Can we just lose FLASH already?
It's about time some of the promised replacements actually made it from the lab to the market.
Samsung's wiping egg off its face after a patch for an under performing solid state disk didn't work, necessitating the issue of a second patch. The drive in question is the 840 EVO, a device we last year mentioned, screams along at impressive speeds and packs a handy and workstation-worthy 1TB. But once the drive hit the …
More to the point, why can't we be offered an 80Gb SLC drive for the price of a 240Gb TLC (consumer grade) drive? Because for many applications, speed and durability are needed, and another 160Gb is not.
I wonder if Memristor tech will be equally frought during its first few iterations?
I have one of these drives but never ran performance tests after the initial ones just after the install. I'll need to re-run them to see how bad it is. In hindsight, things do seem somewhat slower but I'd always blamed that on the inevitable aging and bloat of the Windows install and apps rather than the drive itself.
another note, if you have an 840 (not evo) then update the firmware and run diskfresh, that cured the slow reads for me. When all this furore hit I tested mine and was shocked by the 50Mbs read troughs. After a flash and a refresh things were back up to 300 and have stayed that way a few months later (no real troughs either).
I suppose that is all the evo fix does - flash the firmware and read/rewrite the data.
They provide a bootable DOS ISOs that contains a) updated firmware files and b) a DOS version of the "performance restoring" tool I believe; these should work in any machine unless there's BIOS/UEFI problems.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html
However, if their "solution" is continually shifting files around and thus requires a resident process of some sort then I imagine linux and OSX users will be SOL for the foreseeable.
Indeed, and the problem seems like it was there from the start so shouldn't have any difficulty organising a return even after the 6 month cutoff.
Sad to see Samsung fumbling like this but I can't say I feel that sorry for them; they pushed a brand new NAND technology without adequate testing. On top of that the 3D V-NAND was meant to drastically lower the prices for SSDs... but didn't. Samsung instead priced 3D V-NAND like MLC and MLC like SLC. If there was anyone instrumental in lowering SSD prices over the last 18 months, it was Crucial, who are still using un-sexy MLC and positively snore-worthy Marvell controllers.
Ugh, comment-writing fail as I was yet to reach my minimal caffeine threshold. I did of course mean TLC rather than 3D V-NAND. 850 Evo is of course 3D V-NAND TLC but this drive slowdown issue appears to affect all flavours of TLC regardless of the fab process - i.e. both the 840 and 850 Evo models.
Mine is in its way back to Amazon. As far as I'm concerned it's faulty and I've been more than patient waiting this long.
Probably the last Samsung product I buy. Already had a problem with their phone firmware and TV drm bug.
Theu used to be a good product manufacturer but as of late they've gone very much down hill in terms of quality and service.
Where I am, there is a sticker on the inner wrapper that states opening the bag signals the user's compliance with the EULA. In the typically length EULA there is a statement along the lines of performance may degrade from the time of purchase after "continued use" and "depending on use."
Here in Japan, the govt. pretty much always sides with the business. No returns for that reason available here unless purchased through a foreign sent like Amazon.com
...and for an encore...Samsung's Magician software has applied a firmware update to the flagship 850 PRO SSD (mine is the 1Tb version costing £450 and is only 3 weeks old) which has destroyed the SSD. Samsung's response is to offload the problem to its service provider Hanaro (http://www.hanarocom.com/) which is asking Samsung customers to RMA the drive (complete with sensitive data) for replacement.
We have started a FB page to collate the worldwide experience of Samsung 850 PRO users with this deadly firmware update...65 people who have had problems with the firmware update have joined since the group was created yesterday afternoon and if anyone else has an experience they'd like to share, please join us...
https://www.facebook.com/groups/897460120304659/
I have got an SSD 830 in my notebook. When i look at fotos taken last year it takes up to 5 seconds before the next picture shows up. My old notebook with a standard 500GB hardddisk shows the foto as soon as i press the cursor-to-the-right button.
I used to be a Samsung addict. However now, I am glad not to have one of these new Samsung TV sets that snoop your conversations in the living room. And my next SSD will definitely not be a 8xx series disk.
robert / germany