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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chucknelson - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Thanks for the update. The 500 GB 840 in my MacBook Pro has worked great, but of course that's with only light / "normal" use. It does have the production firmware (6B0Q), so hopefully I'll never see any major issues.stdin - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Likewise the 840 Pro works like a charm on mine. Verified that I have production firmware so that's always good. Thanks Anandtech!Also, don't forget to enable TRIM on it as OS X doesn't support it out of the box.
ImSpartacus - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Do you bootcamp by chance?I've been considering the 840/840 Pro as an upgrade to my Macbook Pro 13 '09 because of their low weight and low power consumption. I almost always run in a bootcamped copy of Windows 7 64-bit.
Considering how I already have minor driver issues just from bootcamping, installing an SSD makes me nervous. Enabling AHCI mode doesn't sound fun.
So if you bootcamp, have you had any issues/adventures with your 840 Pro in Windows?
P.S. I'm sorry to be 'that guy' that's asking these sorts of questions in a comments thread, but it's not easy to find Macbook users utilizing a particular SSD and this article is kinda about 840 reliability anyway.
dashelj - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
I bootcamp windows 7 x64 on an old 2007 unsupported MacBook Pro with no problems with my SSD. It is an old intel x series.Vizsla1086 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
I gave up Bootcamp as the virtualization options became better and better. While I have a slight preference for Fusion, Parallels 8 is terrific as well. My experience has been that virtualization is now so fast, it makes little sense to boot down to boot up and vice-versa. Just stay in OSX and call in the virtualization when you need it. Even better, pause functions in both Fusion and Parallels release the processor and memory holds, so you can literally keep your windows programs right at hand without any delay in calling them.Virutlaization is *worlds* better using an SSD. If you make the move to an SSD, move as well to virtualization and forego Bootcamp. Even better, you can install either program, virtualize bootcamp, and then remove the boot camp partition without any loss of data (or keep it and reach it using either Fusion or Parallels without having to reboot.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
He said he almost always runs in Win7. So in his case why take any performance hit at all? Why waste RAM and reduce I/O performance? The real question is... if you mostly run Win7... why not just get an Ultrathin PC?In your case though, Vizsla, it sounds like virtualization is the better choice.
Vizsla1086 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
I've done it both ways. Biggest issue is which platform dominates the network, and there are reasons to stay with OSX if one has other devices using IOS or OSX. iPhones, iPads and the like still work better on Macs than they do on PCs.It's getting harder, though, to make these decisions. Apple's pricing is becoming absurd, and their current desktop offerings are not very good as value propositions.
Since my wife's business runs on Macs (McPractice), I've moved the home network to all Mac, but I'm reconsidering. Fusion Drive (as opposed to VMware Fusion) is not a good solution for Pros and/or power users, and the iMac presents no good alternative. Meanwhile, no Mac Pro, either.
I'm increasingly thinking of switching back to Windows just because of the cost element. I'd move to Linux in a heartbeat except there's still no alternative to Quicken, and a few other programs I use every day. If I'm going to virtualize, I'll stay with Macs.
imSpartacus seems to want to stay with OSX and Macs, which is perfectly reasonable. If he stays there, though, I think virtualization is better than bootcamp. If all I did was run the laptop in Bootcamp, I'd surely find a way to ditch Mac and move to PCs.
mdrejhon - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I purchased a pair of two Intel 240GB SSD's and did a RAID 0 on them them. Now a hibernated virtual machine wakes up and resumes running in just 2 seconds! Even if it has six or seven applications already open inside them! In fact, that's faster than relaunching the individual applications on the same said SSD, too!orionb - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
Impressive!orionb - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
Thanks for sharing your experiences with Virtualization! I've been wondering if I want to bootcamp or virtualize, and it sounds like virtual will work for me.