Samsung Is Working On A Fix For Slow 840 EVO SSDs

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 11:20 am

Although the article says it only affects the EVO 840 I am hearing from other sources that it also affects the standard 840, but not the 840 Pro.

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

No word on when the updated firmware will be released, but if you install the Samsung Magician app, it will check to see if there's an update and install it:

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

BTW for those of you who own other SSDs, it's REALLY important to make sure you have the latest firmware. SSDs are very much software driven and they often find bugs in the reallocation function that affect performance. Most manufacturers have an app (like Samsung's Magician) that you can leave install and run it once a month to see if there's an update. Some run in the background and notify you.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:07 pm

I have a Crucial CT240M500SSD1 in my new rig that I built this spring. Never thought of checking for a firmware update since I haven't been having any issues.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 11:19 pm

Yup, I check mine often. Oddly, I don't often find updates. Not sure if that's due to lack of support for older drives or what.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Tue Sep 23, 2014 8:57 am

i have a few of the non-EVO 840s. the Magician app notifies as soon as an update is available, so i just let it do it after checking the release notes on the firmware. no slowness experienced so far with the non-EVO for me.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 10:20 am

Fix will be out next week, although it's more than a firmware fix because the drive has to be "conditioned" to force it to level out old cells. They ran a beta of the fix on a system in this article, and it took an hour.

The article also demonstrates how you can see the difference in before and after tests using HD tach.

I'll be doing this on my workstation and gaming system next week (after imaging them first just in case) and will report back. I've noticed some slow down on the gaming system - game levels are loading slower than they did originally.

http://techreport.com/review/27212/sams ... h-old-data

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:29 pm

My 840 (non EVO) is showing the symptoms on my main workstation. Notice all the dips. An SSD should have a nearly flat line on read tests (this is not a SATA 6 controller on this mobo, which is why the speeds are so low):

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:31 pm

Even more dramatic on the 1TB 840 EVO on my gaming PC. The part of the graph on the right that's flat is the unused space on the drive that's never had any files on it.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:01 pm

Here is mine on an old Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop running win 8.1 x86:

Has a T2250 CPU: 1.73GHz and 2 gigs of ram. I was going to sell this laptop, but when I installed the SSD, it feels 10x faster than before. So now I'm going to use it until it dies.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 4:01 pm

The fix is out. It is only for the EVO 840 series (not the regular 840 or the 840 Pro).

Detailed article here on the process:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Sa ... back-speed

The firmware update is NOT detected or installed automatically by the Samsung Magician software. It is included in, and installed by, the Evo 840 Restoration Utility as the first step of the process. The utility then conditions the drive. In PCper's case it took 15 minutes, but they only had 25 GB on the drive. I expect my half full 1TB drive to take a lot longer.

You can download the Restoration tool here:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... loads.html
Scroll down to the "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software".

The utility will remind you that you should backup all your data before running this tool. This is HIGHLY recommended. I imaged my drive the other day in preparation for this.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:56 pm

Before and after. Now I just need to run the test in a month to see if the drive has deteriorated. The problem only occurs after data has gotten "stale" after a month. If it's still good in a month that will confirm it's really fixed.

DaMaN · Post by **DaMaN** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:59 pm

how long did the restoration process take you FP?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:10 pm

It took a little over 2.5 hours to do my 1 TB drive which was half full. You also need at least 10% free on the drive to perform the procedure.

Next I'll do my laptop.

Post by **Genom** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:15 pm

Glad I got a 840 Pro I guess.

DaMaN · Post by **DaMaN** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 9:42 pm

I have a 840 EVO-Series 250GB to do on Sunday. Thanks for the thorough write up.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:15 pm

Strange looking result on my laptop EVO 840 500GB.

The drive hasn't been in the laptop very long and was formatted before I installed it, so it wasn't showing the sharp spikes like the other drives, although it was definitely slower than normal on average.

While it's faster now, there are a LOT of dips in there. It should have smoothed things out like the other drives. Weird.

Before and after: