The Samsung 830 SSD thread

[ablatt]

Hi can anyone help me with this freezing problem. Since I have installed samsung 830 freezing has become very common. When it freezes the 'force quit' key command also doesn't work. THe only way I can solve the problem is to switch off the macbook by pressing the power button for few seconds!!! My battery life has also reduced. Can somebody please help in simple terms what I can do to reduce/eliminate these freezing issues and increase battery life?

I'm on Lion at the moment. Do you think upgrading to mountain lion will sort this problem?

Did you install into the hard drive or DVD bay?

 

[pm79]

Did you install into the hard drive or DVD bay?

I installed the SSD in hard drive bay and i got another new hard drive of 1tb in dvd bay... This problem is really bugging me now as it did it again just now and I had to switch the laptop off completely. The problem is even the force quit shortcut also doesn't work.

FYI it's got 8gb RAM.

 

[mlsusa]

Installed in a 24" late 2007 iMac over the weekend and so far so good. Installation was quite involved but more or less smooth with the exception of the SATA power connector being very short, at least in mine. So I couldn't bolt on the drive to the included 3.5" bracket as intended and instead keeping the drive in place using electrical tape.

The speeds are impressive but understandably it's probably not the best available these days with there being the newer 840 pro and my iMac itself being one of the older models. But still very very good for me.

 

[Eddyquan]

Finally bought my Samsung 830 256GB today and installed it. Still waiting for my HD caddy.

Getting write speeds of about 400MB/s (as advertised) and read speeds of about 470MB/s or so on my Late 2011 MacBook Pro 13' (SSD is in the main bay).

Anyone here using Fusion Drive?

 

[swingerofbirch]

I bought an 830 256 gb a few months ago and just today installed it in my 13" Mbp after the old drive or possibly something else on the computer started failing.

After installing the drive I booted to Internet recovery and tried formatting the drive. Before doing so it was listed as unformatted. It gets about halfway through the process and afterward there's no progress. Nothing happens. I manually shut down the computer and restarted. The drive was the listed as Mac OS extended journaled but I knew it would be corrupted from the previous formatting having been aborted with a hard shut down. I tried the lion installer out of curiosity but it didn't show any available drives.

So I am currently trying to format the drive by partitioning it but its still stuck halfway through. I'm not sure if something is wrong with my computer or if its a bad drive.

Also odd is that the recovery partition shows lion. I believe my Mac shipped with mountain lion.

Any ideas? Thanks

Written on iPod. apologies for bad grammar.

 

[TheAngryPenguin]

I bought an 830 256 gb a few months ago and just today installed it in my 13" Mbp after the old drive or possibly something else on the computer started failing.

After installing the drive I booted to Internet recovery and tried formatting the drive. Before doing so it was listed as unformatted. It gets about halfway through the process and afterward there's no progress. Nothing happens. I manually shut down the computer and restarted. The drive was the listed as Mac OS extended journaled but I knew it would be corrupted from the previous formatting having been aborted with a hard shut down. I tried the lion installer out of curiosity but it didn't show any available drives.

So I am currently trying to format the drive by partitioning it but its still stuck halfway through. I'm not sure if something is wrong with my computer or if its a bad drive.

Also odd is that the recovery partition shows lion. I believe my Mac shipped with mountain lion.

Any ideas? Thanks

Written on iPod. apologies for bad grammar.

I would reseat the SATA connector and zap the PRAM (hold down Command + Option + P + R at power up -- I typically let it chime 3 times before releasing they keys) before trying again. If you have another computer, I would try connecting either your old drive or your new drive there (either directly to the motherboard, or even through a USB enclosure or something similar), and see if the new drive can be successfully formatted there, of if the old drive is accessible. It might very well be something wrong with your MBP since you mentioned that the old drive possibly failed, but you weren't sure. Best case would be a defective SATA cable, worst case would be a failed component on the logic board. Another option would be to temporarily connect either drive to the SATA connector in the optical bay. Finally, if your MBP is new enough, you should be able to run the AHT from the Internet.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I would reseat the SATA connector and zap the PRAM (hold down Command + Option + P + R at power up -- I typically let it chime 3 times before releasing they keys) before trying again. If you have another computer, I would try connecting either your old drive or your new drive there (either directly to the motherboard, or even through a USB enclosure or something similar), and see if the new drive can be successfully formatted there, of if the old drive is accessible. It might very well be something wrong with your MBP since you mentioned that the old drive possibly failed, but you weren't sure. Best case would be a defective SATA cable, worst case would be a failed component on the logic board. Another option would be to temporarily connect either drive to the SATA connector in the optical bay. Finally, if your MBP is new enough, you should be able to run the AHT from the Internet.

Thank you for the excellent advice.

I'm hoping it's just the SATA cable and that it can be reseated or replaced. I've had that component fail on me before with a different MBP. I tried running the Apple Hardware Test a few times now and it shows no problems, which probably makes it less likely to be the logic board, which it says it tests.

 

[circa7]

Finally bought my Samsung 830 256GB today and installed it. Still waiting for my HD caddy.

Getting write speeds of about 400MB/s (as advertised) and read speeds of about 470MB/s or so on my Late 2011 MacBook Pro 13' (SSD is in the main bay).

Anyone here using Fusion Drive?

Whered you buy the SSD from? Im still looking for a good deal on one.

 

[omr]

Not sure if anyone's still interested in this thread anymore, but after living with my with 256GB 830 for a few months now, I have decided to let it ride along without TRIM. Here are three reasons:

1. I have not noticed any perceivable differences in performance with TRIM enabled vs. TRIM disabled.
   
2. (I guess #1's not 100% accurate because...) With TRIM enabled, my MBP would sometimes become unresponsive (keyboard/trackpad, beachball, etc.) - This never happend with TRIM disabled. And according to BlackMagic, not to mention my real-world experience, there was no perceivable speed improvement with TRIM enabled.
   
3. With TRIM enabled, shutdowns could take up to 30 seconds; and with TRIM disabled, shutdowns take less than 5 seconds. (In either case, boot times were identical: approximately 10 seconds until I'm able to enter my password).

Since I leave my MBP powered on and active 100% of the time, I am confident that the SSD's garbage collection strategies are 'good enough' for how I use my laptop. Throughout the remaining useful life of either my MBP or its SSD, I plan to re-enable TRIM occasionally to see if it makes a difference, but for the reasons listed above, I doubt I'll keep it enabled for an extended period of time. It's great to have a choice!

I'd be interested in more opinions on this... to enable, or not to enable

Last I checked, consensus was still to enable trim via trim enabler.
I just installed my 830 256gb on a mid 2010 15" macbook pro 6,2 along with a RAM upgrade, clean installed Mountain Lion and have been running smoothly. and now looking around as I thought my next step was to enable trim support...

according to Anandtech, there's a good argument to be made for enabling trim...
The Samsung SSD 830 Review:
Performance Over Time & TRIM

if enabling, it appeared to me that trim enabler might not be updated to deal with 10.8.2 (and it's my understanding trim will need to be re-enabled with each OS X update), but chameleon ssd optimizer does claim to be...
they also offer the terminal commands to do so manually.

 

[swingerofbirch]

TRIM not working

I'm setting up my MacBook Pro 13" 2012 with the new hard drive, and I'm having trouble getting TRIM enabled.

I first tried the commands on this page:

http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

And then tried the commands here:

http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/faq.php

I'm pretty sure that I'm doing everything right in Terminal, but after restarting each time and checking the System Report, it doesn't show TRIM as being on.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

I also tried this:

https://gist.github.com/3768688

And no dice.

EDIT 2:

Also tried the Lion terminal hack from the first link thinking that the kernel extension may have been an older one since this computer had Mountain Lion installed on top of Lion. But still no dice.

EDIT 3:

I was nervous about continuing to use the computer and install new apps and set it up without enabling TRIM so I caved and downloaded the Chameleon app, and it seems to have successfully enabled TRIM. I'm just a bit nervous because I've heard these apps can replace the kext file rather than patch it.

Does anyone know whether Chameleon patches or changes the file?

 

[Blue Sun]

I'm setting up my MacBook Pro 13" 2012 with the new hard drive, and I'm having trouble getting TRIM enabled.

I first tried the commands on this page:

http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

And then tried the commands here:

http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/faq.php

I'm pretty sure that I'm doing everything right in Terminal, but after restarting each time and checking the System Report, it doesn't show TRIM as being on.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

I also tried this:

https://gist.github.com/3768688

And no dice.

EDIT 2:

Also tried the Lion terminal hack from the first link thinking that the kernel extension may have been an older one since this computer had Mountain Lion installed on top of Lion. But still no dice.

EDIT 3:

I was nervous about continuing to use the computer and install new apps and set it up without enabling TRIM so I caved and downloaded the Chameleon app, and it seems to have successfully enabled TRIM. I'm just a bit nervous because I've heard these apps can replace the kext file rather than patch it.

Does anyone know whether Chameleon patches or changes the file?

I wouldn't worry about it too much. The Samsung 830 SSD has decent garbage collection built-in.

 

[The.316]

Ive had the 830 in my iMac (optical drive) for about six months now, and its been working great. The past week though, Ive had the iMac freeze countless times, and had to turn it off by holding down the power button. Does this have to do with the drive being in the optical area, or is there a problem with the SSD?

 

[skasol]

installed a second 830 on my 2011 Mbp and it's not allowing me to format, I already have another 830 on my main hd bay, the second one installed to the optibay isn't allowing me to format it, it's giving me an error message.

 

[Eddyquan]

Whered you buy the SSD from? Im still looking for a good deal on one.

I bought my SSD from MSY Cannington. Keep in mind I live in Australia (where everything is more expensive). Got my 256GB 830 for $195

 

[ocelittle]

Anyone have anything like this happen?

I have the 256GB SSD in my Macbook Pro (early 2011). Yesterday, I had about 120GB's of free space. Today, my wife is working on some photo editing and the computer goes bonkers and I take over and it says there is no disk space left.

So I look and sure enough, it's at 1.3MB.

I delete a few things and get it up to about 15GB's and I can't for the life of me figure out what is going on.

I downloaded THREE hard drive programs to get a picture of what's going on...

For starters:

So you can see I've gotten it up to 26GB now, and the drive is in fact 256GB.

But when I loaded up these programs...

It shows that only about 100GB's of space are actually taken up...there is nothing saying I have more than 100GB-ish used up except in the last one which says it is HIDDEN SPACE.

What is going on!?!?

I found this thread here...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1329717/

Seems like the guy is having the same problem, he runs verify disk in Disk Utility and it tells him to reboot in repair mode and it fixes it...I tried verifying and it worked fine...

So it's not the exact same issue.

I tried rebooting into repair mode, and it didn't do anything.

Well this is infuriating.

(EDIT)
Small update...

I ran DaisyDisk in Administrator Mode and got this:

100GB's to .DocumentRevisions-v100

Google tells me that's autosave...but since this is a brand new problem, I have trouble believing that 100GB's is that important.

 

[TheAngryPenguin]

Do you have Time Machine enabled? If so, see if this helps:

1) Disable TM
2) Reboot
3) Enable TM

 

[The.Walrus]

Do you have Time Machine enabled? If so, see if this helps:

1) Disable TM
2) Reboot
3) Enable TM

Unfortunately, I don't have any other advice to bring, other than quoting The Angry Penguin... perhaps it's a TimeMachine snapshot saved locally on the SDD?

 

[ocelittle]

I don't have Time Machine on any of my drives unfortunately.

Really bizarre!

 

[BAYsic]

Just Purchased a Samsung 830, Need Help

Hello,

I have been reading about SSDs for the better part of a week, trying to research what brand to buy and why. I am not very knowledgable regarding computer components so I have become quite overwhelmed.

After much research, I settled on a 256gb Samsung 830. I am getting ready to install it tomorrow, but wanted to ask a few questions here first. I have seen a lot of information out there regarding the issues below, but would really appreciate it if somebody could break it down for me in plain English and tell me exactly what to do. Searching through the forums there is a lot of conflicting information or information that is in tech-speak and hard to understand.

I have a 5,5 mid-2009, 13 inch Macbook Pro. The model identifier is MB991LL/A. I am currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

TRIM

I would like to understand exactly what to do about TRIM and garbage disposal. Some say that I do not need to enable the TRIM hack because Samsung drives have their own software to handle this. Others say I must definitely enable TRIM to get the most out of my drive. Could somebody please clear this up for me and tell me exactly how I should enable TRIM if that is what I need to do?

FIRMWARE

I still have not opened the the SSD packaging and so do not know if my hard drive has the most up to date firmware. I do not think it does because I was told that it was sitting on the shelf in the store for the better part of 7 months. I understand that Windows is required to update the firmware. I do not have access to Windows or a Windows machine. Are there any suitable workarounds? I remember reading somewhere that the Samsung site has a disk image that Mac users can burn to a DVD to update the firmware without resorting to Windows. I was not able to find any such disk image on the Samsung support site.

SATA Issues

My system profiler shows that my SATA driver is an nVidia MCP79 AHCI. With my stock HDD in the system it shows:

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported​

I am running EFI Firmware 1.7 (Boot ROM Version: MBP55.00AC.B03). My understanding is that this firmware should have increased the negotiated link speed to 3gb/s.

When I install the Samsung 830, will I see the negotiated link speed increase to 3 gb/s or will it remain at 1.5 gb/s? What do I need to do to increase it to 3 gb/s?

I apologize for all of the questions. I know the answers are out there somewhere, but I have read so much that everything is starting to meld together and make my head explode. I would really appreciate your help.

Also, sorry if I should have posted this as a new thread. I am happy to repost if this is not the correct area.

Thanks!

 

[Hellhammer]

I remember reading somewhere that the Samsung site has a disk image that Mac users can burn to a DVD to update the firmware without resorting to Windows. I was not able to find any such disk image on the Samsung support site.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html

 

[BAYsic]

Thanks HellHammer! One down, two to go so that I can install this drive.

 

[leoburton]

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the long post, but I'm an FNG here.

I bought a 256gb 830 in December, looking to install now.

There seem to be so many issues its quite daunting, not wanting to ruin a stable working computer, but I need the extra performance, so Im plunging in between work.

I'm running a early-2011 Macbook Pro 17", 16gb Corsair

Replacing my 5600hdd with the SSD, and putting HDD into opticalbay with caddy.

I'm running Lion (not sure if I want to upgrade to Mountain lion yet) and can't redownload from app store (even with option key) becuase it came pre-installed as an apple refurb in Nov 2011.

So thinking of making bootable usb stick from the terminal recovery method.

Firmware question 1:
Once I've swapped out superdrive, can I boot into windows 8 on my HDD partition to update the firmware of the other SSD, or do I have to load a working OSx system to SSD first, then make a partition, then do firmware upgrade?
Is this still necessary from a unit purchased in NOv 2012? Would that have latest firmware on it already?

Install Question 2:
For OSX install, should I simply boot into recovery and fresh install that way? Or will that try to give me Mountain Lion via internet? (slow and unstable)
Installing Lion from the recovery USB stick, is that fully stable once installed?

INstall Question 3: I can re-upload lots of applications, but some like FCP6, will need to be migrated? Is this possible to select only certain applications to transfer via time machine or CCC?

...and breathe..

Appreciate any insight people!

Thanks

 

[prograham]

Hi.

My Samsung 830 is topping out at 177w 188r. It's in a MacPro3,1 on PCI-E card mentioned in this thread (I forget the name brand). I had my old SATA primary still in the computer and basically today manually deleted everything off it I could and emptied trash. It's left a couple folders on it that I am wondering if they are the culprits for my slow speed on the SSD (com.apple.bootstamps and com.apple.corestorage)?

I started a thread about it if anyone has any insight I would appreciate it...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1551132/

Thank you.

 

[leoburton]

Holy hand grenade!

I've swapped out the SSD, fresh install of ML, Migration Assistant for apps and user settings....

My 17" MBP early-2011 with 16gb of Corsair Value RAM,

HDD: Boot up time 1min 50secs, read/write 77/83
SSD: Bootup time 14secs, read/write 430/442

Amazingly fast machine!

So happy I did the swap. Thanks to all for the advice and information on this forum!!

 

[prograham]

Hi.

My Samsung 830 is topping out at 177w 188r. It's in a MacPro3,1 on PCI-E card mentioned in this thread (I forget the name brand). I had my old SATA primary still in the computer and basically today manually deleted everything off it I could and emptied trash. It's left a couple folders on it that I am wondering if they are the culprits for my slow speed on the SSD (com.apple.bootstamps and com.apple.corestorage)?

I started a thread about it if anyone has any insight I would appreciate it...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1551132/

Thank you.

Just thought I would write back that I figured it out. I had put the Velocity Solo X2 pci card in slot 3. Putting it in slot two I now am getting the correct speeds.