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Samsung SSD 840 EVO bug and fix

T

^Tripper^

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 31, 2010
64
45
Disneyland with the Death Penalty
The samsung EVO 840 (which is quite used around here from what I see) has been reported to have a bug with the firmware.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/...o-read-performance-bug-coming-on-october-15th


Anyhows, Samsung has released a fix. The PC version was released a couple of weeks ago and the OS X fix just today.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html

Scroll down to "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software". Of course, to apply the fix, one has to do some sort of "DOS Bootup" sequence. A DOS bootup. :eek:

I haven't applied the fix yet as quite honestly, I'm confused as to how to go about it. Anyone here have any ideas? :confused:

Thank you!
 
^Tripper^ said:
The samsung EVO 840 (which is quite used around here from what I see) has been reported to have a bug with the firmware.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/...o-read-performance-bug-coming-on-october-15th


Anyhows, Samsung has released a fix. The PC version was released a couple of weeks ago and the OS X fix just today.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html

Scroll down to "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software". Of course, to apply the fix, one has to do some sort of "DOS Bootup" sequence. A DOS bootup. :eek:

I haven't applied the fix yet as quite honestly, I'm confused as to how to go about it. Anyone here have any ideas? :confused:

Thank you!
Click to expand...

I'm looking to install this too: One issue: Samsung doesn't tell you how to boot from a USB drive, and simply states that you should check other 3rd party tools and websites to learn how to do it.

I pulled out my optical drive, so it's my only option. Anyone know how to get that .iso onto a bootable USB drive properly? (It also needs to be able to run that one file)
 
If your drive is new and you have a PC around, just format the SSD with a NTFS partition and apply the windows fix, it will update the firmware, then install it on your Mac and reformat it with disk utility, but make sure to select the partition table as GUID.
 
I bit the bullet and tried installing the fix. Seems to have worked. Here's what I did;

As always, PLEASE BACKUP YOUR DRIVE FIRST.

I downloaded the ISO file. Burned it to a blank dvd with disk utility. Rebooted the Mac pressing the ALT key, this allowed me to select the boot up disk. Selected the DVD as the boot up disk. Mac loads into DOS. (So strange to see that!) Applied the fix. (This updates the firmware first, then applies the fix). Once done, reboot. Enjoy!

I have noticed an overall improvement, YMMV.

Just to say this again, please make sure to backup your HD first. The firmware update and/or the fix MAY wipe your drive clean. So please make sure YOU BACK UP FIRST.

Anyways, that's what I did and all seems good now.

Good luck!
 
ls1dreams said:
I'm looking to install this too: One issue: Samsung doesn't tell you how to boot from a USB drive, and simply states that you should check other 3rd party tools and websites to learn how to do it.

I pulled out my optical drive, so it's my only option. Anyone know how to get that .iso onto a bootable USB drive properly? (It also needs to be able to run that one file)
Click to expand...

From my understanding, if the Samsung firmware updates are anything like the ones from Crucial and other vendors, they are using syslinux (or isolinux on an optical disk) to load a floppy disk image into ram which boots FreeDOS which runs the actual firmware updater.

In theory it is possible to extract the FreeDOS image file from the ISO and create a bootable USB flash drive using syslinux, which can boot most intel based pc or servers, as most UEFI machines support some sort of BIOS boot mode. Unfortunately, from what I have read on the Crucial forums, the BIOS emulation on most Macs has difficulty booting these Syslinux/FreeDOS images from USB and you can't EFI boot a 16 bit O/S such as FreeDOS.

Some people have also found that booting a USB connected optical drive doesn't work either. Some have resorted to putting the optical drive back in their MBP, just for the duration of the firmware upgrade. Others found it easier to remove the SSD and update the firmware with the SSD installed in a pc.

Do Samsung have a user support forum like the ones at Crucial and Intel (and I think also Sandisk)?


Edit: if you have bootcamp, it might be easier to update the firmware from Windows. From my understanding the data needs to be refreshed in the drive, meaning you might need to then reinstall your OS X partition using Time Machine or some other backup.
 
Last edited:
I've try to make a bootable USB stick by using the dd command in terminal, doesn't work. I can crate the USB stick with all the files there, but not bootable.

The easiest way for mac user is to burn the disk and then boot from the disk. The procedure itself is very straight forward. It cost just less than 1 hour to run the whole process.
 
Looks like I'm out of luck for now..have removed my disc drive so no way to update :(
 
Nope don't have one and no one I know does either...I do have a USB/Sata cable though which I could use to connect the old DVD drive to my Mac! :) Not even sure what issues I'm supposed to be having which this update will fix though..
 
I have an iMac early 2009 with the optical drive replaced by a Samsung 840 EVO. As such i can't update via CD/DVD

I found this tutorial for creating a bootable USB stick with the firmware.
It doesn't work for me but maybe someone else might find it usefull.

Has anyone had success with this tutorial for booting the firmware from USB?
(instructions in French) google translate link below


https://medium.com/@AdamBoum/tuto-cle-bootable-pour-firmware-samsung-840-evo-c4d9c800c169

https://translate.google.com/transl...e-ssd-samsung-840-evo-t102027.html&edit-text=
 
For what it's worth, I was unable to get any of the Mac versions of the Samsung firmware to work at all. Even with the bootable CD method in my Mac Pro, it would get hung up on "Detecting Samsung drives……" or something like that, and never detected my 840 EVO 1TB. It didn't matter if I was using the Restoration ISO or the Firmware update ISO. Both would hang at the detection phase. I thought that was strange, since the drive appeared normally on my desktop, verifying it was properly connected.

What I had to do was put the SSD in a PC and run the Windows exe version 1.1 of Restoration. Even that was a bit of hassle, as I had to reformat the drive into NTFS to run the restoration section. It's a bummer that the Mac versions are so touchy, but I suppose that's what we get for being a minority. There's something to be said for using both PCs and Macs! I used to think Macs were for non-techies when I was younger, but these days, one has to be even more nerdy to get things to work on a Mac sometimes, haha.

The good news is that my 840 EVO 1TB is now on the new firmware, restored, and all back to normal max speed in my 2012 MacBook Pro optical bay. I'm leaving my 840 Pro in the HDD bay alone, as it's working perfectly. :cool:
 
This need for a cd/DVD to update is annoying considering how Apple has moved away from optical media. I tried playing around with the usb stick, trying all possible combinations to get the restoration software on it to boot up the Mac. I even tried loading the Yosemite installer on the usb and dropping the firmware on it. No dice. As I see it, the only way for now is to use the ISO file. Which is annoying. Samsung claims that the fix is for Mac and technically it is, but it isn't exactly as simple as that. They have also provided "instructions" which hardly seem to help. Only thing I can think of is to use an external drive but as always, YMMV.

If anyone figures out a way to use the usb stick method, please do post in here.
 
Since I have 3 optical drives in my Mac, so I go for the easy way.

Another way to go may be use the VM to run Rufus in Windows to create a bootable DOS USB stick and then manually run the performance restoration tool. I didn't try it myself, but it seems doable.
 
I am about to try the dvd image now. I have bootcamp, and I ran successfully the performance restore update when it first came out. It updated the bios and refreshed the disk. However, I do not know if it does the entire disk, or only the windows ntfs partition?

I did notice that there is a USB boot version now on the Samsung site.
 
Just finished, and no data loss at all. Here is what I did:
- Patch was released first for Windows. I ran the full performance restore program in Windows 8.1 via Bootcamp. No problems at all.
- Patch was next released as bootable disk. From Apple side, I download the iso and burned it to a dvd-rw. Re-started off of the dvd, and ran the full performance install. It skipped the bios update as it was already applied, then did the refresh. No problems at all.

This is on a 2012 Macbook Pro 15", Samsung Evo 512, Mavericks (trim enabled) and Bootcamp Win 8.1.

I don't know if the windows version refreshes the entire drive or only the ntfs partitions. The Samsung site indicates the utility will only allow a single run through, however I saw no message of this when executing. Anyway, I am all set, it didn't take long, and I don't have to go through a full backup/restore.
 
Mac mini 2011 server.

I had a hiren boot cd on a usb stick. What I did is to copy the firmware in folder, boot from the usb stick and chose the dos prompt from the hiren boot cd menu. Then I just run the perf.exe and after at least 15 mins it finished successfully. No data lost.
 
I have a new 840 EVO drive coming in the mail. I could use my wifes windows 8.1 laptop to format the drive, or even our soon to be retired xp box, and apply the firmware fix, then reformat for OS/x. Other than time, is there any reason not to do this (i.e. reformatting won't wipe out the firmware fix will it?)
 
johnh57 said:
I have a new 840 EVO drive coming in the mail. I could use my wifes windows 8.1 laptop to format the drive, or even our soon to be retired xp box, and apply the firmware fix, then reformat for OS/x. Other than time, is there any reason not to do this (i.e. reformatting won't wipe out the firmware fix will it?)
Click to expand...

Way too many steps. For a new drive, its not the fix you need (as you have no data), its just the latest firmware that is installed as part of the fix. You can make the boot DVD now on either your current macbook, or on the windows laptop. When you get the new Evo, just install it in your macbook and boot off the DVD to install the new firmware, a format will not be needed. Done! Then you can load up OSX and transfer over your data.
 
fastd said:
Way too many steps. For a new drive, its not the fix you need (as you have no data), its just the latest firmware that is installed as part of the fix. You can make the boot DVD now on either your current macbook, or on the windows laptop. When you get the new Evo, just install it in your macbook and boot off the DVD to install the new firmware, a format will not be needed. Done! Then you can load up OSX and transfer over your data.
Click to expand...

Thanks, my process would not have worked anyway I discovered after reading the installation instructions. It won't work on a USB : SATA mounted drive. I had hoped I could do the update with the drive in the external docking station prior to loading anything on it.
 
shadowfax-- said:
Just check out the links under
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software
section of the page
Click to expand...

How do you get it to burn to the USB drive though? I can't for the life of me figure it out! I've tried using the terminal commands to change the ISO file also and it fails using the dd command line stating that the file or directory doesn't exist.
 
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