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

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:

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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

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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151 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-07-16T13:10:12+00:00

Can someone from Microsoft please give us an update?

The experience of significant, periodic slowdown is bad enough by itself. It's compounded by the fact that I spend a lot of time demonstrating and teaching both live and via webcast, It's pretty bad when you have to explain to your audience that the significant pause they are seeing is the result of a bug in an otherwise brilliant SP3.

The irony for me personally, is that at least 50% of the demos/training that I give these days are to audiences that Microsoft has paid me to address...
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Anonymous

2015-07-22T17:41:38+00:00

This hot fix link no longer works, is there a new link? I am having major performance issues with my SP3 SSD as HD Tune Pro reports 202/MBS and my machine is running very slow with any complex software like Visual Studio :(.
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Anonymous

2015-08-13T09:37:10+00:00

Hi All,

After having upgraded my Surface Pro 3 to the latest OS and playing with it I too noticed that my SSD's (SAMSUNG MZMTE512HMHP-000MV) performance was under par. After soms reading I bumped info the Samsung PM851 fw update - repair tool discussions from end 2014, beginning of 2015. All links to the Samsung tool were dead though.

from which I hoped It was not tampered with. I downloaded it (hee, no guts, no glory), cloned my SSD and ran the tool. After a couple of hours I had a much snappier responding Surface Pro 3. Happy me!

So the SSD's firmware went from EXT41M0Q to EXT42M0Q and the SSD was rearranged by the repair tool.

I'd say: "So far, so good".

Regards to you all!
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Anonymous

2015-08-13T09:57:14+00:00

So the SSD's firmware went from EXT41M0Q to EXT42M0Q and the SSD was rearranged by the repair tool.

I'd say: "So far, so good". Regards to you all!

Thanks mate!

Hey, what tools did you use to test the SSD, & this is Win10 with all the latest updates -right?

Cheers!
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