HD Tune Results for Samsung EVO 840 250GB and 300GB Velociraptor. Normal?

[skyhawk21]

So how does Samsung fix this issue? You cannot make firmware (software) fix bad TLC silicone chips. You could devise a new algorithm to help the data stay fresh!

Anyways how do I get my money back for these? If I RMA through Samsung they just send me the same crap. do they make SSD's with mlc chips?

My Kingston 90gb hyper-x and Adata cheapy 60gb have mlc and do not do this with data 60-90 days or older! Those are 2 year old drives!

I just bought all 3 Samsung 840 evo 250gb ssds in the last 3 months!

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Just logged into say that I just read the article. Pretty interesting that is what the issue is. I was actually thinking it was the cheap $85 motherboard I got as opposed to $120ish. Good to hear I didn't cripple my setup with a cheap mobo. And glad they're working on a fix.

Disappointed the article gives credit to the other sites when my thread on this site is several months older. LOL

 

[SSBrain]

If old data is affected, it either means that:

1) wear leveling isn't working properly -- given normal usage patterns, old data shouldn't have never had the chance to actually become "old" in the first place. This would be bad news as it implies that NAND flash cells that do not hold static data will wear up faster than those that do.

2) wear leveling is working properly, but somehow old data remains marked as old even after getting reshuffled/refreshed to different NAND flash cell locations. So perhaps to increase read operation reliability since the SSD's controller believes that data is getting old, it will take more time to perform this operation, leading to slower performance. Again, under normal usage patterns and no bugs this isn't something that a user would be supposed to experience.

To me, the way this issue is showing up points to SSD controller bugs rather than inherent problems with the TLC NAND memory of Samsung 840 drivers (at least, not directly), which means that a firmware update should be able to fix it.

 

[skyhawk21]

Lets hope firmware or software can fix it! If it cannot, Samsung has one hell of a big recall to conduct!

 

[Ranulf]

PCPer weighs in and does testing of their own:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...tible-flash-read-speed-degradation-over-time?

Guess its a good thing I haven't used the 840 Evo I picked up a few months ago.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[SSBrain]

Not too thrilled about PCPer's comments on how they managed to affect those drive's performance with temperature. Looks like Samsung followed the modern GPU approach to cooling: under-engineered (or in this case absent) cooling solutions are fine, because we can just have the chip throttle to manage thermals.

Crucial/Micron SSDs throttle speeds with temperature too and other SSD manufacturers likely do too. They even advertised it as a plus point as it increases read/write reliability.

http://www.micron.com/products/solid-state-storage/client-ssd/m500-ssd

Adaptive Thermal Throttling: Continuously samples temperature and monitors for extreme conditions. If the temperature exceeds 65°C (150°F), the drive works with the host to adjust NAND workload and power consumption to help decrease the temperature back within the acceptable range—an important feature for tightly designed systems with little airflow.

I think people are overreacting at this Samsung firmware bug and are too easily jumping on the "840/840 EVO/TLC/Samsung sucks" bandwagon.

 

[MongGrel]

I'm so glad I sold all my EVOs for 840 Pros.

However, recent events have really been eroding my faith in my 'buy mature hardware' philosophy. I mean if major issues are going to crop up after the hardware is well and truly mature, why even bother waiting?

Not too thrilled about PCPer's comments on how they managed to affect those drive's performance with temperature. Looks like Samsung followed the modern GPU approach to cooling: under-engineered (or in this case absent) cooling solutions are fine, because we can just have the chip throttle to manage thermals.

Was going to ask, but as the EVO's have been out a long time and have two and waiting a years to go there, the mature technology thing statement seems odd.

Have good airflow in this case and have noticed a throttling problem here on the drive bays I guess.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[skyhawk21]

So on a more serious note; because as all of us do, rely on our data being as safe as possible on drives we buy, that were "supposed" QC checked and sold, how do we rma and get our money back to buy a product that does work as advertised?

I have 2 - 840 evo 250G sata drives in my main game system. First is the boot drive, windows OS, and of course all my bench, internet, office, productivity apps. Second drive is my game drive which well of course is massive and small texture, audio, data files for games.

Third drive I own is a 840 evo 250g MSATA drive that took me forever to install in a hp split x2 laptop/tablet thing. It is showing same issues as I have posted already and the whole idea of installing the thing was to replace the older SSDso I had more size and of course twice the performance. Well now as it sits in my laptop in my closet, I pulled it out, ran the tests and its performing at the lowest of 27 or so MB per sec for reading and copying of those old files stored there. That is slower than the fastest read speed of a USB 2 flash disk! So what the hell is the point of having that as my main drive in a laptop/tablet?

How do we get Samsung to replace them with quality drives without the same problem or give us money back or coupon or whatever to buy different product from different manufacturer? I do not want to wait until October to see if the supposed "firmware fix" hides the problem, makes it worse or fixes it. I need the drives I dished out lots of money for, to be working correctly now!

 

[GlacierFreeze]

How do we get Samsung to

Hmm well calling them would be a start...

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Decided to try a few things. Quoted is from earlier. And I"m assuming I used the same default 16k settings from HD Tune. I was poking around a bit but it was set to that when I ran it. Looks like a decrease...

Thought I may see if there's any newer Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers. Uninstalled them, saw there weren't any. Decided to update BIOS to latest one on ASRock site. From 1.50 to 1.90 then reinstalled same IRST driver version. Jumpy lines seemed to be lower overall but AS SSD improved


After BIOS update and Reinstall of IRST drivers.

AS SSD before BIOS update and IRST reinstall

AS SSD after BIOS update and IRST reinstall

Biggest thing I notice is a significant increase in 4K writes. About 40MB/s improvement. Also access time dropped in half on write, but some reason can't display the read access time.

Yep, I'd say it's fixed! Knew something wasn't right, but at least my 6+ month thread can finally rest.

 

[mhy622]

Yep, I'd say it's fixed! Knew something wasn't right, but at least my 6+ month thread can finally rest.

how did you fix problem?

 

[lukszyk]

i bet it was fixed by Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/us/html/support/downloads.html

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Yep. Should've posted it, but with all the other threads about it at the time....