The Samsung 840/840 Pro SSD thread

pprior said:

Installed the 840 pro 256GB in wife's mid 2009 MPB.

Getting 204mb/sec writes, 256mb/sec reads, consistent with the interface on this machine.

I am pissed that there is no firmware upgrade tool for mac. That is crap and I wouldn't have bought it had I known that in advance. Firmware updates are important for SSD and for them not to support mac computers, well we should not support them.

So although this works fine thus far, I would advise others to look elsewhere to a company that actually supports mac.

Click to expand...

Sandisk Extreme SSD with the r211m firmware update does the job with ease. 194 writes/263 reads at 3.0gb.

brig2221 said:

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe your model may only be equipped with a SATA II connection, which is going to bottleneck the speed of your drive to what you see. You would need a SATA III connection in order to achieve some of the speeds you have seen posted here, which are in line with some of the advertised drive speeds.

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Mmmh, that's the point i don't quite get. What i read so far indicates that my MBP has the Sandy Bridge chipset that should definitely offer SATA III at least on port 0. There has been an EFI Upgrade which should be installed as i do all upgrades so where is my bottleneck? Is it because i put the old Seagate SATA II HD on port 1? This reports in as 6 Gb Link Speed and 3 Gb Negotiated Speed.

This is a screenshot of the profiler for the SSD:

MacBook Pro 5,1 (Late 2008) - Samsung 840 SSD Upgrade Performance Test

MacBook Pro 5,1 (Late 2008)
2.8GHz Core 2 Duo / 4GB RAM / Mac OS X 10.8.2
2.5” Internal SATA bus (Limited to 3Gb/s): Main HD bay

BEFORE
Hitachi HTS723232L9SA6 (B)
7200rpm / 320GB / Original Apple drive
BlackMagic DST WRITE: 53MB/s
BlackMagic DST READ: 46MB/s

AFTER
Samsung 840 SSD (Firmware DXT07B0Q)
120GB / TRIM Enabler ON / Capable of 6Gb/s
BlackMagic DST WRITE: 128MB/s
BlackMagic DST READ: 259MB/s

I'm pretty happy with these numbers.

The next step is to add an additional 500GB internal and tie them into one big Fusion drive. This should allow me to work on my 500GB photo library with reasonable alacrity while still staying mobile.

the 840 pro is a beast !!if anyone is thinking about getting it u wont regret it

someone please help.

i got a Samsung 840 Pro for my late 2011 MBP 13", i installed the drive and try to do a fresh install of the OS X Lion, when I get to the page to "Select the disk to install OS X" the laptop doesnt read the hard drive and that box below is empty.

Please help!!! Thanks,

fng2584 said:

someone please help.

i got a Samsung 840 Pro for my late 2011 MBP 13", i installed the drive and try to do a fresh install of the OS X Lion, when I get to the page to "Select the disk to install OS X" the laptop doesnt read the hard drive and that box below is empty.

Please help!!! Thanks,

Click to expand...

Did you format it first with Disk Utility?

hfg said:

Did you format it first with Disk Utility?

Click to expand...

no i forgot haha, i knew i forgot something

I am deciding between the 840 non-pro or the 830. Ideally I'd get the 500 gig 840 non-pro, or get the 256gig 830. Basically it comes down to size vs performance.

I am purchasing a macbook pro and immediately upgrading the ram and hard drive, this is a purchase I plan on making this week, my old macbook pro was too old to do what I wanted, which is...

Run OSX and windows 7 or 8 (I hate 8 but free win keys from school) in virtual machine via parrallels/fusion. Use visual studio 2010 or 2012 in parallels/fusion, and be able to use Office as well. I figure the base i5 with 16 gig of ram for virtualization will more than be effective, and here I am stuck on the SSD choice.

256 gig seems like a lot, but after OSX and VM partition, im stuck with 125-140 gigs left over...

For what I want, should I opt for the bigger drive (500 gig 840), or get the smaller drive but bigger kick in performance.

2011 2.4 i5 MBP 13"
samsung 840 pro 128gb
kingston 16gb

write speed around 380-390
read speed around 480-490

32bit geekbench score about 6600

fins831 said:

I am deciding between the 840 non-pro or the 830. Ideally I'd get the 500 gig 840 non-pro, or get the 256gig 830. Basically it comes down to size vs performance.

I am purchasing a macbook pro and immediately upgrading the ram and hard drive, this is a purchase I plan on making this week, my old macbook pro was too old to do what I wanted, which is...

Run OSX and windows 7 or 8 (I hate 8 but free win keys from school) in virtual machine via parrallels/fusion. Use visual studio 2010 or 2012 in parallels/fusion, and be able to use Office as well. I figure the base i5 with 16 gig of ram for virtualization will more than be effective, and here I am stuck on the SSD choice.

256 gig seems like a lot, but after OSX and VM partition, im stuck with 125-140 gigs left over...

For what I want, should I opt for the bigger drive (500 gig 840), or get the smaller drive but bigger kick in performance.

Click to expand...

I would go for the larger size, especially if you want a Windows environment too. You won't notice the slight speed difference between those two drives in actual use.

I went with the 840 pro 256gig....newegg has it on sale today for 15 percent off. I couldn't pass up those speeds, the 5 year warranty and saving 150 bucks lol.

Ill make 256 gigs work just like i've made 128 gig work before.

Problems with my 840 Pro 512gb

Hi,

I have read through the entire thread about the 840/840 Pro and I have a few questions/problems. I'm tempted to switch the drive back to the hdd and take it to the genius bar one last time to see if there's a problem (there wasn't before but now I'm scared).

First, I put the 840 Pro 512gb in an external case and then formatted it for Mac. Then I installed it in my 2010 MBP i7 and installed Mountain Lion (app store download) and then transferred my files over from an cloned external copy of my old hdd with migration assistant.

From there, what do I do? I downloaded and enabled TRIM Enabler (and restarted). Then I read something about turning off motion sensor (so I did) and "hard disk sleep" (did that too). However, my battery life is ABYSMAL since installing the drive, I can barely get 2 hours (it says 5 but that's BS) and before I got 4-5 easy. Do I need to do something else? After the first 2 restarts (first the install and then TRIM enabler), I shut it down, which took 2 minutes (what?!?). Then it started (1 minute) with no menu bar up top and nothing on the desktop. So I restarted it and it seemed fine but the battery life is still atrocious. Is my drive defective? Did I do something wrong?

I'm new to all this and would love your help. TRIM Enabler says my Firmware Version is DXM04B0Q, in case that makes a difference.

Thank you,
Ryan

Your firmware is the current one!
Did you perform a PRAM reset? http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

paul-n said:

Your firmware is the current one!
Did you perform a PRAM reset?

Click to expand...

I had not performed one before but I just did. My computer has been on for 5 minutes while I checked email and facebook - and the battery percentage dropped 5%. At 85% it said "3:50" (it was idle) and now at 80% it says "2:32" and then "3:18" (and all I'm running is Chrome with this tab, facebook, and gmail open).

This definitely did not happen before the ssd. According to iStat, my battery is at 88% health (before the ssd it was 89% a week ago, right after the install it showed 85% and has since gone back up to 88% - weird).

And as I finish typing this to hit reply...77%.

Here is my current Activity Monitor, fyi. As I'm sitting here reading the forum, 6% drop in 12 minutes. Not awesome.

Hello. Im new here and i have some questions about ssd and mbp.

I will buy mbp with i7, 2.93, 8gb ram and 750gb (5400). I will repleace this 750gb with Samsung ssd 840 pro. Can i do that and what reat/write speed will i get?

What is TRIM enabler? If i replece hard disk with ssd, i must use trim enabler? For what? And if i dont use trim enabler then i will not get full read/write speed of my ssd Samsung?

Another question
If i buy mbp with retina from Apple store, i will get 128ssd. But which brand ssd will be? Trim will be enabled by default?
Apple's ssd have 3Gb/s or 6Gb/s?

Thank you

balalaika said:

Hello. Im new here and i have some questions about ssd and mbp.

I will buy mbp with i7, 2.93, 8gb ram and 750gb (5400). I will repleace this 750gb with Samsung ssd 840 pro. Can i do that and what reat/write speed will i get?

What is TRIM enabler? If i replece hard disk with ssd, i must use trim enabler? For what? And if i dont use trim enabler then i will not get full read/write speed of my ssd Samsung?

Another question
If i buy mbp with retina from Apple store, i will get 128ssd. But which brand ssd will be? Trim will be enabled by default?
Apple's ssd have 3Gb/s or 6Gb/s?

Thank you

Click to expand...

540 pro advertise 500+ read/write speeds for the 256gig+ versions. I just bought one, comes tuesday.

Trim enabler turns on trim since OSX only turns on trim when SSD is installed by Apple, which makes no sense. This utility trips on trim so it cleans up. Trim is enabled by default if your macbook comes with an SSD from apple, without it and you upgrade you need enabler.

So this TRIM is some "patch" to enable full speed for write and read custom ssd?

Apples ssd are 6gb or 3gb/s speed?

Is better that i buy mbp with retina and apples ssd inside or is better that i buy mbp and custom add samsung 840 pro ssd?

Which ssd is better with same i7 2,9 processor and 8gb of ram?

Awesome SSD

Very happy with my 512 GB 840 Pro running revision # DXM04B0Q

And if you disable Trim, what speed you get?

Which mbp you have? Retina 13"?

If you will have only 8gb of ram, will you get the same speed (read/write) with enabled trim?

4x Samsung SSD 840 Basic 500GB...!

I just posted this in the Mac mini forum https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16775924/

Copy/Paste:

I've had my MBP 15' Retina hooked up to 4 Seagate GoFlex Desktop thunderbolt adapter (two on each port on the MBP) with two Apple Gigabit Ethernet adaptors at the end of each thunderbolt-chain.

Then I got two Samsung SSD 840 Basic 500GB, enabled Trim and created a RAID0 1TB Drive. Using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, that resulted in 600mb/s write and 700mb/s read when empty as well as with only 25% free space.

A couple of days ago, another two Samsung SSD 840 Basic 500GB was added and a 4x SSD RAID0 (32kb stripe size) 2TB drive was created....

All the SSD's arrived with the "correct" FW: DXT06B0Q (If someone know how to update the FW on a Mac-system, please reply)

Prior to adding the last two SSD's, I tried creating a Fusion Drive. First using one Samsung SSD and a Hitachi 3TB 7200rpm SATA-III, secondly with two SSD's in RAID0 and the same Hitachi HDD (that is a Fusion drive consisting of a RAID0 Drive + a HDD). The first Fusion Drive was deleted immediately in favor of the second 4TB Fusion Drive. Both of them worked without any error.


My Thanks to this forum and especially this thread, for convincing me to try the Seagate GoFlex Desktop thunderbolt adapter - as you can see, there is no reason to be disappointed...


BTW: Does the Seagate GoFlex Desktop thunderbolt adapter appear in System Information.app as "Unknown AHCI Standard Controller" for everybody else?

Very nice ... thanks for posting!

So you can create coreStorage RAID drives to build Fusion drives? Nice!

I will have to try that.


-howard

Mine appears as "Unknown ACHI Standard Controller" as well.

Not bringing much to the table here, but I'm picking up a Samsung 840 500GB drive tomorrow to replace the 750GB 5400 HDD in my Macbook Pro 2011 (early). Very pumped! It will be my first SSD.

My 256GB 840 Pro is arriving any day now. I was going to get a Vertex 4 previously but I couldn't find a New Zealand reseller who had some in stock for a decent price so I thought I'd give the 840 Pro a chance.

So im in the market to get an SSD for my Mid 2010 MBP 13".

After reading all these comments, the Samsung 840 Pro is on the table.

One question though:

-In terms of other options for SSDs, are there any you'd recommend aside from the 840 Pro? I am looking in the 240 GB+ area that is a reasonalbe price and, above all else, reliable. How does it compare to the OCZ Vector (capacity aside)?

Thanks!