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Has one of you owners done a firmware update so far?

They are available here. Looks like one would have to prepare one's own solution, since the prepared stuff is geared towards Windows users only.

The Intel ISO images at least work with some of the Macbooks ;-)
 
Samsung 470 = most problem free SSD available.

One exeception: the firmware update procedure isn't problem free for everyone but then again, the firmware update itself isn't important.
 
i'm planning on getting a samsung 470 ssd for a mac mini that i plan on ordering in the coming weeks. are they any problems with sleep/hibernation like some of the sf drives? ever since going with the ssd in my mbp i can't go without one. lol
 
I installed a 256GB 470 SSD into my 2011 MBP 15".

TRIM is automatically enabled without any hacks (10.7.1).
The only thing I did was modify the filesystem mounting for noatime option.

The reason I went with the Samsung is because it is one of the best overall drives. Good reads and writes. Not stellar in either, but very good in both.
 
are they any problems with sleep/hibernation like some of the sf drives?

I would also like to know this. I have an older Sandforce SSD in my MBP and have to change a setting in SmartSleep preference panel to "Sleep Only" for regular sleep to work.

If the Samsung 470 has no problems with sleep and hibernation it would help me sleep better.
 
He is mistaken. I have that drive in a 2011 MBP 13" with 10.7.1 and TRIM is not enabled without hack.

Yup, you're right. Spoke too soon. I tried to revert my IOAHCIBlockStorage file back to the original and rebooted to test. The TRIM function still showed enabled after reboot; however today TRIM is showing disabled.

Oh well, glad I backed up the modified file....
 
I never recommend Samsung products anymore (except possibly their cell phones). I have a single TV made by them that I had to repair myself (it suffered from the power board/capacitor issue that has caused many of their tvs across many model lines to fail somewhere in the 2nd year of use, and their 1 time repair to fix it was not really a fix because the same under volted capacitors were put right back into the tvs). I repaired it myself because it was the only way to permanently fix the issue.

While I do still have that TV, I just bought a new one over the weekend, a Sony Bravia. And I'll say that the Sony is just better quality all around. The Samsung panel also has had a bit of light leakage as well in the last year or so occurring on the left hand side of the screen.

I realize the SSD is not a TV. Different product and all that. But it's the same company, with the same mindset of designing products to fail outside of the warranty.

Something else to consider: Samsung support and firmware upgrades are built around Microsoft and Windows. They don't like to pay enough for support personnel with Mac knowledge. Yet for some reason a LOT of Mac users like buying Samsung products. (I have no idea why).

You'll find that their support policies leave a lot to be desired as well, if you ever need to use it.


Retail pricing for those 10 volt capacitors is something like 4.50. For 25 volt capacitors, 5 dollars. That's RETAIL pricing. meaning, I paid 5 dollars for the capacitors to permanently fix the issue. Samsung saved maybe 2 or 3 cents per TV by going with the under volted capacitors. The real gain for Samsung though is that loyal customers are going out and buying NEW Samsung tvs to replace their failed ones after a year or two of use. And Samsung has never admitted to a design fault, and will only offer a 1 time repair, when it fails again, so sorry, buy a new tv.
 
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One more yes vote on the Samsung 470 256 GB SSD. Been running for about 3 months in my 2011 MBP 15.4 with no issues at all. In answer to previous posters:

A. TRIM is not enabled on my unit
B. No issues with sleep/hibernation

Also like to mention the unit has worked very well running Snow Leopard and now Lion. I went with the Samsung even though both bays on my MBP support SATA III. Took me about a month and various forum readings before finally making a buying decision.
 
My new Sansung 470 SSD arrived this week and I installed it in my 2011 Mini last night. I reinstalled Lion to the bare disk using the built in internet recovery feature that the new Macs come with (pretty handy if you have broadband) and migrated my stuff from a backup to the new SSD.

I'm happy to say everything went very smoothly and the 470 is running flawlessly. No beach balls or any other anomalies. It is very fast compared to the 2.5", 5400 rpm drive it replaces. Bootup is around 16 seconds and applications open almost instantly. TRIM was not turned on by default so I used Trim Enable to turn it on and have seen no ill effects from it. I hope it keeps the SSD fast as it is today.

I like it so much I think I'll pick up a 64GB 470 for my MBP.
 
I recently had my 2008 Unibody 5,1 MacBook Pro replaced with the new Core i7 version (boy do I love Apple), and I would really like to get a SSD. As much as I would like to think that I would be happy with the next gen Momentus XT, I was far from impressed with the first gen version.

I've decided to purchase the 256GB Samsung 470 SSD (although I'll be waiting for the release of the Samsung 830 so that the price of the 470 will drop), but I have some concerns about enabling TRIM support via a hack. I am aware that TRIM support extends the life of the SSD, but by how much, and is it necessary?
 
I recently had my 2008 Unibody 5,1 MacBook Pro replaced with the new Core i7 version (boy do I love Apple), and I would really like to get a SSD. As much as I would like to think that I would be happy with the next gen Momentus XT, I was far from impressed with the first gen version.

I've decided to purchase the 256GB Samsung 470 SSD, but I have some concerns about enabling TRIM support via a hack. I am aware that TRIM support extends the life of the SSD, but by how much, and is it necessary?

If it has its own Garbage Collection, it isn't really necessary. I enabled it on mine anyways, I've yet to see a difference in performance with it enabled/disabled.

It's safe and reversible... just follow the instructions here

And read up on TRIM a little more to understand the concept... it basically helps prevent the SSD performance from degrading over time. It's more useful on older SSD drives where they didn't have their own independent garbage-collection.
 
If it has its own Garbage Collection, it isn't really necessary. I enabled it on mine anyways, I've yet to see a difference in performance with it enabled/disabled.

It's safe and reversible... just follow the instructions here

And read up on TRIM a little more to understand the concept... it basically helps prevent the SSD performance from degrading over time. It's more useful on older SSD drives where they didn't have their own independent garbage-collection.

And the consequences if I don't enable TRIM support?
 
And the consequences if I don't enable TRIM support?

Well, basically if there is no garbage collection anywhere, theoretically you will start seeing major slowdowns and the like. And possibly wearing down your SSD.

...despite [the deleted files] being reported as "deleted" by the operating system, it also means that when the operating system later performs a write operation to one of the sectors, which it considers free space, it effectively becomes an overwrite operation from the point of view of the storage medium. For traditional hard disks this is no different from writing an empty sector, but because of how some SSDs function at the lowest level, an overwrite produces significant overhead compared to writing data into an empty page, potentially crippling write performance...
 
Well, basically if there is no garbage collection anywhere, theoretically you will start seeing major slowdowns and the like.

Interesting. Thank you.

I have read that the 470 supports garbage collection, but does it "collect garbage" without TRIM support enabled? Also, do you have to enable TRIM support before you install the SSD?
 
I have read that the 470 supports garbage collection, but does it "collect garbage" without TRIM support enabled?

Yes. The SSD performs this operation independent of the OS. So, it does it regardless of whether or not the OS supports it, and regardless of what OS you have installed on it, or even if you don't have an OS on it! Really nice feature.

Though, an interesting piece of information from Wiki

...More recent SSDs will often contain internal idle/background garbage collection mechanisms that work independently of TRIM; although this successfully maintains their performance even under operating systems that do not (yet) support TRIM, it has the associated drawbacks of increased write amplification and wear of the flash cells...

Meaning the SSD's independent garbage collection could possibly have more wear on the SSD. Which really, you can't do anything about so it's not worth worrying about it.

Also, do you have to enable TRIM support before you install the SSD?

No. No need to, just do it whenever, it won't hurt your drive to let it go without TRIM for a while. Might not even be a bad idea to see how it works at first without it, because many people have had beach ball problems with TRIM enabled.

By default, TRIM is disabled in OS X because Apple only enables it on their stock SSD drives (because it "just works" on their [Toshiba's, really] SSD's).

Because TRIM is a software level mechanism (the trim commands are sent from the OS itself, not from the SSD), you can't really enable TRIM before you install the SSD anyways. Just trying to clarify.
 
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Yes. The SSD performs this operation independent of the OS. So, it does it regardless of whether or not the OS supports it, and regardless of what OS you have installed on it, or even if you don't have an OS on it! Really nice feature.

Though, an interesting piece of information from Wiki



Meaning the SSD's independent garbage collection could possibly have more wear on the SSD. Which really, you can't do anything about so it's not worth worrying about it.



No. No need to, just do it whenever, it won't hurt your drive to let it go without TRIM for a while. Might not even be a bad idea to see how it works at first without it, because many people have had beach ball problems with TRIM enabled.

By default, TRIM is disabled in OS X because Apple only enables it on their stock SSD drives (because it "just works" on their [Toshiba's, really] SSD's).

Because TRIM is a software level mechanism (the trim commands are sent from the OS itself, not from the SSD), you can't really enable TRIM before you install the SSD anyways. Just trying to clarify.

You have been immensely helpful. Thank you!

This is all very interesting. Is it you're recommendation to enable TRIM for only a brief amount of time?
 
After being very satisfied with the 256GB Samsung 470 SSD I installed on my new Mini I decided to get a 64GB drive for my mid 2009 MBP. Instead of doing a fresh install like I did with Lion on the new Mini I just cloned my MBP Snow Leopard drive to the new SSD.

I'm happy to say it is working flawlessly just like the install on the Mini. I was concerned because initially it look well over a minute just to get to the grey screen with Apple logo when booting. Once it got there it was lightning fast to boot and run the OS. I remembered seeing a "boot drive" option in the System Preferences and wondered if that might be the problem. Sure enough, after setting the boot drive to the new 470 it booted up in about 16 seconds.

All-in-all, I'm sold on these Samsung 470 drives. Although not as fast as most of the new drives, both my installs went without a hitch and I have seen no beach balls, sleep issues, stuttering or any other anomalies. For my uses I will gladly give up a bit of speed for solid performance which these drives are giving me.
 
After being very satisfied with the 256GB Samsung 470 SSD I installed on my new Mini I decided to get a 64GB drive for my mid 2009 MBP. Instead of doing a fresh install like I did with Lion on the new Mini I just cloned my MBP Snow Leopard drive to the new SSD.

I'm happy to say it is working flawlessly just like the install on the Mini. I was concerned because initially it look well over a minute just to get to the grey screen with Apple logo when booting. Once it got there it was lightning fast to boot and run the OS. I remembered seeing a "boot drive" option in the System Preferences and wondered if that might be the problem. Sure enough, after setting the boot drive to the new 470 it booted up in about 16 seconds.

All-in-all, I'm sold on these Samsung 470 drives. Although not as fast as most of the new drives, both my installs went without a hitch and I have seen no beach balls, sleep issues, stuttering or any other anomalies. For my uses I will gladly give up a bit of speed for solid performance which these drives are giving me.

That's music to my ears. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of mine from Amazon.

Do you have TRIM support enabled?
 
That's music to my ears. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of mine from Amazon.

Do you have TRIM support enabled?

Yes. I used TRIM Enabler to turn on trim on both machines. Also, I purchased both of my drives from Amazon and both came with the latest firmware already installed.
 
Yes. I used TRIM Enabler to turn on trim on both machines. Also, I purchased both of my drives from Amazon and both came with the latest firmware already installed.

Brilliant. I purchased mine from Amazon as well.

Looks like I'll be enabling TRIM support.
 
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