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
    2014-10-27T16:57:52+00:00

    Right, the results are in..

    First, here is the performance of the drive at the start:

    ...

    ...

    Then I ran the DiskFresh tool that reads and writes back the whole drive.  The performance now looks like this:

    ...

    ...

    A dramatic improvement!

    I still don't like the way the read rate alternates between two levels but all of the slows 50MB/s sections have gone.  I did subsequently re TRIIM the drive to make sure that the drive garbage collector knew which portions of the drive are empty of file data.  This gave a slight further  improvement to the graph.

    I think someone form the Surface engineering team should have a look at this issue ASAP, they may need to prod Samsung into providing the same fix as they did for the other variant of this drive.

    UPDATE: After I reboot, I tested to see if there was a real world performance difference. The main large app I run that has been installed since day 1 is Visual Studio.  I wish I had measured it beforehand but it seems way faster to open on first run.  Way faster.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-10-27T23:36:59+00:00

    Right, the results are in..

    First, here is the performance of the drive at the start:

    ...

    ...

    Then I ran the DiskFresh tool that reads and writes back the whole drive.  The performance now looks like this:

    ...

    ...

    A dramatic improvement!

    I still don't like the way the read rate alternates between two levels but all of the slows 50MB/s sections have gone.  I did subsequently re TRIIM the drive to make sure that the drive garbage collector knew which portions of the drive are empty of file data.  This gave a slight further  improvement to the graph.

    I think someone form the Surface engineering team should have a look at this issue ASAP, they may need to prod Samsung into providing the same fix as they did for the other variant of this drive.

    UPDATE: After I reboot, I tested to see if there was a real world performance difference. The main large app I run that has been installed since day 1 is Visual Studio.  I wish I had measured it beforehand but it seems way faster to open on first run.  Way faster.

     You are mentioning DiskRefresh, could you point to where I can get more info about this tool?

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-28T00:34:54+00:00

     You are mentioning DiskRefresh, could you point to where I can get more info about this tool?

    http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

    The update that Samsung have made does a similar operation, after it has updated the firmware to stop the problem coming back over time.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-10-28T01:22:27+00:00

     You are mentioning DiskRefresh, could you point to where I can get more info about this tool?

    http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

    The update that Samsung have made does a similar operation, after it has updated the firmware to stop the problem coming back over time.

    Do you run it as read only?  This is what I see in mine after running it read only.

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