----------



## Stephen Rees

@samphony - That's the wrong section of the page. Look under the section towards the top of the page titled....

'Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software'


----------



## Kevin Smithers

@Mosso, could you please explain how to do it?


----------



## samphony

Stephen Rees @ Thu Oct 30 said:


> @samphony - That's the wrong section of the page. Look under the section towards the top of the page titled....
> 
> 'Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software'



Got it. But I've burned a cd with an old MacBook.
When I bootup I only get this message "No supported Samsung 840 EVO SSDs detected"
I've downloaded the mac version.

Is it possible that the ssds have to be in NTFS or FAT32 rather than HFS+?

I've tried several steps:
1. Put EVO in a USB ENCLOSURE = not working
2. Put EVO in FireWire Enclosure = not working
3. Removed MacBook HD and Put EVO into HD slot = not working


----------



## nutotech

Samphony--did you open Disk Utilities and burn the disk image of the update? NOT drag the program to a CD and burn? Whole new protocol for me as well. You right click/option click the program in Disk Utilities and not from Downloads or your Desktop. Learned that lesson. :-( 

And as Stephen had noted: You need to have your SSD on the eSATA bus. Don't think it'll work as external or on a PCI card like he had. 

Finally, when you hold "C" on startup, it takes for freakin' EVER to launch. Then, depending on the size of your SSD, it takes time to run. Over two hours for me w/1 TB drive. And don't freak at the black screen with white lettering. Just follow the prompts and have a beer or cup of coffee.


----------



## synergy543

I just completed restoration of my EVO840 SSD and it went exactly as Stephen described. I had to remove it from the Sonnet PCI and put it into an Icy Dock tray in a Mac Pro drive slot. It all went quite smoothly and was uneventful. It took just under an hour to complete.

And now things are freakin fast again! Highly recommended.

@samphony - Are you on a Mac Pro or a Mac Book? On the Mac Pro it really seems it needs to be in the Mac drive slots. On a Mac Book, I'm not sure (I doubt USB or Firewire are recognized). I'd get someone local with a Mac Pro to do it for you (maybe a local Mac shop?)


----------



## mosso

Kevin Smithers @ 30/10/2014 said:


> @Mosso, could you please explain how to do it?



I finally tried it today and sorry to say the USB installer isn't what I thought (that is to say it doesn't create a bootable USB stick). I tried using Disk Utility to create one from the ISO but no luck at all there.

I also burned multiple CD/DVDs from the ISO that all hang at some point during the start up - I get DOS text but never get as far as any kind of menu. I'll chase up tech support but very disappointed with Samsung right now - I doubt I'll buy another SSD from them.


----------



## Diffusor

Did mine using FreeDos (formatted using rufus on a PC) and a USB stick. Went without a hitch.


----------



## jleckie

Does anyone have the drives in a Thunderbolt Black Magic dock attached to a new Mac Pro?


----------



## samphony

Sorry guys but I must admit the whole process for a mac user is embarrassing.
I've spent a whole day trying everything without luck.

You have to have a pc with a free sata port or a Mac Pro pre 2013. If you only have an iMac or darth pro you're screwed.
I'm using a 2013 Mac Pro with black magic multi dock.

I've tried every possible route from USB to sata, a white mac book where I took out the hard drive. Only errors and frustration. 

I felt like an IT guy. For me it's the last Samsung SSDs I've bought. 

PS: no I have no PC at hand nor buddy's with PCs around me. weird I know.


----------



## gpax

synergy543 @ Fri Oct 31 said:


> I had to remove it from the Sonnet PCI and put it into an Icy Dock tray in a Mac Pro drive slot. It all went quite smoothly and was uneventful. It took just under an hour to complete.


What is the risk plugging in the drive without an Icy Dock tray, just long enough to get the firmware and files all updated? 

G


----------



## brunodegazio

I followed Samsung's procedure to update my 500 GB 840 EVO used as my Mac 10.9.4 system drive. At restart I immediately noticed an improvement in startup time, and when the system was booted application launching was noticeably faster as well. 

The whole process went smoothly except that my first attempt at creating a startup optical disk failed - maybe because I used a dual-layer DVD disk. A second try with a CD worked fine. 

The first two steps of the update process completed in a matter of seconds. The final step - I'm guessing that's where all the files are re-written to the drive - took about 2.75 hours, which was longer than I expected. But all's well that ends well, and the system is working a lot better now.


----------



## synergy543

gpax @ Sat Nov 01 said:


> synergy543 @ Fri Oct 31 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I had to remove it from the Sonnet PCI and put it into an Icy Dock tray in a Mac Pro drive slot. It all went quite smoothly and was uneventful. It took just under an hour to complete.
> 
> 
> 
> What is the risk plugging in the drive without an Icy Dock tray, just long enough to get the firmware and files all updated?
> 
> G
Click to expand...

Yeah, I see the dilemma... 
I suppose if the SSD fits snug into the socket and you don't put any pressure on it, it should be OK for an hour or so. I actually used the *Newer Tech tray* which is only $15. However, if you're in a hurry and don't mind living dangerously, it "probably" will work.


----------



## gpax

synergy543 @ Sat Nov 01 said:


> gpax @ Sat Nov 01 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> synergy543 @ Fri Oct 31 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I had to remove it from the Sonnet PCI and put it into an Icy Dock tray in a Mac Pro drive slot. It all went quite smoothly and was uneventful. It took just under an hour to complete.
> 
> 
> 
> What is the risk plugging in the drive without an Icy Dock tray, just long enough to get the firmware and files all updated?
> 
> G
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Yeah, I see the dilemma...
> I suppose if the SSD fits snug into the socket and you don't put any pressure on it, it should be OK for an hour or so. I actually used the *Newer Tech tray* which is only $15. However, if you're in a hurry and don't mind living dangerously, it "probably" will work.
Click to expand...

Success. In the end, not a big deal: I used a piece of duct tape to keep the drive level while it was in one of the bays. All went smoothly, and the SSD is now restored, and booted from the Sonnet card again.


----------



## synergy543

gpax @ Sat Nov 01 said:


> Success. In the end, not a big deal: I used a piece of duct tape to keep the drive level while it was in one of the bays. All went smoothly, and the SSD is now restored, and booted from the Sonnet card again.


Ah, another Duct tape success story!


----------



## gaz

samphony @ Sat Nov 01 said:


> Sorry guys but I must admit the whole process for a mac user is embarrassing.
> I've spent a whole day trying everything without luck.
> 
> You have to have a pc with a free sata port or a Mac Pro pre 2013. If you only have an iMac or darth pro you're screwed.
> I'm using a 2013 Mac Pro with black magic multi dock.
> 
> I've tried every possible route from USB to sata, a white mac book where I took out the hard drive. Only errors and frustration.
> 
> I felt like an IT guy. For me it's the last Samsung SSDs I've bought.
> 
> PS: no I have no PC at hand nor buddy's with PCs around me. weird I know.



I'm in the exact same boat. I have an iMAc, new MacPro, and ac old MacBook. Really frustrating!


----------



## samphony

gaz @ Sun Nov 02 said:


> samphony @ Sat Nov 01 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry guys but I must admit the whole process for a mac user is embarrassing.
> I've spent a whole day trying everything without luck.
> 
> You have to have a pc with a free sata port or a Mac Pro pre 2013. If you only have an iMac or darth pro you're screwed.
> I'm using a 2013 Mac Pro with black magic multi dock.
> 
> I've tried every possible route from USB to sata, a white mac book where I took out the hard drive. Only errors and frustration.
> 
> I felt like an IT guy. For me it's the last Samsung SSDs I've bought.
> 
> PS: no I have no PC at hand nor buddy's with PCs around me. weird I know.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm in the exact same boat. I have an iMAc, new MacPro, and ac old MacBook. Really frustrating!
Click to expand...


I gave it another try. What a waste of time instead of composing I have to deal with that.
I formatted one out of two to NTFS via paragon. Removed the hd from my old white MacBook. Had to wiggle the SSD until it fit into the sata port correctly. Started from the CD and now it's running. Even on a freshly formatted SSD it seams to take 2-4 hours.

So I won't be able to compose tomorrow because of this prehistoric approach to updating a firmware on a mac. 

I know none of you is responsible but I had to let it out. For anyone who is a Mac user and doesn't has access to a pc or Mac sata port I suggest find somebody with the former or sell your ssds and get another brand.


----------



## Soundhound

This is really shoddy support from Samsung, I gotta say. I'm set for SSDs for the moment (fingers crossed, knock on wood, handful of salt thrown over shoulder...) assuming this firmware update works for me. But when I do need more, they sure as hell won't be Samsung.

I'm deeply DOS ignorant, and wondering if I've got what I need to make this work. I have:

One 2012 iMac using two 1tb EVO drives in a BlackMagic dock, conected through Thunderbolt. 

Second 2010 iMac with two t1b EVO drives, each in their own Macally enclosures (this model: (Macally 2.5-Inch SATA to Firewire 800 and USB3.0 SuperSpeed Hard Disk Drive Enclosure) connected via Firewire 800. 

The two iMacs are networked via ethernet (for VEP5 use). Can I make the EVO update happen in this setup, anyone know? 

Thanks guys, appreciate any help at all! 

And Samsung: thanks for nothing.


----------



## samphony

Before going back the DOS CD shit MacBook disassembly waste of time procedure I've even tried and went through the cumbersome process of downloading a windows 8 preview and parallels desktop trial, installed everything on another Mac OS SSD (office stuff) and installed the Samsung restoration windows version, formatted the EVO to NTFS = no samsungs SSD found. (Pulling hair out kind of situation)

So clearly it is impossible to update the firmware and run the restoration over thunderbolt or USB to sata. 

I should charge Samsung for loosing a lot of time. Never had these issues with my crucial, Intel, SanDisk SSDs.


----------



## gaz

I ended up removing my HD from my white MacBook and putting my SSD into that, which seems to be working. The drive was detected and the restoration took 1hr 15m (on a 75% full 500GB SSD). I ran the DiskUtility which showed no issues and a test with Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test which showed 388MB/s read performance (TB connection).

I'm glad that ordeal is over with!

Cheers,
Gari


----------



## proxima

samphony @ Sat Nov 01 said:


> So clearly it is impossible to update the firmware and run the restoration over thunderbolt or USB to sata.


While it's annoying that you need an SATA connection to update the firmware, the instructions make this pretty clear. It explicitly rules out USB-SATA adapters and even lists that it's only designed to work with certain chipsets.

So while I share your frustration (I have to dig out an old Windows desktop to fix mine), your time was wasted in part because you didn't read the instructions.


----------



## gpax

proxima @ Sun Nov 02 said:


> samphony @ Sat Nov 01 said:
> 
> 
> 
> So clearly it is impossible to update the firmware and run the restoration over thunderbolt or USB to sata.
> 
> 
> 
> While it's annoying that you need an SATA connection to update the firmware, the instructions make this pretty clear. It explicitly rules out USB-SATA adapters and even lists that it's only designed to work with certain chipsets.
> 
> So while I share your frustration (I have to dig out an old Windows desktop to fix mine), your time was wasted in part because you didn't read the instructions.
Click to expand...

If I may offer a bit more of an empathetic response: Proxima's effort still highlights the fact that some will not have options to fix this problem. 

Indeed, if it were not for my six year old Mac Pro, and burning a CD (which I have not used in years), or running DOS (which I have not seen in over twenty years), I would have not been able to run the updates. Even so, I had to take the SSD out of the later generation PCIe card, and then duct tape it so it would sit evenly in one of the available SATA II bays. 

At least here in the US, the lack of options for fixing the SSD renders it defective, according to the terms of Samsung’s warranty. In which case, a refund or replacement are definitely warranted.


----------



## Soundhound

I just spoke to cust service at Samsung and I think I'm going to send my drives back to them and get replacement drives. I have two sets, the second on my slave iMac, so I'll do without that for the time being (I'm trying to keep everything on one iMac anyway). 

They said that any drives that are sent out from the service dept will have the new firmware update/fix. 

I'll do it in two steps, the second macs ssds, then first. arg.


----------



## jleckie

Soundhound: Did they offer to do the firmware update for you or did they offer only to send you replacements?


----------



## Soundhound

Ah, you know what I forgot to ask him that, and that's what I'd intended to see about. I'll ask. Thanks! 



jleckie @ Mon Nov 03 said:


> Soundhound: Did they offer to do the firmware update for you or did they offer only to send you replacements?


----------



## jleckie

They may opt out of doing the update as your data would be at risk. Can not hurt to ask though. It would also cost them money to do it.


----------



## Soundhound

Yup, I bet that's right. I've asked though and will let you know what they say.

- Doug



jleckie @ Mon Nov 03 said:


> They may opt out of doing the update as your data would be at risk. Can not hurt to ask though. It would also cost them money to do it.


----------



## jleckie

I called them and they said they would accept the drives back from users who have no other means of updating the firmware. They said though that they recommend doing a backup as when they receive the drives the FIRST thing they will do is wipe it clean. And then they instal the firmware and return to the user.

They can't put the firmware on top of a drive that contains user data as that would violate the users privacy.


----------



## Soundhound

That's good to hear. All depends on who you happen to speak with I guess. The guy I'm in touch with just got back to me saying they won't 'repair' (his quotes) they will only replace the drives. Not sure which I'd prefer actually. But since I'm already going down the road with this guy I guess I might as well continue this particular vale of tears...?






jleckie @ Mon Nov 03 said:


> I called them and they said they would accept the drives back from users who have no other means of updating the firmware. They said though that they recommend doing a backup as when they receive the drives the FIRST thing they will do is wipe it clean. And then they instal the firmware and return to the user.
> 
> They can't put the firmware on top of a drive that contains user data as that would violate the users privacy.


----------



## jleckie

The rep I called talked to a manager. Don't know if that makes a difference or not. He sent an email that is basically a RETURN/REPLACEMENT form but they said that they will NOT be replacing the drives but putting on the new firmware. This is untreaden ground by Samsung so it does not surprise me if you will get different responses from who you talk to.


----------



## Soundhound

For sure. Does anyone know of a good speed test app for OSX? I'd used a few different ones over the last couple of weeks, but thought it would be good to get a recommendation since I'll be sending the drives in etc and would want to have before and after info. thanks!


----------



## jleckie

I used Black magics.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackma ... 4550?mt=12


----------



## Soundhound

Thanks, I'd been using that one as well!


----------



## mushanga

Hi all - currently running a 1TB EVO via an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 PCIe card in my Mac Pro 3,1.

How can I tell if this issue is affecting my SSD?

Blackmagic speed tests are currently returning 400+ MB/s write and 500+ MB/s read.


----------



## Sovereign

The Blackmagic tool is not going to tell you because it will read and write new data while the problem is due to old data. Right now I am copying Hollywood Strings to a new Sandisk Extreme Pro from a Samsung 840 EVO and I can tell you the copying and reading speed is extremely slow.


----------



## jleckie

I thought it was the Magician software that would not show the slow down and not the Black Magic?


----------



## Craig Sharmat

I am replacing all 5 discs, they are sending me refurbs.
I prefer this as I will have little down time as I don't have to send my old discs in until the new ones get here.

I was not particularly attached to my old discs so there is no real remorse here.
I have all my samples backed up which is of course good policy.


----------



## karmadharma

after seeing some folks on the overclock.net thread confirming that after the update/"performance restoration" there was no more slowdown even after several weeks I decided to go ahead with it myself, in order not to risk issues with windows running while things happened, I just burned a cd with the commandline tool and it worked just fine, I ran an fciv -r before the update (checksum every file on the disk, very nice microsoft utility) and after and all files match so no data loss issues.


----------



## NYC Composer

Craig Sharmat @ Wed Nov 05 said:


> I am replacing all 5 discs, they are sending me refurbs.
> I prefer this as I will have little down time as I don't have to send my old discs in until the new ones get here.
> 
> I was not particularly attached to my old discs so there is no real remorse here.
> I have all my samples backed up which is of course good policy.



Craig- who did you talk to, please?


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Craig, 

I got my Samsung replaced as well but the new disk had the same problem after over a month. Samsung has not confirmed if all disks suffer from this problem or if it is a specific batch from certain factories. 

Another friend who bought the Samsung 4 months before I did has the same problem. Three disks a few months apart having the same problem. I think it is showing up on more disks all the time.

So, I would definitely ask Samsung if the refurbished ones have been fixed before you copy all the samples.

Good luck!


Tanuj.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

OR you could try and convince them to replace your disks with the PRO's which are almost the same price now.


Tanuj.


----------



## bpf

Completely contrary to the 840 EVO, the 850 PRO SSDs with their capacity up to a TB are the best thing ever!


----------



## Kevin Smithers

So if I format to MS DOS, do the firmware update on a PC and then format to MAC OS Journaled will the update carry on?


----------



## Mahlon

Just for info, I bought an EVO 256 in January 2014. So far no problems and reading at about 520 MB/S. I only use it for sample streaming.

Mahlon


----------



## Soundhound

I sent 4 1TB EVOs back to Samsung and got replacements. 3 seem fine, one is defective (I was able to format it, but Disk Utility says it can't be repaired—it actually crashed my system several times. I'm sending that one back to them. I've been using two of the others for a few weeks, I use them only for streaming samples, and so far they seem okay. 

I asked about replacing them with the EVO Pros and they said no, the EVO Pros cost quite a bit more. Hopefully these will keep working fine. If not, I'm going to see about getting a refund for all of them, and then buy something else. Fingers crossed.


----------



## milesito

Thanks for providing this feedback Soundhound.


----------



## Guy Rowland

My Black Friday ambivolence has just been prodded a little by an upcoming 1TB EVO sale at Amazon. What's the consensus now - safe to buy again and check / replace the firmware first if necessary?


----------



## OLB

Thanks for the heads up Guy, I went for it. I was sitting on the fence anyway. 

I already have one and what I would probably do is check the firmware on the new one and then copy everything over from the old one. Only good experiences with the EVO's so far.


----------



## Guy Rowland

OLB @ Fri Nov 28 said:


> Thanks for the heads up Guy, I went for it. I was sitting on the fence anyway.
> 
> I already have one and what I would probably do is check the firmware on the new one and then copy everything over from the old one. Only good experiences with the EVO's so far.



Yeah I went for it too, so much for my virtuous Black Friday patience. Well, it's not software I guess...

I've had a plan for a while to convert the laptop to SSD. There's never been a 1TB close to £240 before. I'll do exactly as you say - check and update the firmware first. I can see it being a while til I get round to this whole renovating-the-laptop job though, as its going to be spectacularly boring.


----------



## Neifion

So to download this performance fix, does one just update the firmware through Samsung Magician, or is there a webpage to download from?


----------



## Soundhound

Anyone have info on how you check to see if your EVO drives have the firmware update?


----------



## ChristopherDoucet

So I'm sorry, I'm just still a little bit confused. So with the firmware upgrade, these should completely fine to use for PC users?


----------



## NYC Composer

ChristopherDoucet @ Sun Dec 07 said:


> So I'm sorry, I'm just still a little bit confused. So with the firmware upgrade, these should completely fine to use for PC users?



As the issue stands at present, I don't think it's clear whether the firmware update will hold over time.


----------



## Dan Selby

What's the word on this, has the firmware upgrade fixed this issue? I'm thinking about buying a 1TB SSD to try to breathe some new life into my labouring office laptop (Dell Win7 (64bit) PC) and this seems to be, by a margin, still the cheapest 1TB SSD I've found.

Safe to buy this model to use as a laptop system and data drive or not?

Thanks! 

Dan


----------



## NYC Composer

Dan Selby @ Wed Jan 14 said:


> What's the word on this, has the firmware upgrade fixed this issue? I'm thinking about buying a 1TB SSD to try to breathe some new life into my labouring office laptop (Dell Win7 (64bit) PC) and this seems to be, by a margin, still the cheapest 1TB SSD I've found.
> 
> Safe to buy this model to use as a laptop system and data drive or not?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Dan



As Remo the Mafia don said in Casino- "why take a chance?"

I recently bought two Crucials that were cheaper, gb for gb, than the 840s.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Dan Selby @ Wed Jan 14 said:


> What's the word on this, has the firmware upgrade fixed this issue? I'm thinking about buying a 1TB SSD to try to breathe some new life into my labouring office laptop (Dell Win7 (64bit) PC) and this seems to be, by a margin, still the cheapest 1TB SSD I've found.
> 
> Safe to buy this model to use as a laptop system and data drive or not?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Dan



I did exactly the same thing, bought in a Black Friday deal. AFAIK just make sure the firmware is up to date before you start, then you're good to go. I've not faced the ugly deed yet, got feb / march pencilled in for that lovely job.


----------



## Kejero

Mine seems to be working fine since the update too.


----------



## vicontrolu

Can you be streaming ALL the sounds (Kontakt) from a SSD 1TB drive without problems? Think a fast orchestral-hybrid action cue with many short notes and percussion, etc.


----------



## kfirpr

Can you update from the "samsung ssd magician" ? how exactly did you upgrade your firmware?


----------



## Astronaut FX

So if SSD is the latest and greatest in available storage technology, and would be beneficial in loading samples more quickly, does it make sense to cheap out and go with the lowest priced drives, or is there any advantage to pulling the trigger on the Samsung Pro 850, which currently appears to be their flagship and king of the hill with regard to SSD performance?

Would an end user notice much performance difference between the Pro 850, the EVO series, and the lower priced Crucial mentioned above?

I mean if you're going state of the art, is this a case of go large or go home?

I'm about to make the move myself and really wonder about which way to go.


----------



## milesito

I got a bunch during the Black Friday sale. Only one had the old firmware which I had to update...the rest had the latest firmware and the site says it it has the latest firmware you are good to go. No issues so far


----------



## Udo

In case you didn't know, the 850 EVO series was recently released. There was some talk about a 2TB model, but I'm not sure if that will eventuate (I'd say probably not, at least in the near future, as Samsung goes for mass market products and I don't think 2TB falls in that category (yet)).


----------



## Peter Costa

I just did this fix for a mac the other day and it was a pain. I have the 2013 iMac so no optical drive. I had to copy everything to another hard drive. Bring the HD over to a windows machine that wasn't mine, format to NTFS and then finally run the update. I'm running through the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter and getting read/write speed around 380 MB/s. Before I was getting speeds around 200-250. Though I do wish I could get the 510 that most people are talking about. Probably have to get a PC slave if I wanted that.


Does anybody know about measuring real-time streaming speeds off the hard disk during a project? I'm running EW hollywood strings/woodwinds/brass off it right now and wanted to put my komplete ultimate 9 (which I don't use too often) but just wanted to make sure that I'm not going to be getting pops if I were to put the drive around 900 GB.

Thanks in advance


----------



## Mike Marino

> I have the 2013 iMac so no optical drive.



Same. I have not gone through the update yet. My drives are in a Pegasus J4 via TB....so I can't hook them up to a Windows machine anyway. I guess that means I'm f'd until Samsung gets their shit together.


----------



## Guy Rowland

milesito @ Wed Jan 14 said:


> I got a bunch during the Black Friday sale. Only one had the old firmware which I had to update...the rest had the latest firmware and the site says it it has the latest firmware you are good to go. No issues so far



Good to know - just spell out a bit more about checking your drive with the website?


----------



## mohurwitzmusic

3 months and counting, the update is still going strong for me


----------



## Dan Selby

mohurwitzmusic @ Thu Jan 15 said:


> 3 months and counting, the update is still going strong for me



That's great. Thanks, all - very helpful.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

I can confirm that my SSD has dropped to about 50% read speed after about two months of the update.

This was a replacement from Samsung after the first one basically became useless in the first 2 months. 

This one had the same problem but it got rectified. However, I am now seeing about 200-250 Mb/s read speeds at best. 

I have asked for an advance RMA from them. I am not convinced of this drive. I am now only going to go for the Pro's or another competing brand.


Tanuj.


----------



## Guy Rowland

Oooh Tanuj, that is bad news, that's the first I've heard that the fix isn't really a fix. Yikes.


----------



## NYC Composer

Tanuj Tiku @ Thu Jan 15 said:


> I can confirm that my SSD has dropped to about 50% read speed after about two months of the update.
> 
> This was a replacement from Samsung after the first one basically became useless in the first 2 months.
> 
> This one had the same problem but it got rectified. However, I am now seeing about 200-250 Mb/s read speeds at best.
> 
> I have asked for an advance RMA from them. I am not convinced of this drive. I am now only going to go for the Pro's or another competing brand.
> 
> 
> Tanuj.



As I said earlier, I just don't see how anyone buys more of these drives without waiting 6 months to see if the problem persists after this ridiculously difficult fix. I still haven't fixed min. I bought a Crucial and copied it over. Screw 'em with the 840.


----------



## Dan Selby

Boo, that's not good, Tanuj.

Larry: I haven't seen anything from Crucial or elsewhere in the 1TB size that's close to the same price point as the 840 evo... or have I missed something?


----------



## Markus Kohlprath

I've just seen there is an evo 850. the 1tb is 400,-€. This might be the solution. But again we only can be sure after a couple of month.
Has anybody experience already?


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Thanks guys!

I am surprised myself. I have also not yet heard of any problems since the update was released. 

My DAW builder also tested some of these drives after the update and they seem to be running fine as of now. 

We are trying to investigate further. Problem is getting an advance RMA. I am in the middle of a project and while its still OK sort of....previously the drive became slower and slower over a period of time. I am seeing fluctuations. 

I also feel betrayed by Samsung Magician and other competing HD testing software. As HD Speed from Steel Bytes is the only one which shows a sustained real average read speed. 

Samsung Magician never reports anything problematic with the drive. Even before the update, it always maintained that the drive was perfectly normal. Same goes for ASSD. 

Definitely never buying 840 EVO again!


Tanuj.


----------



## NYC Composer

Dan Selby @ Thu Jan 15 said:


> Boo, that's not good, Tanuj.
> 
> Larry: I haven't seen anything from Crucial or elsewhere in the 1TB size that's close to the same price point as the 840 evo... or have I missed something?



Dan, I just looked around and saw the Xmas deals on the Crucial M500 aren't there anymore. I bought two from OWC for $329 each- looks like they're back around $400, but there will be deals.

I just strongly feel the 840 (and maybe Samsung in general) is untrustworthy. Why would you buy a high speed product that has a serious chance of degrading, regardless of pricing?

If you want to stick with Samsung, the Pro seems to be fine. I'd just wait (if possible) for the next deal from New Egg, Amazon, OWC or whoever on something you can have more confidence in. Cheers.


----------



## Dan Selby

Yeah, I'm definitely minded to wait for now, Larry. It's annoying that I can't make do with something smaller than a 1TB drive but it's to replace the HD on my aging laptop, which is 750GB and about 80% full.

The 840 EVO is considerably cheaper over here than the Crucial M550 or the 850 EVO but, as you say, a saving isn't really one if it ends up being a pain in the arse.

My laptop will just have to put up with being regularly sworn at for a while longer.


----------



## Guy Rowland

I took a gamble on the fix being, ya know, a fix. It was a Black Friday blind panic lightning deal and an amazing price.

Doing some more reading, there seems to be a view out there that some problems aren't necessarily related to the main slow down issue per se. I did read that AMD AHCI driver can cause issues with these drives.


----------



## vicontrolu

Does anybody know for sure if the 850EVO has this same problem?


----------



## givemenoughrope

I pulled the trigger on three of these a few days ago. I've already requested a return and they are still in transit. I went OWC mercury extreme for my laptop so il probably just stick with those. You get what you pay for I guess.


----------



## Tanuj Tiku

Back here in Mumbai, I paid close to $700 for this drive..not exactly cheap. You get better prices in the US and Europe. 

I am however, not going to be quiet about this with Samsung. I am in no mood to accept any more EVO replacements (My current drive already being a replacement). I have made some calls, lets see how it goes down. 

Ideally, they ought to give another line of drives as a replacement as these are clearly problematic. I would have bought a Pro had this issue been discovered earlier :(


Tanuj.


----------



## macteacher

Hi Guys,

I lept for the 850 Pros on sale and they are great so far.

The Pros are different from the regular 850s though.

However, if it was a fix for the 840s I can't imagine Samsung making the same mistake for the new regular 850s.

But anything is possible.

Sorry to hear about the 840s...


----------



## givemenoughrope

What about exchanging these for the EVO 850 (not the 'Pro)? Only a $30 hike from B&H. 

Will the 850 Pro or OWC Mercury Extreme be that much better?


----------



## Dan Selby

I'm now looking at the SanDisk Extreme PRO 960 GB. 290 quid on Amazon http://amzn.to/1KOvL6q

Looks like it might be decent option. 10 year warranty is nice!


----------



## NYC Composer

Dan Selby @ Thu Jan 15 said:


> I'm now looking at the SanDisk Extreme PRO 960 GB. 290 quid on Amazon http://amzn.to/1KOvL6q
> 
> Looks like it might be decent option. 10 year warranty is nice!



Here's another possibility:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Crucial/ ... gn=dealmac


----------



## synergy543

The Samsung 840 EVO works just fine. I'm running my OS on it on a Sonnet PCI card. I bought one of the original ones "with the problem" and simply flashed it as per the instructions. Works like a charm, I'm very pleased and my old 2008 mac feels like a new trash can! (that' didn't come out right but you get the idea).


----------



## givemenoughrope

Conflicting reports on these then. I'm inclined to just return the three that are en route (since they haven't been opened) and go with the 850's. 

Anyone else?


----------



## NYC Composer

synergy543 @ Fri Jan 16 said:


> The Samsung 840 EVO works just fine. I'm running my OS on it on a Sonnet PCI card. I bought one of the original ones "with the problem" and simply flashed it as per the instructions. Works like a charm, I'm very pleased and my old 2008 mac feels like a new trash can! (that' didn't come out right but you get the idea).



Could you explain "simply flashed it"? Also, how long have you been running it successfully?

The problem is: no one can say with any certainty which ones will hold up, though I'm very glad to hear that yours is.

Btw, is your Sonnet card PCI or PCI-e? I wanna try one of them suckers.


----------



## synergy543

By flashed, I mean I just followed the instructions on the Samsung site creating a bootable CD and ran the updater app. It was quite simple and took less than an hour to run.

My 840 EVO has been running smoothing for over a year. I've never had any troubles and its very fast. My Sonnet card is a PCIe 2.0.


----------



## NYC Composer

Interesting. It took a friend of mine over 6 hrs and he was never sure it worked.


----------



## synergy543

I almost always have trouble following instructions, but this time it just worked.


----------



## Scrianinoff

NYC Composer @ Fri 16 Jan said:


> synergy543 @ Fri Jan 16 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The Samsung 840 EVO works just fine. I'm running my OS on it on a Sonnet PCI card. I bought one of the original ones "with the problem" and simply flashed it as per the instructions. Works like a charm, I'm very pleased and my old 2008 mac feels like a new trash can! (that' didn't come out right but you get the idea).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Could you explain "simply flashed it"? Also, how long have you been running it successfully?
> 
> The problem is: no one can say with any certainty which ones will hold up, though I'm very glad to hear that yours is.
> 
> Btw, is your Sonnet card PCI or PCI-e? I wanna try one of them suckers.
Click to expand...

*
Here: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... loads.html 
Scroll down to "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software"*

No problems for three months now. 


On another note, I see there are a lot of wise people here that are reluctant to buy Samsung SSDs after the fixed 840 evo firmware bug. I must sincerely thank all those wise people, since they made it possible for me to buy a few more at bargain basement prices. Of course the wisest thing to do right now is to only buy SSDs from 'reputable' brands, such as Intel, Crucial, Toshiba and of course LSI, because as everyone knows, or ought to know, they of course never had any bugs. Right?

Intel: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/08/ ... mware-bug/

Intel again: http://www.techspot.com/news/44694-inte ... lable.html

Crucial: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/BSOD-Crucial-M4/td-p/79098 (http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSD ... td-p/79098)
http://www.storagereview.com/crucial_m4_0309_firmware_update_for_5200_hour_bug_released (http://www.storagereview.com/crucial_m4 ... g_released)

Sandforce: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4973/sand ... able-today

Note that the last two 'reputable' brands I mentioned respectively use and own the Sandforce technology. And these are just some usability bugs, not the longer list of (unacknowledged but widely documented) performance issues. The truth is you cannot protect yourself against the risk of potential SSD problems. Nothing changed there compared to hard drives.


----------



## Scrianinoff

Even if you buy a new, never used Samsung 840 EVO that does not already have the newest fixed firmware, then you still will have to run the performance restoration tool to flash the newest fixed firmware. In other words, running only the firmware update will NOT flash the newest and fixed firmware. This has confused and eluded quite some people. If the firmware version shown by Samsung Magician is EXT0CB6Q, then you're good.


----------



## NYC Composer

I'm delighted that your drives are working well, as I wish NO ONE any drive problems.

That having been said, your three month time window for the 840 doesn't convince me. This was a time and use based bug, and I've already seen multiple users saying, essentially, that the fix didn't stay stable for them. Additionally, your link about the Crucial M4 was from 2012. 

Glad you got your 840s cheap, and again, I hope they run flawlessly for you.


----------



## Guy Rowland

NYC Composer @ Fri Jan 16 said:


> This was a time and use based bug, and I've already seen multiple users saying, essentially, that the fix didn't stay stable for them



I've done some googling and couldn't find anyone else in Tanuj's shoes, I have to say - but keen to read anyone's links that they've found. There were people with problems, but they seemed to be about something different (like the AMD driver). I'm not 100% sure Tanuj's issues are the same as the original fault - they could be, but I'd expect a more alarming drop at the same time (about a month). This seems like a much more subtle drop off. We've well passed the month point where I'd expect howls of protest across the web if the fix achieved nothing. Maybe the fix is a partial fix, of course which has lessened the issue but not entirely eliminated it.

Currently not quite sure what to make of it all, obviously hoping that this fix does stick though.


----------



## Dan Selby

Going to plump for the SanDisk Extreme PRO 960 GB, I think. Actually a bit cheaper than the 840 EVO now, meant to be faster (http://bit.ly/1KQ1Vi4) and the 10 year warranty makes me think (hope) it'll be reliable. Fingers crossed, anyway.


----------



## Scrianinoff

NYC Composer @ Fri 16 Jan said:


> I'm delighted that your drives are working well, as I wish NO ONE any drive problems.
> 
> That having been said, your three month time window for the 840 doesn't convince me. This was a time and use based bug, and I've already seen multiple users saying, essentially, that the fix didn't stay stable for them. Additionally, your link about the Crucial M4 was from 2012.
> 
> Glad you got your 840s cheap, and again, I hope they run flawlessly for you.



To be frank, I have been struck by all the issues I posted as examples. I will let you know which drive I am going to buy next so you can also avoid that one, because based on my track record, it's bound to fail too. The message I tried to convey though is that you cannot be safe. My hunch is that the EVO problems were fixed completely, as were the x25m, the m4 issues, and the sandforce 'most' of the time for 'most' users. 
Your hunch is that the EVO issue wasn't fixed completely. That's fine. If you want to investigate further have a look at the threads over here http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/read ... d-ssds/250


----------



## Guy Rowland

Scrianinoff @ Fri Jan 16 said:


> If you want to investigate further have a look at the threads over here http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/read ... d-ssds/250



Yes, that recent stuff is encouraging, looks like it's been thoroughly done too.


----------



## NYC Composer

Scrianinoff @ Fri Jan 16 said:


> NYC Composer @ Fri 16 Jan said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm delighted that your drives are working well, as I wish NO ONE any drive problems.
> 
> That having been said, your three month time window for the 840 doesn't convince me. This was a time and use based bug, and I've already seen multiple users saying, essentially, that the fix didn't stay stable for them. Additionally, your link about the Crucial M4 was from 2012.
> 
> Glad you got your 840s cheap, and again, I hope they run flawlessly for you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To be frank, I have been struck by all the issues I posted as examples. I will let you know which drive I am going to buy next so you can also avoid that one, because based on my track record, it's bound to fail too. The message I tried to convey though is that you cannot be safe. My hunch is that the EVO problems were fixed completely, as were the x25m, the m4 issues, and the sandforce 'most' of the time for 'most' users.
> Your hunch is that the EVO issue wasn't fixed completely. That's fine. If you want to investigate further have a look at the threads over here http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/read ... d-ssds/250
Click to expand...


Scrianoff- please do post as you buy. You can be my bad weathervane . :wink: 

Your comment about not being safe with any drive maker is noted. The testing you referenced in THIS link is 2.5 months old. I'll be interested to see what happens when more and more writes are done on the drive.

I now have 5 SSDs. The Evo screwed up. The four Crucials (two MX100s, two M500s) are fine so far. Call me crazy, but for now....

Besides , I own stock in Micron!


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## Tanuj Tiku

I would like to add that the failure of my SSD could be for other reasons. Obviously, for me there is no way to tell. 

It could be dying for other reasons and may not be related to the earlier problem which the update may have in fact fixed for good.

Like many others, I cannot find anyone else having these issues post the update.

I would not worry if your drives are working well but if you are looking to buy right now, perhaps you can either hold off or buy something else. 

Samsung and Scandisk have come up with enterprise versions offering a 10-year warranty. That does says a lot about how confident they are with these drives!


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## PeterKorcek

Im sorry if it was addressed previously in this thread, but this performance drop is common in ALL the units produced or are there some of you who use the SSDs without any problems. Unfortunately, in my custom built PC there are exclusively Samsung 840 EVO SSDs, built last September, currently I dont see any performance issues. thanks


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## Guy Rowland

This is well worth a read

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Sa ... -Effective


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## chimuelo

Here's more.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thessdreview/KGyZ/~3/vvR13uYrcbo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thessdre ... dium=email)


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## Guy Rowland

Hmm, wonder where this will go next? Looks like some folks have been fixed properly, others not. I wonder if in the end Samsung will have to replace those still affected with new units.


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## chimuelo

My guess is they will take a hit on the EVOs since the fix is temporary, and at least 50% of the people using it will be happy at 250MBps thinking their fix was permanent.

But we should thank them for starting the read intensive battle between manufacturers as this was the drive that pretty much set the pace for others.

I can forgive them for this mistake as it was a one time error, and also because I didn't buy a few....... ankyuvarymush.

But if you haven't read about PCI-3.0, usually associated with 16x slots connected to the CPU for gamers, the SM951 can sit right in between PCI slots, not taking up any more at all for audio guys, and the pre lims from CES showed how bad ass 330k Random IOps and 2.4GBps can truly be.
Let's say you were using RAID 0 of a pair of drives, which makes me nervous, but is a very inexpensive way to get past the SATA 3 bottleneck, you can now have a tiny little 512GB device that surpasses RAID for less than 1.00 USD per GB....

Now we're talking, and direct connection to the CPU means load times from HELL...
For indoor guys no biggie, but live this means I can really load up PLAY and go to town.

I am waiting for Skylake ASRock designs where 64GBs of RAM can be used w/ 2 x PCI 3.0 storage devices like the SM951 all on a ATX 1U Chasssis.
\
So for bringing us this bad boy tech, I will always admire ASSRock and Samsung.


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## PeterKorcek

Hey, too bad if its only temporary fix, yesterday I did the restoration on my Drive with HollyWood Strings, it took a while, but today I ran the heaviest patches inside VEP5 and the speed is back! hopefully it will stay a while like this.

All my drives are Samsung EVO 840 - what were the odds??? 

2 of them are SCSI connected, in the manual it says you cant restore these, so maybe I will live with those speeds and put some less intensive libraries, try the restoration (has anyone done it for these SCSI drives?) or buy Crucial SSDs and let it go.


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## Tanuj Tiku

Samsung India, in Mumbai is refusing to upgrade the drives. They are insisting that they will only give a new 840 as a replacement.

That is not of much use unless they can guarantee its performance. 

Needless to say I am very upset about this whole thing. Specially the way Samsung is handling it. 

Just replaced it with the new Sandisk 1TB with a 10-year warranty. It's working well!


My DAW builder tells me that they have stopped selling the 840's over here so may be we will get an 850 via RMA.


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## milesito

I read that it the drives have the latest firmware installed already then we do not need to do the update. Do you all agree?


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## Guy Rowland

milesito @ Mon Feb 02 said:


> I read that it the drives have the latest firmware installed already then we do not need to do the update. Do you all agree?



Yes, that's my understanding BUT they might not work correctly regardless. Some drives do stay good if they have the latest firmware, but not all (and when they go bad again the performance isn't AS bad as before).


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## NYC Composer

Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 02 said:


> milesito @ Mon Feb 02 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I read that it the drives have the latest firmware installed already then we do not need to do the update. Do you all agree?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, that's my understanding BUT they might not work correctly regardless. Some drives do stay good if they have the latest firmware, but not all (and when they go bad again the performance isn't AS bad as before).
Click to expand...


Once again, I'm at a total loss why anyone would take a chance on this brand! Especially when the current generation of Crucials are similarly priced or even better priced. Mysteries abound.


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## Guy Rowland

I think at this stage Larry it's about those who already have them.


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## NYC Composer

Like me!! But I wouldn't contemplate another anytime soon, and fairly recently others were...


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## PeterKorcek

Guy Rowland @ Mon Feb 02 said:


> I think at this stage Larry it's about those who already have them.



exactly, my pc slave is filled with only these! successfully i restored the speeds in 2 of them now, 3rd one in progress, unfortunately, the last 2 drives are SCSI which according to manual cannot be restored, but have another pc in work where i can insert them and run it there

Of course if I was to buy a new SSD now and know this issue, I would probably choose another brand


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## Cat

I need to add some SSD(s) to my system. Probably of 1 TB in size. Which brand and model do you guys recommend? The 1TB Samsung 840 EVO is very nicely priced (and has high speed performance) but it potentially has this issue. Now, there is also the Crucial M550 that is a little more expensive and I hear (from the store tech) that are not as good as the Samsungs. What?! The Crucial MX100 series seem okay (less expensive) but only go up to 512 GB so I would have to buy 2x 512 GB (RAid 0, no worries, I have all the samples backed up). Both of them would cost, in total, less than the 1TB 840 EVO.

What do you guys think? Samsung 840 EVO (1TB), or Crucial M550 (1TB) or Crucial BX100 2x500GB)?


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## givemenoughrope

I bought a few of these from B&H and returned them before I even opened the box. Why take a chance... looking at Crucial via OWC.


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## PeterKorcek

Cat @ Wed Feb 04 said:


> I need to add some SSD(s) to my system. Probably of 1 TB in size. Which brand and model do you guys recommend? The 1TB Samsung 840 EVO is very nicely priced (and has high speed performance) but it potentially has this issue. Now, there is also the Crucial M550 that is a little more expensive and I hear (from the store tech) that are not as good as the Samsungs. What?! The Crucial MX100 series seem okay (less expensive) but only go up to 512 GB so I would have to buy 2x 512 GB (RAid 0, no worries, I have all the samples backed up). Both of them would cost, in total, less than the 1TB 840 EVO.
> 
> What do you guys think? Samsung 840 EVO (1TB), or Crucial M550 (1TB) or Crucial BX100 2x500GB)?



If these SSDs have read performance bug that in some cases might reappear after performance restoration, plus if youre thinking about 1TB capacity, which is quite expensive nonetheless, I would not opt for this, try samsung evo pro maybe, or one of those Crucials


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## Dan Selby

I recently bought the SanDisk Extreme Pro 960. Faster on paper than the 840 evo and cheaper or comparable price now too plus a 10year warranty! Very happy with it so far!


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## PeterKorcek

So I did performane restoration on all my SSDs (5 of them) and they all work as expected! whata relief, of course, time will tell if the fix is/was temporary, but till that time, happy sample loading and effortless playing!!!

NOTE: with good SSD, EW stuff loading times are great, at least here


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## Cat

I have just ordered the SanDisk Ultra II 960GB Solid State disk. Alongside an extra controller (SYBA SI-PEX40057 PCI-Express 2.0 x2) so that I can use full Sata3 speeds (the other 2 Intel Sata3 ports are occupied).

Will see how it goes....Thank you for your advice.


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## Scrianinoff

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8997/sams ... -the-works

http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-promises-another-firmware-update-to-fix-evo-840-ssd-performance-issues/87486.html (http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-pro ... 87486.html)

For any of you still plagued by the 840 evo performance degradation issue after using Samsung's restoration tool: In March there will be 'another' fix for the remaining unlucky users. Either I have been extremely lucky, or something fishy is going on here, because not a single one of my six 840 EVOs (5 regular 1TB SSDs and 1 mSata 1TB) has issues anymore after running the restoration tool.


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## Scrianinoff

Here is another screenshot of the SSD read speed tester tool that I just ran again. 974 MB/s average read speed for my 2TB Windows striped volume of 2 x 1TB 840 EVO, in my laptop. Four months after running the restoration tool. Not shabby at all, not a problem at all.


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## Guy Rowland

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.


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## NYC Composer

Scrianinoff @ Mon Feb 23 said:


> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8997/samsung-releases-statement-on-840-evo-performance-another-fix-is-in-the-works
> 
> http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-promises-another-firmware-update-to-fix-evo-840-ssd-performance-issues/87486.html (http://vr-zone.com/articles/samsung-pro ... 87486.html)
> 
> For any of you still plagued by the 840 evo performance degradation issue after using Samsung's restoration tool: In March there will be 'another' fix for the remaining unlucky users. Either I have been extremely lucky, or something fishy is going on here, because not a single one of my six 840 EVOs (5 regular 1TB SSDs and 1 mSata 1TB) has issues anymore after running the restoration tool.



I'm curious-what do you suppose might be going on that's fishy?


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## karmadharma

anybody tried checking the performance again? posts seem to imply that even after the firmware fix and 'performance restoration' software the drive still slows down as time goes on and the only way around it is to periodically "refresh" it


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## karmadharma

just today a new article on anandtech about a new firmware that hopefully will permanently fix the issue

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9158/new- ... this-month


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## Guy Rowland

Good news, thank you for posting.


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## karmadharma

the annoying thing is that the 'fix' seems to be that the firmware internally will just rewrite things (costing you endurance), it's starting to look like TLC drives should be avoided completely and one should stick to MLC.


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## NYC Composer

The annoying thing is that the story keeps changing.


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## Stephen Rees

As far as I can tell, reads on my 840EVOs are still exactly as fast as they were 6 months ago right after I ran the restoration software (I just checked). I'll keep a closer eye on them from now on though...


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## mohurwitzmusic

Looks like the new fix is out.


http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... loads.html


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## Mike Marino

I have two 500GB 840 EVO drives in an external enclosure (Pegasus J4) via TB.

Is there a fix for us Mac users who can't go the DOS fix method on PC (mentioned much earlier in this thread) due to Thunderbolt?


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## proxima

Mike Marino @ Sun Apr 26 said:


> I have two 500GB 840 EVO drives in an external enclosure (Pegasus J4) via TB.
> 
> Is there a fix for us Mac users who can't go the DOS fix method on PC (mentioned much earlier in this thread) due to Thunderbolt?


Nope, not to my knowledge. I had to send mine back to Samsung because my one Windows desktop didn't have a SATA chipset that supported the software either.


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## PhilG

There is no solution for Mac users yet. 
I had 2 Evos in my MacBook Pro, but replaced the system drive with a SanDisk Extreme Pro, after the first fix. 
But all my libraries are on the second 500GB Evo drive, which replaced my SuperDrive.

The first fix could only be done via Bootcamp and Windows 7.
But I doubt it will be possible this time, because of the Magician method.
I will replace it with another Sandisk or Crucial SSD as soon as I can.

In future I'll stay away from their SSDs. :evil:


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## karmadharma

the update was officially released it seems, which should mean the iso will also come out to enable non-magician users to apply the fix (it was in limited rollout before the w/end)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9196/sams ... 40-evo-fix

unfortunately as I was expecting this is just a brute force 'refresh all the old cells regularly' which while keeping the performance up will use up the drive endurance faster.

It is definitely disappointing that Samsung went this route instead of the 'right way', which IMHO would be to also allow a trade in, if not for free for a very large discount, towards a TLC drive.


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## BoulderBrow

Just adding to the info pool here: installed firmware today (thought I'd got away with my Evos being unaffected but speeds have been dropping for last few weeks).

Getting 'cpu fan error' upon reboot, then upon next boot, the aforementioned coupled with 'cpu over temp' and finally 'overclocking failed!'

Fan seems to be working so not sure how the fix has affected the boot process. Anyone had similar issues?


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## chimuelo

Just in time for the recent Magician 4.9 fix.
New drivers and 4.9 fixed my Samsung issues.
All tempurature related too.
I dont use EVO devices.
But a software company that Samsung acquired implemented thier caching scheme which seemed to be troublesome. But also gives SATA III SSDs a nice bump.


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