Thanks for writing about this. So far Samsung support (almost impossible to contact by the way) wasn't very helpful in responding to the user complaints, saying the bug didn't show up on their end and that users shouldn't test with an old bench like HDTach (ironically used in this article).
Glad they acknowledge the issue and it is fixable.
I think it's general practice at big businesses to deny the existence of a problem and try to avoid all culpability until a fix has been found. After all, if you admit there's a problem and you can't actually fix it, you've basically killed your product. Samsung publicly admitting there's a problem means they're probably done with the fix and are just running internal validation at this point. Guess we'll see what happens next week.
It's sad that's considered an acceptable practice these days. It sounds like the result of the "share value > customer service" attitude created by publicly-traded corporations.
Why support customers. They've got their money already! New customers get drawn in by the marketing machine and existing customers get distracted by script reading monkeys. As for disgruntled customers, we all know that one screwball can't make a difference.
Congratulations to Anandtech.com and Kristian Vättö personally, who decided to expose this VERY SERIOUS BUG.
For all us customers of 840 EVO, I think it's a milestone that Samsung after this "outing" of anandtech, at least acknowledges the bug and hopefully they will fix it.
If they don't, they should be prepared for legal actions against them, in case they decide to not give us our money back.
Yeah, my thoughs exactly. Even though its still a great ssd and for some time, it was the best value for money, it was slowly outrun by competition with similar performing drives at lower pricepoints. And all of them feature a more robust MLC flash (well sandisk is an exception now).
Sorry mate - damage done. I was slightly[1] tempted by the Evo 840 until due diligence searching found the overclock thread on this subject.
[1] Until I realised it was TLC tech - but I was balancing that against Samsung who usually don't mess up - until now.
If Samsung had acknowledged early, and promised a fix was being worked on asap, I would have forgiven them. But I hate the stony corporate silence. There are alternatives, so I will be going with the Crucial M550. I'd be happiest with a Sandisk X110 but sadly not available in 515GB in mSATA.
Finally some more coverage of this. Hopefully they issue a fix for this soon.
Although one thing i do wonder; could this be an issue with the TLC flash itself ? I mean, its already really small (being 19nm) and having 8 states, that surly affects data retention or atleast accessing stuff, that has already lost some charge. Even if they manage to fix this with firmware, that doesn't rule out TLC as the main cause of this. They could tweak garbage collection in a manner, that shits around older data, so it stays "fresh".
My theory is that the NAND management algorithms don't take the changes in cell charges into account properly. Electrons leak through the silicon oxide over time, which may result in a change in the voltage state of the cell. That in turn would return an incorrect bit output when read, so the data must be recovered using ECC/parity, which makes it readable but the calculations take time and that translates to poor performance.
If this is indeed correct (although we're really just speculationg here) could this also potentially mean, that if there are lots of really old data on the drive that could translate to curruption ? I mean, ECC can only recover so much and if this does indeed get worse over time, curruption is quite possible. Atleast thats what i think
Technically yes. ECC and parity both have a limit of how much they can recover and if there are too many corrupted bits, then the whole data will be corrupt.
But yeah, that was just a theory I came up with. Once I have some actual information, I'll be sharing is ASAP.
1) Wear leveling isn't working properly and static data is not getting periodically reshuffled to new memory cells. The controller likely takes more time to read old static data in order to increase read operation reliability, but under normal usage patterns and no firmware bugs users aren't supposed to experience this. This bug would imply that a portion of NAND will have worn up more over time - bad news, but hopefully fixable.
2) Wear leveling is working properly, but somehow old data remains tagged as old even after getting reshuffled/refreshed to different NAND flash cell locations. In other words the SSD controller is acting needlessly conservatively in order to avoid read errors.
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 indeed be able to fix it.
If that's the case I won't be buying one of these ever again! MLC all the way from now on, my 250GB Crucial M500 mSata has been out performing my 120GB 840 EVO since I got it.
If this is true and you don't use a drive for a few months or a year you could loose all your data??
Kristian, good work on this being swiftly on the case. However, I am rather puzzled by your recommendation not to buy the drive until a fix has been issued. The EVO has been a solid drive since it's release and recommended many times by every man and his dog. This issue is not a critical one but more of an annoyance which has taken nearly a year to surface. Add in the fact a fix is probably only a few weeks away, your statement does seem rather dramatic.
To be fair, EVO is not exactly the best value for quite some time. So really, if you're in a market for budget drives, there are better/cheaper options, unless you're after nieches (1TB msata for example).
If lots of people recommend it, it doesn't make it a good value. I mean, SSD market is chaning quite quickly and one day this drive is a great value and the next isn't anymore, since competition is offering more for less.
And while issue may not be critical (although we really need for info on that) its certanly a VERY big annoyance to have a few month old files reading much slower than with an old HDD. Afterall, you do buy SSDs for speed.
Well the issue took a while to surface due to the nature of the problem
While the EVO offers good value, until a fix is released and proven working in the wild, why not just get other similar drives that offer very much the same performance/value and are not beset by potential issues.
Its doesn't affect all users/all drives or all data > a month. I have two of these in two different systems and have not noticed a single hiccup. If it affected all users, there would be a LOT more noise than an overclock.net thread, there are so many of these drives in the wild!
They'd need to test for 6 months or so at least for this issue to show up. That's 6 months of holding off from releasing a product in a fast moving industry. I'm all for well tested products but you can't test for everything.
You are correct that the EVO is still a solid drive and it has in fact been one of our recommendations since it was launched, but I don't feel comfortable recommending it until we have peace of mind that the issue has been solved. I'm confident that Samsung is able to deliver a fix on a timely matter, but there is always the possibility of "what if it's not fixable by firmware", in which case we would have an egg on our face for recommending a drive with a known problem.
buddy this is absolutely critical! my whole system (like many others) has been slowing down
i generally love my Samsung gear but until this is fixed they're on probation -you sound a little too much like a marketing department employee for my liking!
Great...and I've been using the damn things as OS/App/boot drives. Samsung needs to get their shit together. I have a Samsung refrigerator with a broken ice maker (less than 2 years old) and a dishwasher that only works on one setting (purchased at the same time as the refrigerator.)
Needless to say I have no confidence in the brand anymore.
I should have a confirmation next week, but the OEM drives are very likely affected too since they share the same firmware architecture as the retail drives.
Finally someone wrote about this huge issue. I'm amazed that it has taken the tech journalism world this long to bring this debilitating issue to light - especially after so many of them advocated these horrible horrible drives.
It's funny, I thought I was experiencing IO slowdowns at some times, but dismissed it as my imagination, since all my frequently used/updated stuff worked well. But OUCH, it is actually a lot worse than I thought...... http://i.imgur.com/LnBG1Pq.jpg
Some areas below 10Mb/s. Good thing I have backups! :/
I actually purchased this drive strictly for fast seek times and fast access to large amounts of small files that are never modified (aka streaming music samples for composition). I am VERY disappointed to hear of this problem, as it directly effects what I purchased the SSD to do! For anyone saying this isn't a big deal, I'm confused as to how they use HD's. Does no one access older files and want them to be accessed at the speeds they paid for when buying an SSD?
Any other recommendations of an alternate SSD, or should I just wait and hope Samsung can fix this issue? I really hope they allow for easy updates for Macs as well as PC's!!
I have samasung magic installed and it pretty much updates the drive when a new firmware comes out you just have to click OK and let the computer reboot.
Seriously? You don't think even in this degraded state, streaming music files will take exhaust the bandwidth available? There's no need to be a drama queen about it!
People forget why SSDs feel fast. It's mostly because they're low latency. As in, you do a read, and 0.1ms later the data is available, instead of the ~10ms it takes a HDD to get the same data. 40 vs 400 MB/s makes very little difference at the random IO level for most workloads. And for most sequential workloads, like your streaming files, the bandwidth requirements are low (for a SDD or HDD even).
Chill. If you haven't noticed yet, you probably never will. It's probably only been noticed on overclockers forums because these people like doing their (synthetic) benchmarks and noticed the issues as a result.
@TheWrongChristian FYI I am NOT streaming "music files," I am WRITING music compositions which involves reading thousands, if not 10's of thousands of small music samples at one time from all over the drive. Thus I'm not being a drama queen here - you just simply don't understand what it is I do. :-) (If you'd like me to explain it further let me know so you don't make the same assumption again). So again, this bug could be a show stopper for me and my work!
This is the typical error made when calculating the AUDIO sector computing needs. Even techs would be surprised to know that in several massive sectors of Audio, the actual state of the PC offerings are still far below regular usage needs. Have a look about a detailed post over a common latency problem in one of the barest uses of PC in Audio; while recording and trying to monitor it; "System latency:-Through the chip is 0.7 msec. to 0.8 msec per direction, which makes at least 1.4 msec for a roundtrip. Analog Digital ADC / DAC converters add 0.6 msec each way, for a 1.2 msec roundtrip. A big part of the delay is added by the OS and your computer. It could depend on the BIOS, drivers and different programs running. The PC / Mac need at least two buffers per direction to copy the data from the FireWire to the memory and from the memory to the ASIO buffers. The data from FireWire to memory takes 0.6 msec. A PC / MAC is only able to copy the data to or from ASIO buffers at minimum of 1 msec. So the best result ideally is a 3.2ms. This means that the lowest latency with such a system and standard Windows or MAC low level drivers is probably 5.8 msec (best case)."(link interpreted as spam by this site).
And that is not the end of the story; every Audio Software that works with plug-ins, like so call DAW (the digital version of old recording studios), or Musicians' performance Software, Dj Software, Composing tools, etc. routinely get introduced additional latencies. Increased -Yes-, if frequent visits to the Harddrive/SSD are required. The options for Audio Pro users are only two; either allow for high latencies (when <10ms of summed latencies are very difficult to achieve) or get audio glitches, what in other words is listeneable and obviously recordeable audio corruption. Bear in mind that >5ms of audio latency is already audible and in some occasions unbeareable for performers and Audio people.
///In the global view, SSDs have meant an advancement in this matter, but cannot solve the overall audio latency problem. Another advancement is the lower total latency Thunderbolt brings as compared to USB or even the more professional Firewire connector. There are a few brands pioneering this switch. However, the processing power needs of Audio are only starting and thus far from satisfied. Without extending in this, let my share this image; audio users tend to have a central software (for Studio, Performance/composing, DJing, Live Mixing, etc. works) typically a DAW which is akin to a stream of multiple simultaneous runs of audio, from 4 tracks to over 64, and each of them may pass thru different additional software (plugins iex Equalizers, reverbs, limiters, effects, and a long ever-increasing etc.). So far audio users have had to limit the number of those plugins applied or the count of tracks utilized, or even the basic DAW functions applied, despite the fact of using state of the art PCs. These simple Audio needs still remain elusive at related PC tech discussions.
So, I was basing my assumptions on your original post. I didn't assume it was a single music stream. A single 16-bit, 96KHz, stereo sample is what, <400KB/s? 40MB/s leaves you lots of bandwidth for many, many tracks, more tracks (100 perhaps?) than *you* could handle in realtime. And if you're not mixing in realtime, then is it a moot point?
There's been no indication that this bug has affected latency in any measurable way.
I'd be interested to know if you're already hit by the bug, but simply haven't noticed. Do a benchmark dump of all your small samples, and see what sort of bandwidth you get, then copy all the samples to a new directory, and repeat the test to see if it improves. If so, and you've not otherwise noticed any problems, then the problem simply doesn't affect you.
Sorry if the tone came across as disrespectful, however.
I have to agree, there is a general ignorance among the IT crowd about what is involved in a modern computer-based music composition studio. Never mind hundreds of samples of audio, we are talking THOUSANDS at once through hundreds of tracks, especially if you writing for full virtual orchestra (as most film composers are). Pile on top of this the insane deadlines typical in audio post-production and you can see start to see why composers need massive amounts of computing power. Not only do we have to be able to within minutes recall a session that uses 48+GB of RAM, we also have to be able to play our instruments in real-time with zero audio artifacts. Even with two PCs linked together in a master-slave configuration each with six-core 4.2 GHZ i7s, 128 GB of RAM, and all SATA 3 SSD drives, I still come up against the limit of what of my studio is able to do (usually the bottle neck is the random read speed). That's why composers like Hans Zimmer have *farms* of computers and a team of tech people at the ready to take care of them. Anything more than 50ms of total latency is unacceptable; from the time I play a note on my keyboard to the time I hear a note.
And that it high up in the ladder. Whereas a simple Dj with the best laptop out there will add a plug in and try to sync an external instrument... under 5ms (in order to not have conflicting beats on air) and the regular DJ software will crash when a linear phase plug in is selected. The performance is simply not there yet.
I haven't heard of or experienced this problem on the original 840 (non EVO) so it seems unlikely that it is a problem with the TLC NAND itself. It seems to just be a problem or bug in the EVO firmware.
Good to know, glad to see the community staying on top of this one until a fix came about.
Another odd thing I've noticed about these Samsung SSDs is RAID0 performance with an asynchronous number of SSDs. For example, 2 of these drives result in near-linear performance gains. Adding a 3rd drops results to less than 2, 4 returns it to near linear performance but limited to the same speed as 2 drives, adding a 5th drops it again. Very odd behavior. Other SSDs I have tested do not exhibit this problem, like Kingston HyperX and Sandisk Extreme II.
Hopefully this is addressed too in the firmware fix.
That sounds like an issue with the controller, the drives themselves don't know they're in a RAID. Possibly odd number of drives causes misaligned block sizes?
This article by Kristian begins by mentioning: "numerous reports of Samsung SSD 840 and 840 EVO having low read performance". So does this mean the 840 Pro and the 840 EVO versions both have this issue? And what about the previous generation 830 SSDs, do they have this issue? I wonder if anyone has tested the 830 models yet to confirm.
I do hope they would release a firmware update for the discontinued 840 non-Evo drives too... I have a 500GB one installed in a macbook and the it is getting between 10-20MB/s read speeds...
Wow I just tested mine and its happening to me too. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lGVzZeS.jpg[/IMG] First 50GB are reading very slowly. Trying to refresh the drive with a utility I found in the meantime.
Interesting, I seem not to be affected, or at least not to a significant level. My sequential reads never drop below ~160mb/s (and that's a few specific dips, otherwise it's 200+). This is my OS drive so there are definitely areas that haven't seen a write for over a month.
If your SSD drive does not sustain around 400MBs across the entire drive, then you may as well get a bog standard SATA III 7200rpm 16MB buffer Toshiba 500GB for a fraction of the cost, because that delivers a steady 170MBs across the entire drive and it's not a SSD!
And you've really missed the point of an SSD from a performance POV.
I used to laugh at all the IDE nerds bragging how their EIDE was upwards of 133MB/s, and would whup the ass of the old school UltraWide SCSI (40 MB/s), yet my 10000rpm cheetah at the time would see off pretty much any IDE HDD of the time.
It ultimately isn't about peak bandwidth. It's about low latency. And it appears that most people haven't even noticed this problem, and then only did using synthetic benchmarks.
Agreed totally. A spinning disk can have high numbers for sequential reads, but latency and random reads don't even compare to an SSD.
BTW, I'm one of those that has an 840 EVO (in my laptop) and hasn't noticed a problem, at all. Either it's not occurring, or I'll need to run some benchmarks and go "gosh I guess that's a problem".
It's very fast, from what I can tell just by using it.
so what happens if we have these drives in RAID? can't update firmware as long as they are in raid, we gotta remove raid and then do it drive by drive.
Also, YES, you DO have to break the RAID to update firmware, as I discovered to my horror, but I don't think this is much different with other manufacturers of SSDs too.
wouldnt it help to just backup with ghost/acronis/macrium then format the drive and restore the backup? all files will be new then, atleast for the disk.
Windows defrag did nothing for me, so looking at mydefrag now. I imagine a 'Move To End Of Disk' script followed by a 'Force Together' would do the trick, at the expense of a couple of P/E cycles.
Wow, DiskFresh worked for me on my 120GB 840 EVO. Now seq read doesn't drop below 200MB/s for the entire drive! Before half the drive was below 50MB/s and dropping to around 10MB/s.
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be very healthy for the drive to run this too often, but as a once off to restore lost performance it really works, thanks!
Refresh my memory? I recall that controllers *routinely* moved all data on the NAND as part of wear leveling, including unmodified blocks. When did controllers (or, only Samsung's) stop doing this?
Interesting...I wonder if a full backup and restore of the drive would (temporarily) restore its full speed. (Not a practical solution, just wondering...)
-Excuse me, but aren't ALL SSD (and NAND flash storage) have wear-leveling algorithm that supposed to move around (shuffle) the data internally? So those old data never get shuffelled at all?
-What about data retention? What'll happen to the data in a drive that has been unplugged for months/years?
-And how about the earlier 840 (non-EVO, non-Pro) which use 21nm TLC NAND (versus 19nm TLC NAND in 840 EVO)? Does it has the same issue too? I helped a relative upgraded his ProBook 6555b to a 120GB 840. :(
OLD data wouldn't get shuffled, that would make the drive wear out faster. Leveling means that when it is time to write NEW data that it is placed in an area that has the fewest previous writes.
Yes, it looks as if old data never gets shuffled, which means it's likely to be a issue in the firmware's programming logic rather than hardware problems. Wear leveling is indeed supposed to shuffle all the data, both old (static) and new, so there isn't supposed to be "old data" inside the SSD in need of refreshing (reprogramming) in the first place with normal usage patterns.
The data retention time is supposed to be at least one year for cells at the end of their rated life (1000 program/erase cycles for Samsung TLC NAND).
Earlier 840 seem to be affected as well (mine is, at least) by this issue. I wonder if this actually started showing with one of the latest firmwares. It seems strange to me that people started experiencing it only relatively recently.
I just checked my 120GB 840 Evo in my laptop and the seq read is below 50MB/s across half of the drive and dropping to single figures. This thing has performed terribly since a few weeks after I installed the OS, my laptop sometimes takes longer to start up then it did with the HD. I know it's only a 120GB, but I hope a firmware update can sort this!
I actually tried to return it after about a month, but the return shipping and restocking fees made it not worth while and they would not accept that it was underperforming for an RMA.
Oh my, i just bought one these as my sys drive last week!!! Thank goodness a new firmware is coming out, i just purchased it based on all the good reviews....didnt realize there was a problem past the one month mark!! Good thing Samsung is releasing a fix soon...
I just got off the phone with Samsung and the good news is that they are aware of the problem and have presumably found the source of it. The engineers are now working on an updated firmware to fix the bug and as soon as the fix has been validated, the new firmware will be distributed to end-users. Unfortunately there is no ETA for the fix, but obviously it is in Samsung's best interest to provide it as soon as possible.
Yes, I read that. Respectfully, that is not a "release" from the company. I was looking for something more "official", something that is kinda binding upon them. As it is now there is NOTHING from the company to the public. Samsung is not known for being communicative with their customers, IMO.
Two weeks ago I fired up an old E8400 Core2Duo to do a Windows 7 update. It had been at least 6 months since I last turned it on. I have a 840 EVO as the OS drive. Seemed to take forever to bootup and I wondered what the heck had happened. I haven't messed with it since but it sounds like this is the problem.
My not so old Samsung 500GB SpinPoint F1 HDD got CRC errors, but fortunetaly still works. My Samsung 20" SyncMaster 206BW monitor got vertical lines artifacts seen when is black sreen and black colour is also with artifacts.
Only thing from you I have and which work is Samsung GT-S5230 cell phone.
I don't count some ugly Samsung mouse which I also have.
Now I read this.
Nice job Samsung, I know that I will higly unlikely buy anything from you again.
Hello guys, like most here, also use an Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250, recently I heard this news, today I made a test to determine this problem reported by many! Link the images of the tests: http://imgur.com/a/wvjgf What do you think? Please.
Thank u for editing with an updated release date, & good thing samsung fixed it....october 15th cant come soon enough for those of us with the 840 evo as a system drive! I wonder how much this has effected sales as all the tech forums ssd/hdd sections on the net are abuzz with this. It was a really popular ssd back in the day...
When the firmware update fix becomes available will I need to reformat my drive and os then apply the fix? I tried doing an update a year ago with a kingston hyper ssd and it kept blue screening.
I will be using this as a primary os drive or do you guys have any other options for a os ssd that won't need a fix at the moment?
I have an unboxed 500GB 840EVO. Hopefully SAMSUNG will release the fix October 15th (yes that’s tomorrow) as I have only one more week left to trade in the EVO for another product.
If the fix is not released in the coming days then I will trade in for a 250GB 840PRO with proven track record and no reports about performance bug. That’s probably my best option?
Hopefully SAMSUNG will also advise on the root cause of this performance bug and the way they have implemented the fix. More important will full speed be restored on old files and will the fix affect life-time of the SSD.
I assume we have sufficient candidates here with 840 EVO disks and old data files that can validate the fix we are all waiting for.
850PRO newest technology is advertised as ‘the way to go’ but I prefer to see some feedback from users and maybe in some months we can definitely say that 850PRO is the way to go.
Let’s see ‘tomorrow’ if SAMSUNG can keep a promise and make the 840EVO a top-class SSD.
Could "Anandtech" call these guys again and ask them what the h**l is going on and why is this update not released? Cause sure as h**l they are not moved by individual users, what do they care if I buy their products, if I do not represent a big corp. customer to suck up to I am irrelevant. I am running an 840 Evo 250G since February with the latest firmware. The performance is a disgrace. I have recommended against buying Samsung SSD in the past 6 months and will continue to do so until I see a change. I am working in a big enterprise software provider and we are looking for ways to improve performance. I was the first and only one to buy a Samsung. The performance of this SSD is laughable, why would they?
Looks like we aren't going to get this firmware download for Mac / Linux users today or for a while. From Samsungs download page - Dos version for MAC, Linux users Will be released on end of Oct. Shame on them.
Yeah I used the DOS Version Samsung EVO 840 Performance Restore ISO as I am using a EVO 840 1 TB in my Macbook with native only MAC OSX. It was 15 Minutes or so Performance + update to the firmware!!
My 840 EVO is nearly a year old but has not had heavy use in my HTPC and showed no symptoms. The repair tool worked with no problems. It took about a half hour to repair my 120 G drive.
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sweeper765 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Thanks for writing about this. So far Samsung support (almost impossible to contact by the way) wasn't very helpful in responding to the user complaints, saying the bug didn't show up on their end and that users shouldn't test with an old bench like HDTach (ironically used in this article).Glad they acknowledge the issue and it is fixable.
JarredWalton - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I think it's general practice at big businesses to deny the existence of a problem and try to avoid all culpability until a fix has been found. After all, if you admit there's a problem and you can't actually fix it, you've basically killed your product. Samsung publicly admitting there's a problem means they're probably done with the fix and are just running internal validation at this point. Guess we'll see what happens next week.jay401 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
It's sad that's considered an acceptable practice these days. It sounds like the result of the "share value > customer service" attitude created by publicly-traded corporations.semo - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Why support customers. They've got their money already! New customers get drawn in by the marketing machine and existing customers get distracted by script reading monkeys. As for disgruntled customers, we all know that one screwball can't make a difference.Fergy - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
That is why you should force companies to by law give 5 years warranty. Maybe some components even more.NikosD - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Congratulations to Anandtech.com and Kristian Vättö personally, who decided to expose this VERY SERIOUS BUG.For all us customers of 840 EVO, I think it's a milestone that Samsung after this "outing" of anandtech, at least acknowledges the bug and hopefully they will fix it.
If they don't, they should be prepared for legal actions against them, in case they decide to not give us our money back.
jowdy - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Hopefully people can now shut the hell up about this *still* amazing series of SSDs.Dismount off the Bandwagon, folks.
hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Yeah, my thoughs exactly.Even though its still a great ssd and for some time, it was the best value for money, it was slowly outrun by competition with similar performing drives at lower pricepoints. And all of them feature a more robust MLC flash (well sandisk is an exception now).
MacDude2112 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Anyone care to recommend specific alternatives, hopefully in a 500GB capacity? I'm open to suggestions.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
mx100tim851 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Crucial M550, available as 2.5" SATA drives and M.2 SATA modules.TimJWatts - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
Crucial M550TimJWatts - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
No - scrub that (Crucual M550) - serious queued TRIM bug:http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD...
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71371
and no firmware releases from manufacturer for the M550 series.
Oh well, better check out the Transcend MSA370 and see if that has any nasties.
SanX - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
What's amazing is here? It sometimes slows down to *seconds* of waiting which looks like 1 bit per second speed? I stopped using this sh!tTimJWatts - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
Sorry mate - damage done. I was slightly[1] tempted by the Evo 840 until due diligence searching found the overclock thread on this subject.[1] Until I realised it was TLC tech - but I was balancing that against Samsung who usually don't mess up - until now.
If Samsung had acknowledged early, and promised a fix was being worked on asap, I would have forgiven them. But I hate the stony corporate silence. There are alternatives, so I will be going with the Crucial M550. I'd be happiest with a Sandisk X110 but sadly not available in 515GB in mSATA.
TimJWatts - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
Re Crucial M550 - bug alert, see my post just previous to this one.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Finally some more coverage of this. Hopefully they issue a fix for this soon.Although one thing i do wonder; could this be an issue with the TLC flash itself ?
I mean, its already really small (being 19nm) and having 8 states, that surly affects data retention or atleast accessing stuff, that has already lost some charge.
Even if they manage to fix this with firmware, that doesn't rule out TLC as the main cause of this. They could tweak garbage collection in a manner, that shits around older data, so it stays "fresh".
hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
*shiftsSilly me :)
Kristian Vättö - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
My theory is that the NAND management algorithms don't take the changes in cell charges into account properly. Electrons leak through the silicon oxide over time, which may result in a change in the voltage state of the cell. That in turn would return an incorrect bit output when read, so the data must be recovered using ECC/parity, which makes it readable but the calculations take time and that translates to poor performance.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
If this is indeed correct (although we're really just speculationg here) could this also potentially mean, that if there are lots of really old data on the drive that could translate to curruption ? I mean, ECC can only recover so much and if this does indeed get worse over time, curruption is quite possible. Atleast thats what i thinkKristian Vättö - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Technically yes. ECC and parity both have a limit of how much they can recover and if there are too many corrupted bits, then the whole data will be corrupt.But yeah, that was just a theory I came up with. Once I have some actual information, I'll be sharing is ASAP.
Kristian Vättö - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
*sharing IT ASAP.I guess that's a sign that I need to call it a day and get some sleep.
hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
this site REALLY needs an EDIT function :)Coup27 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Definitely.hrrmph - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Nope. It's a feature not a flaw.And it's working just as it should.
Good on Kristian for calling it the way it is and admitting that he is too tired to post.
Solid State Brain - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
If old data is affected, it either means that:1) Wear leveling isn't working properly and static data is not getting periodically reshuffled to new memory cells. The controller likely takes more time to read old static data in order to increase read operation reliability, but under normal usage patterns and no firmware bugs users aren't supposed to experience this. This bug would imply that a portion of NAND will have worn up more over time - bad news, but hopefully fixable.
2) Wear leveling is working properly, but somehow old data remains tagged as old even after getting reshuffled/refreshed to different NAND flash cell locations. In other words the SSD controller is acting needlessly conservatively in order to avoid read errors.
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 indeed be able to fix it.
kgh00007 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
If that's the case I won't be buying one of these ever again! MLC all the way from now on, my 250GB Crucial M500 mSata has been out performing my 120GB 840 EVO since I got it.If this is true and you don't use a drive for a few months or a year you could loose all your data??
Coup27 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Kristian, good work on this being swiftly on the case. However, I am rather puzzled by your recommendation not to buy the drive until a fix has been issued. The EVO has been a solid drive since it's release and recommended many times by every man and his dog. This issue is not a critical one but more of an annoyance which has taken nearly a year to surface. Add in the fact a fix is probably only a few weeks away, your statement does seem rather dramatic.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
To be fair, EVO is not exactly the best value for quite some time. So really, if you're in a market for budget drives, there are better/cheaper options, unless you're after nieches (1TB msata for example).If lots of people recommend it, it doesn't make it a good value. I mean, SSD market is chaning quite quickly and one day this drive is a great value and the next isn't anymore, since competition is offering more for less.
Coup27 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I want to retract my comment. On second reading you simply said to hold off buying the drive until a fix has been released.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
And while issue may not be critical (although we really need for info on that) its certanly a VERY big annoyance to have a few month old files reading much slower than with an old HDD. Afterall, you do buy SSDs for speed.hojnikb - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
*morestickmansam - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Well the issue took a while to surface due to the nature of the problemWhile the EVO offers good value, until a fix is released and proven working in the wild, why not just get other similar drives that offer very much the same performance/value and are not beset by potential issues.
mrdude - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
"Well the issue took a while to surface due to the nature of the problem"So Samsung doesn't thoroughly test their drives? They never bothered to read data that was written and not accessed a month ago?
I'm not sure I like that answer... at all, frankly.
stickmansam - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I wonder how much long term retention testing is doneand if the tests are done, do they only look if the data is accessible or do they consider if there is any speed degradation
I'm thinking this is an issue with TLC long term retention
wintermute000 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Its doesn't affect all users/all drives or all data > a month.I have two of these in two different systems and have not noticed a single hiccup.
If it affected all users, there would be a LOT more noise than an overclock.net thread, there are so many of these drives in the wild!
Gigaplex - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
They'd need to test for 6 months or so at least for this issue to show up. That's 6 months of holding off from releasing a product in a fast moving industry. I'm all for well tested products but you can't test for everything.Kristian Vättö - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
You are correct that the EVO is still a solid drive and it has in fact been one of our recommendations since it was launched, but I don't feel comfortable recommending it until we have peace of mind that the issue has been solved. I'm confident that Samsung is able to deliver a fix on a timely matter, but there is always the possibility of "what if it's not fixable by firmware", in which case we would have an egg on our face for recommending a drive with a known problem.hrrmph - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Even a firmware fix is an irritating disruption.Samsung apparently moved too quickly when it pulled so far ahead of Intel. Now Intel reliability is looking more attractive again.
fallaha56 - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
buddy this is absolutely critical! my whole system (like many others) has been slowing downi generally love my Samsung gear but until this is fixed they're on probation -you sound a little too much like a marketing department employee for my liking!
TEAMSWITCHER - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Great...and I've been using the damn things as OS/App/boot drives. Samsung needs to get their shit together. I have a Samsung refrigerator with a broken ice maker (less than 2 years old) and a dishwasher that only works on one setting (purchased at the same time as the refrigerator.)Needless to say I have no confidence in the brand anymore.
danstek - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
To be fair, Samsung's home appliance division has nothing to do with Samsung semiconductors.fallaha56 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
i'm in the same spot bud -but at least now i understand why my system feels so slow loldanstek - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
What about OEM versions of this drive?Kristian Vättö - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I should have a confirmation next week, but the OEM drives are very likely affected too since they share the same firmware architecture as the retail drives.PCHardwareDude - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Finally someone wrote about this huge issue. I'm amazed that it has taken the tech journalism world this long to bring this debilitating issue to light - especially after so many of them advocated these horrible horrible drives.Beef Meister - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
It's funny, I thought I was experiencing IO slowdowns at some times, but dismissed it as my imagination, since all my frequently used/updated stuff worked well. But OUCH, it is actually a lot worse than I thought...... http://i.imgur.com/LnBG1Pq.jpgSome areas below 10Mb/s. Good thing I have backups! :/
fallaha56 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
me too buddy -thought i was imagining thingsMacDude2112 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I actually purchased this drive strictly for fast seek times and fast access to large amounts of small files that are never modified (aka streaming music samples for composition). I am VERY disappointed to hear of this problem, as it directly effects what I purchased the SSD to do! For anyone saying this isn't a big deal, I'm confused as to how they use HD's. Does no one access older files and want them to be accessed at the speeds they paid for when buying an SSD?Any other recommendations of an alternate SSD, or should I just wait and hope Samsung can fix this issue? I really hope they allow for easy updates for Macs as well as PC's!!
Coup27 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
They do. Samsung release their updates via Windows software and .ISO files you can boot.themeinme75 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I have samasung magic installed and it pretty much updates the drive when a new firmware comes out you just have to click OK and let the computer reboot.stickmansam - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I would wait a while for a fix, if not, the MX100 is a good choiceTheWrongChristian - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Seriously? You don't think even in this degraded state, streaming music files will take exhaust the bandwidth available? There's no need to be a drama queen about it!People forget why SSDs feel fast. It's mostly because they're low latency. As in, you do a read, and 0.1ms later the data is available, instead of the ~10ms it takes a HDD to get the same data. 40 vs 400 MB/s makes very little difference at the random IO level for most workloads. And for most sequential workloads, like your streaming files, the bandwidth requirements are low (for a SDD or HDD even).
Chill. If you haven't noticed yet, you probably never will. It's probably only been noticed on overclockers forums because these people like doing their (synthetic) benchmarks and noticed the issues as a result.
MacDude2112 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
@TheWrongChristian FYI I am NOT streaming "music files," I am WRITING music compositions which involves reading thousands, if not 10's of thousands of small music samples at one time from all over the drive. Thus I'm not being a drama queen here - you just simply don't understand what it is I do. :-) (If you'd like me to explain it further let me know so you don't make the same assumption again). So again, this bug could be a show stopper for me and my work!Nexing - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
This is the typical error made when calculating the AUDIO sector computing needs. Even techs would be surprised to know that in several massive sectors of Audio, the actual state of the PC offerings are still far below regular usage needs.Have a look about a detailed post over a common latency problem in one of the barest uses of PC in Audio; while recording and trying to monitor it;
"System latency:-Through the chip is 0.7 msec. to 0.8 msec per direction, which
makes at least 1.4 msec for a roundtrip. Analog Digital ADC / DAC converters add 0.6 msec each way, for a 1.2 msec roundtrip. A big part of the delay is added by the OS and your computer. It
could depend on the BIOS, drivers and different programs running. The PC / Mac need at least two buffers per direction to copy the data from the FireWire to the memory and from the memory
to the ASIO buffers. The data from FireWire to memory takes 0.6 msec. A PC / MAC is only able to copy the data to or from ASIO buffers at minimum of 1 msec. So the best result ideally is a 3.2ms. This means that the lowest latency with such a system and standard Windows or MAC low level drivers is probably 5.8 msec (best case)."(link interpreted as spam by this site).
And that is not the end of the story; every Audio Software that works with plug-ins, like so call DAW (the digital version of old recording studios), or Musicians' performance Software, Dj Software, Composing tools, etc. routinely get introduced additional latencies. Increased -Yes-, if frequent visits to the Harddrive/SSD are required.
The options for Audio Pro users are only two; either allow for high latencies (when <10ms of summed latencies are very difficult to achieve) or get audio glitches, what in other words is listeneable and obviously recordeable audio corruption.
Bear in mind that >5ms of audio latency is already audible and in some occasions unbeareable for performers and Audio people.
///In the global view, SSDs have meant an advancement in this matter, but cannot solve the overall audio latency problem. Another advancement is the lower total latency Thunderbolt brings as compared to USB or even the more professional Firewire connector. There are a few brands pioneering this switch.
However, the processing power needs of Audio are only starting and thus far from satisfied. Without extending in this, let my share this image; audio users tend to have a central software (for Studio, Performance/composing, DJing, Live Mixing, etc. works) typically a DAW which is akin to a stream of multiple simultaneous runs of audio, from 4 tracks to over 64, and each of them may pass thru different additional software (plugins iex Equalizers, reverbs, limiters, effects, and a long ever-increasing etc.).
So far audio users have had to limit the number of those plugins applied or the count of tracks utilized, or even the basic DAW functions applied, despite the fact of using state of the art PCs.
These simple Audio needs still remain elusive at related PC tech discussions.
TheWrongChristian - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
To quote:"(aka streaming music samples for composition)"
So, I was basing my assumptions on your original post. I didn't assume it was a single music stream. A single 16-bit, 96KHz, stereo sample is what, <400KB/s? 40MB/s leaves you lots of bandwidth for many, many tracks, more tracks (100 perhaps?) than *you* could handle in realtime. And if you're not mixing in realtime, then is it a moot point?
There's been no indication that this bug has affected latency in any measurable way.
I'd be interested to know if you're already hit by the bug, but simply haven't noticed. Do a benchmark dump of all your small samples, and see what sort of bandwidth you get, then copy all the samples to a new directory, and repeat the test to see if it improves. If so, and you've not otherwise noticed any problems, then the problem simply doesn't affect you.
Sorry if the tone came across as disrespectful, however.
composer1 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
I have to agree, there is a general ignorance among the IT crowd about what is involved in a modern computer-based music composition studio. Never mind hundreds of samples of audio, we are talking THOUSANDS at once through hundreds of tracks, especially if you writing for full virtual orchestra (as most film composers are). Pile on top of this the insane deadlines typical in audio post-production and you can see start to see why composers need massive amounts of computing power. Not only do we have to be able to within minutes recall a session that uses 48+GB of RAM, we also have to be able to play our instruments in real-time with zero audio artifacts. Even with two PCs linked together in a master-slave configuration each with six-core 4.2 GHZ i7s, 128 GB of RAM, and all SATA 3 SSD drives, I still come up against the limit of what of my studio is able to do (usually the bottle neck is the random read speed). That's why composers like Hans Zimmer have *farms* of computers and a team of tech people at the ready to take care of them. Anything more than 50ms of total latency is unacceptable; from the time I play a note on my keyboard to the time I hear a note.Nexing - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
And that it high up in the ladder. Whereas a simple Dj with the best laptop out there will add a plug in and try to sync an external instrument... under 5ms (in order to not have conflicting beats on air) and the regular DJ software will crash when a linear phase plug in is selected.The performance is simply not there yet.
iamezza - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I haven't heard of or experienced this problem on the original 840 (non EVO) so it seems unlikely that it is a problem with the TLC NAND itself. It seems to just be a problem or bug in the EVO firmware.hojnikb - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
There are reports of slowdown even on 840basic, so its defenetly something with TLC.xkiller213 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
definitely affects the 840 too... see my screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/NLAMGmp.pngchizow - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Good to know, glad to see the community staying on top of this one until a fix came about.Another odd thing I've noticed about these Samsung SSDs is RAID0 performance with an asynchronous number of SSDs. For example, 2 of these drives result in near-linear performance gains. Adding a 3rd drops results to less than 2, 4 returns it to near linear performance but limited to the same speed as 2 drives, adding a 5th drops it again. Very odd behavior. Other SSDs I have tested do not exhibit this problem, like Kingston HyperX and Sandisk Extreme II.
Hopefully this is addressed too in the firmware fix.
Gigaplex - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
That sounds like an issue with the controller, the drives themselves don't know they're in a RAID. Possibly odd number of drives causes misaligned block sizes?Indio22 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
This article by Kristian begins by mentioning: "numerous reports of Samsung SSD 840 and 840 EVO having low read performance". So does this mean the 840 Pro and the 840 EVO versions both have this issue? And what about the previous generation 830 SSDs, do they have this issue? I wonder if anyone has tested the 830 models yet to confirm.Gigaplex - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Pro is likely unaffected since it doesn't use TLC NAND.xkiller213 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I do hope they would release a firmware update for the discontinued 840 non-Evo drives too... I have a 500GB one installed in a macbook and the it is getting between 10-20MB/s read speeds...ThisWasATriumph - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
Wow I just tested mine and its happening to me too. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lGVzZeS.jpg[/IMG] First 50GB are reading very slowly. Trying to refresh the drive with a utility I found in the meantime.TheWrongChristian - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
And the fact you never previously noticed tells you what?Samus - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
This seems to only apply to TLC NAND drives?Friendly0Fire - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Interesting, I seem not to be affected, or at least not to a significant level. My sequential reads never drop below ~160mb/s (and that's a few specific dips, otherwise it's 200+). This is my OS drive so there are definitely areas that haven't seen a write for over a month.graphicequaliser - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
If your SSD drive does not sustain around 400MBs across the entire drive, then you may as well get a bog standard SATA III 7200rpm 16MB buffer Toshiba 500GB for a fraction of the cost, because that delivers a steady 170MBs across the entire drive and it's not a SSD!TheWrongChristian - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
And you've really missed the point of an SSD from a performance POV.I used to laugh at all the IDE nerds bragging how their EIDE was upwards of 133MB/s, and would whup the ass of the old school UltraWide SCSI (40 MB/s), yet my 10000rpm cheetah at the time would see off pretty much any IDE HDD of the time.
It ultimately isn't about peak bandwidth. It's about low latency. And it appears that most people haven't even noticed this problem, and then only did using synthetic benchmarks.
barleyguy - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Agreed totally. A spinning disk can have high numbers for sequential reads, but latency and random reads don't even compare to an SSD.BTW, I'm one of those that has an 840 EVO (in my laptop) and hasn't noticed a problem, at all. Either it's not occurring, or I'll need to run some benchmarks and go "gosh I guess that's a problem".
It's very fast, from what I can tell just by using it.
Morawka - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
so what happens if we have these drives in RAID? can't update firmware as long as they are in raid, we gotta remove raid and then do it drive by drive.Notmyusualid - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
These drives are absolutely terrible in RAID0. Please don't do it. I tried already.Notmyusualid - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Also, YES, you DO have to break the RAID to update firmware, as I discovered to my horror, but I don't think this is much different with other manufacturers of SSDs too.Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
is there a workaround yet? beside installing everthing new...... will samsung only fix the EVO series?hojnikb - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
you can defrag the drive..Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
how will defrag help? i guess the data has to be moved, newly written.but when the data is not fragmented it will not be moved.
terrorbobo - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
wouldnt it help to just backup with ghost/acronis/macrium then format the drive and restore the backup? all files will be new then, atleast for the disk.Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
thats what i meant.... but it´s a bit cumbersome....hojnikb - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
People are reporting, that using mydefrag helps restoring performance.Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
i juste tested with the win7 defrag tool.it´s now a bit better (from min. 20 mb/s to 120mb/s) but still not good. :-(
Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
i now defrag again with mydefrag and will report if it´s better after that.Beef Meister - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Windows defrag did nothing for me, so looking at mydefrag now. I imagine a 'Move To End Of Disk' script followed by a 'Force Together' would do the trick, at the expense of a couple of P/E cycles.Anybody have any better suggestions?
Gothmoth - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
indeed mydefrag restored my 840 back to full perfiormance.thx for th advice!
Notmyusualid - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Mydefrag didn't help me.ThisWasATriumph - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
I used a utility call DiskFresh and it worked great. Basically it just reads and writes each sector once. Drive is now back to nearly full speed.kgh00007 - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
Wow, DiskFresh worked for me on my 120GB 840 EVO. Now seq read doesn't drop below 200MB/s for the entire drive!Before half the drive was below 50MB/s and dropping to around 10MB/s.
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be very healthy for the drive to run this too often, but as a once off to restore lost performance it really works, thanks!
Notmyusualid - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
I have 2x 250GB 840 Evo's.I have been telling others they were garbage long ago, receiving many 'thumbs-down' etc on other forums. Now I feel a little 'vindicated'.
You'll not see me part with money for TLC again.
FunBunny2 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Refresh my memory? I recall that controllers *routinely* moved all data on the NAND as part of wear leveling, including unmodified blocks. When did controllers (or, only Samsung's) stop doing this?cooldadd - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Interesting...I wonder if a full backup and restore of the drive would (temporarily) restore its full speed. (Not a practical solution, just wondering...)Musafir_86 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
-Excuse me, but aren't ALL SSD (and NAND flash storage) have wear-leveling algorithm that supposed to move around (shuffle) the data internally? So those old data never get shuffelled at all?-What about data retention? What'll happen to the data in a drive that has been unplugged for months/years?
-And how about the earlier 840 (non-EVO, non-Pro) which use 21nm TLC NAND (versus 19nm TLC NAND in 840 EVO)? Does it has the same issue too? I helped a relative upgraded his ProBook 6555b to a 120GB 840. :(
Regards.
hojnikb - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
840basic is also reported to have this issues.GTVic - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
OLD data wouldn't get shuffled, that would make the drive wear out faster. Leveling means that when it is time to write NEW data that it is placed in an area that has the fewest previous writes.Solid State Brain - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
Yes, it looks as if old data never gets shuffled, which means it's likely to be a issue in the firmware's programming logic rather than hardware problems. Wear leveling is indeed supposed to shuffle all the data, both old (static) and new, so there isn't supposed to be "old data" inside the SSD in need of refreshing (reprogramming) in the first place with normal usage patterns.The data retention time is supposed to be at least one year for cells at the end of their rated life (1000 program/erase cycles for Samsung TLC NAND).
Earlier 840 seem to be affected as well (mine is, at least) by this issue.
I wonder if this actually started showing with one of the latest firmwares. It seems strange to me that people started experiencing it only relatively recently.
kgh00007 - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
I just checked my 120GB 840 Evo in my laptop and the seq read is below 50MB/s across half of the drive and dropping to single figures. This thing has performed terribly since a few weeks after I installed the OS, my laptop sometimes takes longer to start up then it did with the HD. I know it's only a 120GB, but I hope a firmware update can sort this!I actually tried to return it after about a month, but the return shipping and restocking fees made it not worth while and they would not accept that it was underperforming for an RMA.
poohbear - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Oh my, i just bought one these as my sys drive last week!!! Thank goodness a new firmware is coming out, i just purchased it based on all the good reviews....didnt realize there was a problem past the one month mark!! Good thing Samsung is releasing a fix soon...chas_martel - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
When did they release info about an updated firmware? I've seen/heard nothing.Gothmoth - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
it´s written in this anandtech article:I just got off the phone with Samsung and the good news is that they are aware of the problem and have presumably found the source of it. The engineers are now working on an updated firmware to fix the bug and as soon as the fix has been validated, the new firmware will be distributed to end-users. Unfortunately there is no ETA for the fix, but obviously it is in Samsung's best interest to provide it as soon as possible.
chas_martel - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
Yes, I read that. Respectfully, that is not a "release" from the company. I was looking for somethingmore "official", something that is kinda binding upon them. As it is now there is NOTHING from the company to the public. Samsung is not known for being communicative with their customers, IMO.
Gothmoth - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
nobody spoke about that samsung HAS released it already.....SputBob - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Two weeks ago I fired up an old E8400 Core2Duo to do a Windows 7 update. It had been at least 6 months since I last turned it on. I have a 840 EVO as the OS drive. Seemed to take forever to bootup and I wondered what the heck had happened. I haven't messed with it since but it sounds like this is the problem.trparky - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
http://www.golem.de/news/samsung-ssd-firmware-fuer...Translated from German to English by Google...
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&...
It seems that a firmware fix will be appearing for both the 840 and the 840 EVO on October 15th, according to the article linked above.
cpupro - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
My not so old Samsung 500GB SpinPoint F1 HDD got CRC errors, but fortunetaly still works.My Samsung 20" SyncMaster 206BW monitor got vertical lines artifacts seen when is black sreen and black colour is also with artifacts.
Only thing from you I have and which work is Samsung GT-S5230 cell phone.
I don't count some ugly Samsung mouse which I also have.
Now I read this.
Nice job Samsung, I know that I will higly unlikely buy anything from you again.
johnyG.S - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
Hello guys, like most here, also use an Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250, recently I heard this news, today I made a test to determine this problem reported by many!Link the images of the tests: http://imgur.com/a/wvjgf
What do you think? Please.
poohbear - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
Thank u for editing with an updated release date, & good thing samsung fixed it....october 15th cant come soon enough for those of us with the 840 evo as a system drive! I wonder how much this has effected sales as all the tech forums ssd/hdd sections on the net are abuzz with this. It was a really popular ssd back in the day...xwingman - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
When the firmware update fix becomes available will I need to reformat my drive and os then apply the fix? I tried doing an update a year ago with a kingston hyper ssd and it kept blue screening.I will be using this as a primary os drive or do you guys have any other options for a os ssd that won't need a fix at the moment?
AnonymousGuy - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
And this is why I only put Samsung drives in my secondary computers. Intel SSDs for when it matters.sdr - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
I have an unboxed 500GB 840EVO. Hopefully SAMSUNG will release the fix October 15th (yes that’s tomorrow) as I have only one more week left to trade in the EVO for another product.If the fix is not released in the coming days then I will trade in for a 250GB 840PRO with proven track record and no reports about performance bug. That’s probably my best option?
Hopefully SAMSUNG will also advise on the root cause of this performance bug and the way they have implemented the fix. More important will full speed be restored on old files and will the fix affect life-time of the SSD.
I assume we have sufficient candidates here with 840 EVO disks and old data files that can validate the fix we are all waiting for.
850PRO newest technology is advertised as ‘the way to go’ but I prefer to see some feedback from users and maybe in some months we can definitely say that 850PRO is the way to go.
Let’s see ‘tomorrow’ if SAMSUNG can keep a promise and make the 840EVO a top-class SSD.
sepuko - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Could "Anandtech" call these guys again and ask them what the h**l is going on and why is this update not released? Cause sure as h**l they are not moved by individual users, what do they care if I buy their products, if I do not represent a big corp. customer to suck up to I am irrelevant. I am running an 840 Evo 250G since February with the latest firmware. The performance is a disgrace. I have recommended against buying Samsung SSD in the past 6 months and will continue to do so until I see a change. I am working in a big enterprise software provider and we are looking for ways to improve performance. I was the first and only one to buy a Samsung. The performance of this SSD is laughable, why would they?Guyp16 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Looks like we aren't going to get this firmware download for Mac / Linux users today or for a while. From Samsungs download page - Dos version for MAC, Linux users Will be released on end of Oct. Shame on them.scunmmonk - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconduct... - DOS Version for Linux, MAC OSX released ;-)Yeah I used the DOS Version Samsung EVO 840 Performance Restore ISO as I am using a EVO 840 1 TB in my Macbook with native only MAC OSX. It was 15 Minutes or so Performance + update to the firmware!!
sdr - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Windows version has been released and available for download from SAMSUNG."Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software"
Can anyone with old data files upgrade and do a validation test.
aaront - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
looks like the fix workedhttp://techreport.com/review/27212/samsung-840-evo...
Chargerdude - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
My 840 EVO is nearly a year old but has not had heavy use in my HTPC and showed no symptoms. The repair tool worked with no problems. It took about a half hour to repair my 120 G drive.