# Speed problems with Samsung SSD 850 Pro



## stigc56 (Aug 6, 2019)

Hi
I have a Blackmagic SSD Dock with 4 SSD Harddrives connected to my Mac Pro 6.1. 3 of the SSD's runs around 350mb/s write & read, but the 4th - a Samsung SSD 850 Pro - runs only *69mb/s write* and 380 mb/s read. It's not that old and used rather seldom. 
Any idea's what to do about the pretty low write speed?


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## jneebz (Aug 6, 2019)

Same results when bypassing your MultiDock?


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## Bear Market (Aug 6, 2019)

Has it always been like that? You sure it is formatted appropriately?


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## stigc56 (Aug 6, 2019)

I have tested the drive in another configuration, same result. Now I have formatted it and still same result. It's gone. Buying a new one.


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## Maxime Luft (Aug 6, 2019)

stigc56 said:


> I have tested the drive in another configuration, same result. Now I have formatted it and still same result. It's gone. Buying a new one.



Did you already activate the TRIM functionality?

If you are on a Mac, open the terminal and enter:

`sudo trimforce enable`

Make sure to check this page before ordering your new ssd








How to Enable TRIM for Third-Party SSDs on Mac OS X


Macs only enable TRIM for the Apple-provided solid-state drives they come with. If you upgrade your Mac with an aftermarket SSD, your Mac won’t use TRIM with it. This reduces the drive’s performance.




www.howtogeek.com


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## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 6, 2019)

Both of my Samsung SSDs run very slow. About 400 mb/s. My Crucial MX500 gets 600 mb/s. 

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I'm done with Samsung. I just bought another Crucial but haven't installed it yet.


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## jcrosby (Aug 6, 2019)

Just curios if any of you with slow drives have then mostly filled? Same rules apply to SSD as mechanical about leaving space... the fuller they get the more performance declines. Also higher chance of shortening its lifespan


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## GtrString (Aug 6, 2019)

+1 for trim, like Maxime wrote


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## Salorom (Aug 6, 2019)

I had the same problem with the same drive back in 2014. It turned out this generation was faulty and Samsung acknowledged the issue. As I remember it they released a software fix that only ran on Windows. My rig was a hackintosh so I managed to get a refund. I’m now a happy camper going with Crucial.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Aug 7, 2019)

jcrosby said:


> Just curios if any of you with slow drives have then mostly filled? Same rules apply to SSD as mechanical about leaving space... the fuller they get the more performance declines. Also higher chance of shortening its lifespan


I keep my drives about 20% empty. No more than 800 GB on a 1 TB drive. How much space do you think should be left?



Salorom said:


> I had the same problem with the same drive back in 2014. It turned out this generation was faulty and Samsung acknowledged the issue. As I remember it they released a software fix that only ran on Windows. My rig was a hackintosh so I managed to get a refund. I’m now a happy camper going with Crucial.


My problem is with two different generations of Samsung EVOs. Both of them had the same loss of speed. I'll see how it goes over time with my drives from other companies.

But I do think it's true that SSDs don't last forever. Performance can decline and they can fail.


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## Divico (Aug 7, 2019)

Maybe something wrong with your SATA driver?
I had a speed problem once where my AHCI driver wasnt installed properly. 
My system was using IDE instead.


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## Zero&One (Aug 7, 2019)

jcrosby said:


> Just curios if any of you with slow drives have then mostly filled? Same rules apply to SSD as mechanical about leaving space... the fuller they get the more performance declines. Also higher chance of shortening its lifespan



Mine are full and no issues. All 4.
I’m sure @EvilDragon mentioned this wasn’t an issue with ssd’s.


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## EvilDragon (Aug 7, 2019)

It's not a problem for purely reading from them (which is what sample libraries are all about), correct.


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## Salorom (Aug 7, 2019)

I’m pretty sure this is the problem you’re facing:





__





840 Evo Performance has dropped by ~50%


When I installed my 840 Evo around a month ago the Samsung Benchmark was showing ~50k IOPS for both random read and write. Its now showing ~30k read and 20k write. What might have caused such a massive degradation in less than a months (light) use. Current used capacity is 50GB from a total...




forums.tomshardware.com





It seems Unix based systems don’t agree with the EVO series. Newly written files would read at proper speeds, but then gradually drop to lower than HDD rates over time. I had 2 of them, both with the same issue.

Good luck


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## Zero&One (Aug 7, 2019)

Salorom said:


> I’m pretty sure this is the problem you’re facing:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Disk Speed Test writes and new file to the drive to test. So I'm not sure this is the problem


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## babylonwaves (Aug 7, 2019)

Maxime Luft said:


> Did you already activate the TRIM functionality?


I believe it's easier to use APSF instead which supports trimming from the start and is designed to handle SSDs.
The Samsung issue where the boot tiles are getting progressively slower, to the point now it’s pretty much like an HDD is an EVO 850 840 issue and not present with the 860 models.


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## EvilDragon (Aug 7, 2019)

babylonwaves said:


> The Samsung issue where the boot tiles are getting progressively slower, to the point now it’s pretty much like an HDD is an EVO 850 issue



Evo 840 issue. It's not on 850, 860 or 870.


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## babylonwaves (Aug 7, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Evo 840 issue. It's not on 850, 860 or 870.


yes, you're right, it was the 840. time flies ...


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## ironbut (Aug 7, 2019)

My test shows the Crucial slightly faster than the equal sized (2T) Samsung 850/860.
But what I paid the premium price for with the Samsungs is the warranty.
More of a security blanket.
If this Crucial has a long and happy life, I'll jump ship next time.


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## stigc56 (Aug 7, 2019)

I bought a new. I have tried to repair the old one, enabling trim, trying to update firmware via a PC - bvadr - had to give up on windows, I couldn't even find a tool to format the drive!
It's gone. I asked one of the major companies here in Copenhagen and he said Samsung Evo 860 is what they use.


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## jcrosby (Aug 7, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> It's not a problem for purely reading from them (which is what sample libraries are all about), correct.


I was under the impression that read speeds slow down once you start getting around 80-90% full. That's not true? Or have newer architectures made this a moot point?


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## EvilDragon (Aug 7, 2019)

That's not true, indeed.


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## chimuelo (Aug 7, 2019)

I wouldn’t pay attention to benchmarks for SSDs.
My old Raptors (SATA HDD) stream fine at 68MB sequential read.

But even if a Samsung EVO or PRO doesn’t bench well it still works fine.
I think their Magician Software isn’t even necessary.

They bought it from a South Korean guy who used caching algorithms to get outrageous benchmarks. 
Makes you wonder why they would even bother since their NVMe Devices all the way back to XP941 are usually the best, the warranty’s are like enterprise devices, etc.
I’ve used Samsung DRAM NMVe and SSDs for years and the Magician software use to read insanely high numbers, then started reading out regular old 500+ and 95k Random.

Some say that’s slow but it layers instruments with super high polyphony so I don’t care what soft AS-SSD or Magician software benchmarks say.

If a drive starts gagging, then I’ll send it back, it has a 10 year warranty.
Don’t think it will ever happen but wish they would all die after 9 years so I can get new ones with Terabytes sequential 5 million in random.


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## stigc56 (Aug 8, 2019)

Well the Magician software doesn't run on Mac, so I have never used it.
On my slave 1 - Mac Pro 5.1 - I have a Crucial MX500 2TB SSD and it's by far the fastest of my SSD's write 437 read 514. That's interesting!


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## redlester (Aug 8, 2019)

I've only got one external SSD, a Samsung T5 1TB, and it's over 90% full. But it's only used for sample libaries. Have noticed no speed issues with it. I have no idea if TRIM is enabled, will look into that as I also have an SSD system drive which I think was retrofitted before I bought the computer (it's a second hand 2012 Mac Mini).


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