Update on Samsung SSD 840/840 Pro Failures
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 28, 2012 12:06 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Samsung
- Samsung SSD 840
In our review of Samsung's SSD 840 Pro I noted that my drive died shortly after I completed testing. Samsung sent me a replacement, which also stopped working (although it still pulled current) after a couple of days. Kristian's Samsung SSD 840 review sample shared a similar fate.
I spoke with Samsung about this problem a couple of weeks ago and was told that there was a bug in the pre-production firmware (version 2B0Q/5B0Q for 840 Pro/840) loaded on our drives. All retail samples should ship with a newer firmware revision (3B0Q/6B0Q) that have this bug fixed. To confirm what firmware revision is on your drive, look at the end of the hardware id string for the SSD in Device Manager.
Samsung sent me an 840 Pro with the updated firmware and so far I haven't had any issues. I'm trying to retrace my steps in bricking the drive and things are looking good thus far. As always, if things change I will update you all.
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Bownce - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
After decades of using and supporting Windows (back to 2.0; dropping Apple when they orphaned us Apple ][ users), I got an iMac 27" Mid-2010 i5 (bumped to 8Gb or RAM). I virtuualize Win7x64 using Fusion for some pretty complex stuff and it works fine. I find I use Win less and less but those remaining processes still run well.iCrunch - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
Hi! I'm interested in your preference for VMWare Fusion 5(is it?), as compared to Parallels 8. I seem to remember that Fusion has become significantly better since version 3, 4, and now 5, while Parallels has as well but not to the same extent. Presumably because VMWare started to actually *care* about its Mac virtualization solution.As for the 840/840 Pro update, I'm glad to hear that Samsung is not having to recall any drives, which would have hurt them considerably. I love my 256GB 830 Series in my Retina MBP, which Apple calls "Flash" and in System Information renames it Apple SM256E. Fair enough to call it Flash seeing that it's not like there's a 1.8" or 2.5" SSD enclosure inside the rMBP. TRIM is on by default, of course, because the drive originated from Apple. I sincerely hope that Apple will at least still procure its Flash/SSD's from Samsung. Maybe we'll see the 840 Pro in the next refresh. The RAM in the rMBP is also from Samsung, although they're using Hynix in the new iMac's. (really cool looking black SODIMM's lol)
Sabresiberian - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Yah, thanks Anand!Just bought a 128GB version of the 840; it's going in a friend's computer, so I sure hope it stays reliable! That's one reason I bought a Samsung drive, and if the reliability on the new drives isn't there - well, OCZ will look mighty good.
phil13 - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
I have one that failed, only show 0.9GB, SN: 000000000, Firmware: DXT06BO0, even samsung Magician software can see it, but say that there is no samsung SSD drive.It does look the firmware problem, all feel ok.
Any solutions and help? appreciate, thanks.
n0x1ous - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Anand,Any chance Samsung will make their Magician tool for OS X so we don't have to revert to TRIM hacks?
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
It's coming early next year from what I've been told.tyger11 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
The 840 Pro is one of the few that supports encryption - any chance of a review of how that works, and what type of performance hit you take? I've not seen anyone take that on yet.Guspaz - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
All Sandforce drives encrypt the data; are you sure the encryption process on the 840 Pro isn't transparent?There's not necessarily any way to validate this on the SandForce drives short of desoldering a NAND package from the SSD and trying to read the NAND directly without the controller.
Impulses - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
I don't think that's the type of encryption he was alluding to, might've been referring to some sort of hardware accelerated encryption for stuff like AES, for like Bitlocker and whatnot.tyger11 - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Yes, the 840 Pro supports AES at the hardware level. Very few SSDs do. I've not seen any review yet that has done any testing of how much of a performance hit this entails, how much more (if any) writes it subjects the drive to, or anything at all, really.