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SP3 SSD, possible firmware bug, same as just fixed in another Samsung drive.
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Anonymous
I've just had to update the firmware in another device that had a Samsung 840EVO SSD because they had a serious firmware bug with it. Out of curiosity I tested the Samsung drive in my Surface Pro 3 and it looks like it has exactly the same issue (the SP3 drive is closely related to the 840 series I believe, but an OEM version.
The test is simple, just look at the read rate across the drive. Older data (OS, installed apps) suffered from terrible read performance after a month or so. Newly written data is fine.
As you can see, much of the drive is down to 50MB/s now. It should be a fairly level line right the way across at about 350+MB/s. This test was run with AC power connected and nothing else running.
If this is the same issue as the 840EVO, the good news is it can be corrected with a firmware update and refresh of the data. Bad news would of course be Microsoft need to look into it first, then get the Samsung engineers looking into it.
Perhaps some other people could run the test too, and post results. Remember the drive needs to be a month or more old, so that the data can have been sitting there only being read during that time.
Further details of the bug and the fix that Samsung released can be found here:
Surface | Surface Pro | Install and update
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
2014-11-28T02:52:43+00:00 Here's my storage configuration on the SP3.
Will the Evo Flash work on the SP3 SSD ????
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Anonymous
2014-11-28T02:14:20+00:00 This does not tell you much because SSDs are different from magnetic media drives.
On the contrary, it tell us a lot, thanks! As you can see, some of the data on the drive is very slow to read, but most of it is very fast. Can I ask how much of the 512GB you have in use?
The bug which Samsung have fixed on the 840 EVO drive (very closely related to the PM851 used in the SP3, both using TLC flash) occurs because the firmware didn't correctly compensate for the drop in voltage that occurs to flash cells that have not been written to for a long time. This would typically be the ones where the OS files are stored and installed applications.
Since those files are frequently read, but not erased and re-written (unless by say, Windows Update) then after some time (more than a month) the voltage would drop and the firmware would end up making multiple retries to read the cell, slowing it right down.
The fix Samsung made was to the algorithm that compensates for this voltage drop, thus avoiding all the extra retries and bringing the speed back up again even for old data.
Please see the AnandTech article explaining the issue in more detail:
Or on the site you linked to:
Now, I'm not saying there definitely is a problem, but the graphs I posted from mine, and that others have posted (including yours) do seem to show that some portions of the drive have terrible read performance while others do not. And it is pretty consistent if you run the test multiple times. If you go further and use a tool that reads and writes back every block of data on the drive, refreshing all the cells, the performance dramatically improves. And in my case the real world performance (loading Visual Studio) improved a lot too.
I do realise that the HDTune utility was intended to show the speed difference at physical locations on a spinning disk drive, but with this issue it also does a reasonable job of showing us how the performance varies across a range of logical addresses that correspond to OS files, data files and unused areas.
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Anonymous
2014-11-27T23:38:44+00:00 This does not tell you much because SSDs are different from magnetic media drives.
This is the Site for All Things SSD. http://www.thessdreview.com/
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Anonymous
2014-11-27T23:00:51+00:00 I'm sorry I butted in.
Hi Rick,
Sorry I didn't mean to sound so harsh! I was just concerned that people would post benchmark results that tested the wrong thing and everybody would think there was no problem.
Any chance you could post the results of a whole drive, read only, test like HDTach or HDTune? You would be the only one to have posted them from a 512Gb drive so that would be appreciated.
And again, my apologies for the tone of my response.