Firmware Update to Fix the Samsung SSD 840 EVO Read Performance Bug Coming on October 15th

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• jhh - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link

  The key is intelligent shuffling. Of course, no drive can predict the future, but if 1/2 of the drive is relatively static, and 1/4 is dynamic, with the rest unallocated, then without static wear leveling, only 1/2 of the drive will wear out. If the static wear leveling is done when the dynamic part is 1/4 through its lifetime, it adds an extra 4 writes out of 800, but allows one to get another 1600 1/4 drive writes of dynamic data. The hard part is that static data is hard to predict, as something which is thought to be static may be changed the next time Windows Update decides to patch that static file. But WIndows only issues patches once a month, so at most, that data would be changed 60 times over a 5 year drive.

• Coup27 - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  People like you are actually making my blood boil over this.
  
  1,2,3 - Once the firmware has been validated and released I am sure more information will be forthcoming. It would make no sense to release all of their findings to date on this issue only to find another issue during validation which may alter the information released, which is only going to annoy people further.
  
  "All in all, Samsung should have done a better job with this drive.".
  
  This drive has been consistently recommended from all reputable websites since it was released, well over a year ago. It has not had a widespread bug which has caused complete failure or data loss. This bug here causes an inconvenience, an inconvenience which has taken people 8-9 months to identify, so it was hardly easy for anybody to spot.
  
  Maybe you also need reminding that since the introduction of SSD's Samsung has the best record in reliability from all big manufacturers and to date. None of their SSD's have had a widespread bug which has caused their drives to brick. Unlike, to name a few:
  
  Intel X25-M 8MB bug
  Intel 320 series 8MB bug (same bug, two drives)
  Sandforce (many BSOD reports, including some Intel's)
  Crucial m4 (5184 power on failure)
  OCZ - everything
  
  From the 470 series which Anand never publicly reviewed but said it was always reliable (albeit slow), to today, Samsung have not had a major widespread drive failure bug. And despite the doomsday FUD coming from people like you, this is not it either.

• sweeper765 - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  You misunderstood. I meant the information should be revealed at the time the firmware fix is released, not now.
  
  A silent firmware release without clearly specifying what was wrong and how the drive is affected will damage their credibility more. Customers have the right to know how the drive will behave in the future.
  
  And yes, other manufacturers had problems too, that doesn't make it ok for Samsung.

• Coup27 - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  "And yes, other manufacturers had problems too, that doesn't make it ok for Samsung."
  
  I don't think they have done it on purpose.

• saliti - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  Unless we get official statement from Samsung, we can only guess what the problem is. But it seems people just like to draw conclusions too quickly. If the problem is data not being moved around uniformly than a firmware fix will probably improve endurance rather than decrease it.

• hojnikb - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  Do you really think samsung would give an official statement, that their flash was losing data retention/cell charge faster than normal ?

• saliti - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  I think the fact that their drive is losing cell charge hasn't been established yet. As of yet they are just speculations. We will have to wait and see with the new firmware what changed and what was fixed to establish the fact or we need official statement.

• DPUser - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  This test suggests TLC does not have the endurance of MLC, but it also shows that all the SSDs tested, including the EVO drive, have performed very well over the long haul. No drive failed before 750 TB in writes. The story continues, with two drives still fully-functional after writing 1.5 PB.
  
  http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-enduran...

• DPUser - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  Correction: One drive failed at 725 TB.

• hojnikb - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link

  Yeah, but it still shows the weaker points of TLC. While lots of MLC would go happily over ~700TB, they appear to have a hardcoded limit, so they locked up and stopped writing data.
  TLC based 840 started getting relocated sectors much sooner than MLC drives...
  
  Its still plenty of endurance for most users though.