SP3 SSD, possible firmware bug, same as just fixed in another Samsung drive.

Anonymous
2014-10-20T22:49:51+00:00

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:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmware-update-to-fix-the-ssd-840-evo-read-performance-bug

Surface | Surface Pro | Install and update

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Anonymous
2015-09-30T22:01:46+00:00

Hello all

We wanted to let you know that an update to resolve this is still being worked on.  Please continue to post your experiences and technical details.

Mod Edit: Samsung SSD Optimization Utility for Surface Pro 3 now available.

Best regards

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-29T17:25:49+00:00

    Low023, I think it likely you did not run the DiskFresh tool in read-write mode if the graph above is your "after" graph. 

    The before graphs are what we need to see more of, to show that there is a problem in the first place.

    I tried finding out more about the drives in the SP3, they do appear to be the OEM version of exactly the 840 EVO.  They have the same TLC type flash memory and the firmware version number is also EXT41xxx, the same as had the bug on the 840 EVO mSata version.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-29T12:58:15+00:00

    Low023, I think it likely you did not run the DiskFresh tool in read-write mode if the graph above is your "after" graph.  The 50MB/s strip at the right-hand end is a giveaway.  After the read-write DiskFresh that should be much ore like 250.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-29T05:10:25+00:00

    Ran it on mine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-10-29T00:15:51+00:00

    But the diskfresh did you run it using the checkbox read only?

    Ah, DiskFresh I specifically ran with writing enabled, as I wanted it to read and then write back the data to 'refresh' the flash memory cells (yes I know that's not good for SSD's in general, but just as a one off test, I wouldn't do it regularly, hopefully never again).  The performance tests had already been reading data across the whole drive.

    I went and ran the refresh and Wow! What a difference!

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