Samsung 840, sudden very poor performance. 32MB/s write and 100MB/s read.

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

Hi,

I've recently been experiencing sluggish SSD performance on my desktop build. In particular, I own a Samsung 840 250GB that I've owned for about a year and a bit. The read speed is averaging around 100MB/s, and write speed has plummeted down to 32MB/s! I remember benchmarking the SSD when I first bought it and getting around 500MB/s for read and somewhere around 250 for write, as I would expect.

I also have an OCZ Agility3 120GB that is a few years old. While it's running better than the Samsung, it is getting around 230 read and (oddly more) 260 write. I remember again having in the range of 500MB/s when I first bought it.

They are both plugged into SATA 6.0 ports, with a decent power supply. I haven't done any defragging on them and I keep trim enabled. Comparatively, my hard drives are working around what I'd expect, 100MB/s read and write.

Could they both be turning bad? The Samsung is still within warranty, but I'm probably out of luck for the OCZ (it still works adequately anyway). Could this be a problem with my motherboard? I tried using the SATA 3.0 ports instead and got similar performance. I am actually on an old BIOS version (F4), but when I tried to update it, my computer stopped booting (thank fuck for dual BIOS). So for now I'm stuck on F4 (incidentally, does anyone know how I could restore the second BIOS to F4 so that I can try flashing it again without risk?). The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH.

Here are the benchmarks - Samsung and OCZ . The filesystems are ext4.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thank you.

clutchc · Dec 17, 2014

Is the SSD getting pretty full? They lose write speed as the get nearly filled.

Mr_Venbeer · Dec 17, 2014

If your 840's storage full or near full?

ronintexas · Dec 17, 2014

Samsung had a patch and firmware update they put out about 2 months ago. This should speed the drive back up again.

See this part: Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software

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

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

clutchc :

It has two partitions, one with 8.8GB free and one with 5.9GB free.

So yes, quite full, but still with some spare. I'll make some space and try again to see if it makes a difference.

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

ronintexas :

I noticed that fix, but it's for the EVO and mine is just the older 840.

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

I cleared about 40GBs of space on the ext4 partition and ran the benchmark again. There was a small improvement - 160MB/s read and 50MB/s write. Still not very good though.

clutchc · Dec 17, 2014

themusicalduck :

What are you checking read/write speed with?

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

clutchc :

I'm using gnome-disks mostly. hdparm -t seems to vary and increase the more I use it, starting at 50MB/s and levelling at 100MB/s. Writing a zero file with dd doesn't really give me a good response (it says finished writing at 1.8GB/s after a second and then spends a minute writing the rest of it).

clutchc · Dec 17, 2014

Try AS SSD and see if it corresponds to your other results. It will also tell you if the SSD Partition Alignment is OK.

clutchc · Dec 17, 2014

Here's my results:

Mr_Venbeer · Dec 17, 2014

Have you tried running the SSD on rapid mode? It boosted my speeds from both ~500mb/s to about 2000mb/s.

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

clutchc :

I don't have Windows installed at the moment sadly. I looked it up and found out I could do an alignment check with parted. It says that both of the partitions are aligned properly.

Mr_Venbeer :

I think rapid mode is only for the 840 EVO, or maybe the 840 Pro too. Not for my model though.

ronintexas · Dec 17, 2014

Just came across this: http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Samsung-Germany-acknowledges-840-Basic-performance-slow-down-promises-fix

It appears that the 840 is experiencing similar problems to the 840 EVO. You can wait on their fix, or you can backup the drive, write all zeros to the drive, then restore the data. It will pick up performance for a while after doing this.

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

ronintexas :

Thank ronintexas, that's interesting.

My only thought is that it only mentions read speed, but for me the write speed is the most problematic. I reckon I'll try zeroing it and restoring the data to see if it does anything though.

If it does come down to waiting for Samsung to fix it, I think I'll just end up sending it back under warranty and try for a refund (or replacement if that's all they'll do, assuming the replacement isn't bad too). Kinda sucks that all these problems for Samsung are cropping up now, I bought the SSD originally because they had such a good reputation.

ronintexas · Dec 17, 2014

I have an 840 EVO in my main desktop - running for about 1 1/2 years - I never experienced the problems that others had - but I reloaded the OS at least 3 times during that period. I now have 840 EVOs in my other 5 computers (6 in total), no drive failures, no slow performance as of yet. All of them are on the new firmware. I even upgraded the laptop to the SSD....and it screams as well.

The 840 EVO and 840 PRO were the first SSDs that Samsung put out that I was willing to spend on (the first drive was $149 for a 128GB - the last 5 I caught on sale for $55 each).

I have two computers at work with older SSD's (they are actually 3.5" footprint drives - first generation - Crucial made them I believe) - and they aren't nearly as fast as the SSDs I have at home....but they are faster than a hard drive....

themusicalduck · Dec 17, 2014

It's mostly down to luck I guess. I'm actually really surprised by what is happening to my 840, I still haven't ruled out it being a problem with the motherboard or something.

The 840 EVO does look really attractive, especially since they fixed the firmware problems it had and that turbo boost feature looks pretty great.

Mr_Venbeer · Dec 18, 2014

themusicalduck :

Trust me, it is an amazing fucking SSD

themusicalduck · Dec 18, 2014

ronintexas :

Welp. Looks like you were right.

I zeroed out the entire drive, made a brand new ext4 partition and benchmarked it. I'm getting 550MB/s read and 215MB/s write. Pretty much completely up to spec. Absolutely huge difference.

Here's hoping it lasts a while and they get a fix ready in the not too distant future.

Thank you.

ronintexas · Dec 18, 2014

On the EVO, data that was written to the drive that was older than a year (or somewhere near that) started to degrade in speed (reading). It should give you at least 6 months of good performance - if not a year.

Samsung 840, sudden very poor performance. 32MB/s write and 100MB/s read.

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