Samsung Fixes 840 EVO SSD Performance Drop With Firmware Patch
Samsung released a patch to fix the performance your 840 EVO SSD might lose over time.
If you have a Samsung 840 EVO SSD, you may have noticed a loss in performance if you've owned it for a long while. Unfortunately, a bug in the design of the 840 EVO causes older blocks of data to deteriorate, resulting in poor read speeds when accessing older data. Fortunately, Samsung acknowledged this bug and released a fix.
The new firmware's version number is EXT0CB6Q, and it can be downloaded from Samsung immediately. What this firmware does is rewrite older data blocks, ensuring that the data remains fresh, avoiding excessive read-retry processes.
The update can be installed through Samsung's Magician software, or you can run it off of a bootable disk. Either way, be sure to back up your data in case something goes wrong.
You can download the EXT0CB6Q firmware directly from Samsung here. If you're unsure about how to install the new firmware, you can read through Samsung's installation guide here.
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The majority of fixes turn out to be just that- workarounds. Probably the only real fix they could do would be a HW change that would affect only new models. I'd rather deal with a workaround "fix" than having to buy a new SSD to get my performance back...
ah, that's good to know. Thanks for that. I haven't been home to check it out yet.
Samsung stated that not all EVO drives are affected by this issue but im not sure. I did install an EVO in a customer's machine and he did complain that it seems to have 'slowed down'. Ill have to look into this.
The 840 Pro is NOT affected by this issue, only drives that use TLC NAND (your 840 Pro uses MLC NAND).
I just installed and ran the "restoration" app, and it didn't brick my drive and was non-destructive to the data, although it take quite a while (maybe 45 mins or so on a 250GB drive). Windows startup is indeed markedly faster afterwards.
So firmware update then restore drive from a backup looks like your best bet.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html
So firmware update then restore drive from a backup looks like your best bet.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html
It only affects data over a month old, and this is also why it has taken so long to even be noticed. You will NOT see any degradation in standard benchmarks due to this particular issue since those simply write new data to the drive and then read it back. What you will notice with this issue is that Windows boots slower, or a game/app you installed over a month ago is now taking longer to load.
Yeah you are right. Here is the statement from Samsung :
“Because of an error in the flash management software algorithm in the 840 EVO, a drop in performance occurs on data stored for a long period of time AND has been written only once. SSDs usually calibrate changes in the statuses of cells over time via the flash management software algorithm. Due to the error in the software algorithm, the 840 EVO performed read-retry processes aggressively, resulting in a drop in overall read performance. This only occurs if the data was kept in its initial cell without changing, and there are no symptoms of reduced read performance if the data was subsequently migrated from those cells or overwritten. In other words, as the SSD is used more and more over time, the performance decrease disappears naturally. For those who want to solve the issue quickly, this software restores the read performance by rewriting the old data. The time taken to complete the procedure depends on the amount of data stored.”