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Samsung Fixes 840 EVO SSD Performance Drop With Firmware Patch

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 43 comments

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.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

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  • 0 Hide
    dgingeri , October 15, 2014 11:38 AM
    Wouldn't this degrade the drive over time, costing extra write cycles even if the data is mostly just read only? I keep my games on a 500GB 840 EVO. They don't see a whole lot of writes (Magician shows barely one fifth the writes to that drive compared to my 840 Pro OS drive that is half the size) so I figured the drive would last for a long time. This doesn't sound like a fix. More like a workaround.
  • 0 Hide
    ldun , October 15, 2014 11:45 AM
    Quote:
    Wouldn't this degrade the drive over time, costing extra write cycles even if the data is mostly just read only? I keep my games on a 500GB 840 EVO. They don't see a whole lot of writes (Magician shows barely one fifth the writes to that drive compared to my 840 Pro OS drive that is half the size) so I figured the drive would last for a long time. This doesn't sound like a fix. More like a workaround.


    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...
  • 1 Hide
    bigpinkdragon286 , October 15, 2014 11:51 AM
    I agree with the initial poster's concerns. I don't want a drive that is rewriting itself to preserve it's data, especially if it's in relation to the amount of data I have stored on it. The more data on the drive that is considered old, the more writes to the device? There seem to some unknowns that are not being mentioned. What determines if data is being considered old? Date from time written, number of reads, etc.? Why is the data degrading over time? Is this due to how it is being read, or something else, such as the need for higher power levels when reading multi-level cells? Did Samsung cut a corner to achieve certain performance levels with their product? Did they expect customers to have replaced the units before the problem manifested or was Samsung unaware also? I am glad they addressed the issue, but again, it seems more of a workaround, and not a satisfactory one, than a true solution to the problem.
  • Add your comment Display all 43 comments.
  • 0 Hide
    dgingeri , October 15, 2014 12:02 PM
    I prefer my preset workaround: every 4-6 months, when things start getting intolerable, I wipe the drive and restore from backup. It looks like fewer writes than this new firmware, and it only takes me about 20 minutes. It also gives me much more consistent behavior from the drive. Of course, I've only done this once, and that was just before I heard Samsung acknowledged the problem as not being my imagination.
  • 0 Hide
    dovah-chan , October 15, 2014 1:01 PM
    Indeed this may be just a workaround but I find this better than them ignoring the problem and not trying at all.
  • 1 Hide
    baldmosher , October 15, 2014 1:41 PM
    Amazingly Samsung Magician says there's no new firmware available (yet)... not quite joined up thinking from Samsung!
  • 1 Hide
    dovah-chan , October 15, 2014 1:50 PM
    I know that was the first thing that I checked after I read this article. You'd think they would distribute it over some more accessible networks rather than hoping that the user has the benefit of the word of mouth as chances are the regular common consumer doesn't keep up with stuff like this.
  • 0 Hide
    nitrium , October 15, 2014 1:58 PM
    You can do it manually using the freeware utility DiskFresh (http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html). Worked a treat on my 840 EVO. I guess Samsung is effectively doing the same thing with this "fix". Won't do the drive's longevity any favours, that's for sure.
  • 1 Hide
    ThisWasATriumph , October 15, 2014 2:39 PM
    The article is misleading. Samsung is supplying a utility that updates the firmware and rewrites old sectors. The utility fixes the problem. The firmware prevents it from happening again. Samsung Magician does not provide either part at the moment.
  • 1 Hide
    dgingeri , October 15, 2014 2:42 PM
    Quote:
    The article is misleading. Samsung is supplying a utility that updates the firmware and rewrites old sectors. The utility fixes the problem. The firmware prevents it from happening again. Samsung Magician does not provide either part at the moment.


    ah, that's good to know. Thanks for that. I haven't been home to check it out yet.
  • 0 Hide
    nitrium , October 15, 2014 2:48 PM
    This fix seems to only work on the 840 EVO drives and the regular 840 which suffers from the exact same issue.
  • 0 Hide
    firefoxx04 , October 15, 2014 2:51 PM
    My 840 pro has never shown any type of speed degration. Boot speed is always almost instant and time to open programs has always been consistent.

    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.
  • 0 Hide
    nitrium , October 15, 2014 3:32 PM
    @firefoxx04
    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.
  • -1 Hide
    Dave Danger , October 15, 2014 4:29 PM
    Looks like Samsung has again left out the Apple users. From what I can see in the instructions will only work on an NTFS formatted partition. I guess I will just have to periodically backup, format and restore, or update to another brand that is more friendly to Apple such as the crucial mx100 which seems to have similar performance numbers.
  • 0 Hide
    Led Weappelin , October 15, 2014 5:06 PM
    For what it's worth I went to the Samsung website link provided in the article, downloaded the zip file "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration", hit Start and the installer did the rest. Checked it with the Samsung Magician software after installing. All is good.
  • 0 Hide
    SteelCity1981 , October 15, 2014 6:30 PM
    I tried it and I saw no real diff in performance with benchmarks. maybe it only effects certain chips on the evo and instead of Samsung just trying to sort out which chips on certain evos it effects they just issued a mass update for all evo's instead.
  • 0 Hide
    dachness , October 15, 2014 6:45 PM
    ISO firmware update is provided for Mac OSX users. However it looks like we don't have the Performance Restoration portion of it. So looks like performing the firmware update would prevent it from slowing down going forward but not restore any speed that has been lost.

    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
  • 0 Hide
    dachness , October 15, 2014 6:46 PM
    ISO firmware update is provided for Mac OSX users. However it looks like we don't have the Performance Restoration portion of it. So looks like performing the firmware update would prevent it from slowing down going forward but not restore any speed that has been lost.

    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
  • 0 Hide
    nitrium , October 15, 2014 11:47 PM
    Quote:
    I tried it and I saw no real diff in performance with benchmarks. maybe it only effects certain chips on the evo and instead of Samsung just trying to sort out which chips on certain evos it effects they just issued a mass update for all evo's instead.

    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.
  • 0 Hide
    confuoco , October 16, 2014 12:06 AM
    Quote:
    The article is misleading. Samsung is supplying a utility that updates the firmware and rewrites old sectors. The utility fixes the problem. The firmware prevents it from happening again. Samsung Magician does not provide either part at the moment.


    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.”
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