A few Samsung 840 SSD questions

[mikeymikec]

That is, just an 840 128GB SSD (not EVO, not PRO). I have one spare due to upgrading someone else's computer and they no longer had any use for this SSD. I'm partly wondering how (or whether to) come up with a new purpose for this disk.

I'm not overly impressed by the ATTO results for this disk (latency aside, the stats I'm getting for it put it in the same ballpark as my 3.5" WD Black, minimum of ~10/sec, max of ~200MB/sec).

I think this series requires a firmware upgrade in order to possibly regain some of its performance potential. Is this something that can be done while in Windows with the drive connected via USB? If so, do I need to be concerned about the fact that the host system has an 840 PRO attached?

If it requires a firmware upgrade in order to avoid some of the issues that I'm vaguely aware that the non-PRO drives had, will it make a big difference for the kind of figures I've mentioned?

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Don't think there is a firmware update for the 840, at least it hasn't had one for a long time.

In general performing a firmware update over USB may not work since it is not sure that Samsung Magician will recognize it as a Samsung SSD.

And if you think that there is a firmware update to fix its issue with old files being read slower then you're out of luck because Samsung has not and will not release one for the 840.
Nor would it improve the results in ATTO seeing as it does not read old files but rather creates a batch of them which it then reads.

The poor performance is due to it being low capacity and that it lacks an SLC-cache the more modern TLC SSDs have.
You could try performing a secure erase and then see how it performs but the 840 is not a very fast drive and the 120GB is the slowest one of them all.