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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Death666Angel - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Which will only be a pain in the ass for Samsung: those drives are clearly faulty and have to be replaced without cost to the buyer. It will generate negative press for Samsung that will likely translate to fewer units sold. Samsung has no incentive to see faulty SSDs. But if they had not included the word "should", it would have been disingenuous, because nobody is perfect and they can't guarantee that there won't be issues. This way, to me at least, I know they aren't just talking PR crap.Also, who moves their backup to a drive and deletes the backup? I see no issue in the example you provide above, except some lost time.... ?
Cryptohead - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
HiI want to by this SSD for Mac Book Pro 2012 mid year. From earlier posts here it seems to work good with new FW. Any other experience ?
Thanks.
bugguts - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
For those of you who are using Linux, you can get the controller firmware version by doing:"dmesg|grep -i samsung" and looking for the line in the output that matches your drive. For example, mine reads:
# dmesg|grep -i samsung
[ 1.322495] ata1.00: ATA-9: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series, DXM03B0Q, max UDMA/133
[ 1.323397] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA Samsung SSD 840 DXM0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
So I can see that I have version 3B0Q.
Jedimind82 - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
Hey guys, first of all thanks for the great article.Second, help :(
So I decided to try this 840 pro 256gb. I had two samsung 830 128gb in raid 0, and everything was great exepct for loss of TRIM.
I setup the bios with AHCI, installed windows and noticed it required me to install windows with a GPT partition. Installed fine. Updated drivers, windows update, you know the standard stuff after a fresh install.
Now i'm getting random BSOD, all with the same error, storport sys driver_irql_not_less_or_equal 0x000000D1.
Whats up with that. So I thought it was a fluke, reinstalled windows. Same thing. Hmmm... 20 reinstalls later and started using intel RSTe release and other drivers. No luck.
Thought got a bad draw on the drive, when to Frys, exchanged it, installed it. Same thing. Ugh!
1 week later, I'm here, seeing if anyone has had any issues.
System info:
Asus sabertooth x79 UEFI AHCI Intel SATA 6gbps Port for SSD samsung 840
Intel 3820 I7 2011LGA
Corsair dominator ram 16gb
Creative X FI Fatality Sound card
Corsair AX1200i PSU
Drivers:
Win7 Sp1 fully updated x64
Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility V9.2.3.1025
SABERTOOTH X79 BIOS 3102
Asmedia USB 3.0 Driver V1.14.3.0
Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology enterprise Driver Software V3.5.0.1092
B.Cernik@inf.cz - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - link
I have similar trouble. 2x Samsung 840 pro 256GB died in the interval of 2-48 hours with error Drive not ready. Only power off/on make accessible the drive back for the next 2-48 hours.There are official answer from Samsung support.
As mentioned previously we do not support any RAID set up. All we can recommend is that you update the firmware on the Samsung SSD. Also make sure that your BIOS and controllers are all up to date.
I use the newest firmware 4B0Q. But some bug in hardware or firmware still resist.