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The Samsung 840/840 Pro SSD thread

Swiss-G said:
FWIW its possible to create a bootable USB using the magician software in despite it not being able to see the SSD. The MBP booted from the USB image but then FreeDOS produced an error code.

In short the only way I was able to update the firmware was via a bootable DVD.
Click to expand...

I have the Samsung 840 and ran into the same problem as others in creating the DVD for my MB Pro 2010.

What worked for me was to download and burn the Mac ISO on a Windows 7 laptop. It might also have helped that I also used a different brand of DVD. Hope this helps for others having the problem.
 
What prices are people getting the 840 Pro for?

When firmware update, can it be done on mac via thunderbolt?
 
840 500 GB in an early 2008 (Santa Rosa) 15" MBP?

Finances are forcing me to hold on to my early 2008 MBP as long as possible before I buy a new computer. The price on the Samsung 840 500 GB has finally dropped to a level I can justify. BuyDig.com currently has it on sale for $295: http://dealmac.com/c625/Computers/Storage/SSDs/?e=1

I've read several threads about upgrading old MBPs with various SSDs, and several said, "This will work in a late-2008 (unibody) MBP or later." I checked the Samsung site a couple weeks ago, and I recall it saying that the 840 was compatible with SATA 2 and SATA 3, which would imply that it's incompatible with my SATA 1 MBP. I just went to double-check, and the 840 500 isn't listed as a current product anymore - only the 840 512 Pro is. Has anyone here upgraded an early 2008 MBP with an SSD recently? What is the reason that some SSDs might not work? I know I'd only get SATA 1 speeds, but it still would be faster than my 7,200 RPM 320 GB HDD.
 
Samsung 840 250GB came in today, popped it in, enabled trim and...

Results..

eQz3Zvg.jpg


So far seems lightning fast..

What is latest firmware right now?
 
I ordered a 500GB Samsung 840 the other day for $295. It should arrive tomorrow.

I have a (mid-2012 MBP) 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR3, and soon this SSD drive.

I was highly disappointed with how sluggish this thing was for a while, up until I upgraded from 4GB to 16GB of ram. Lets hope the disappointment days are a thing of the past once the SSD goes in.
 
Native Firmware Support

Just about to pull the trigger on the 840 Pro 256GB for my mid 2012 MBP and i have heard that Samsung will give us Mac users native firmware support!

Any ideas on when this will come to be?

Cheers Paul
 
Last edited:
imorton said:
Let us know how it goes. Do some benchmarks afterwards to we can compare... :)
Click to expand...


everything went perfectly. installed, booted from USB drive, installed OS clean, and i've been transferring essential stuff from an external drive back to the ssd.

running trim enabler. battery life at 8 and a half hours - pretty damn good. i would like to run some benchmarks, but i've heard it's actually bad for a new SSD. can anyone comment on that? heard it does a lot of writing to your drive so that it can establish your speed.

hardware installation and software was a breeze. using lion diskmaker to make a bootable usb drive btw.


edit: 2.9ghz dual core i7, 8gb ram
 
jasonforisrael said:
i would like to run some benchmarks, but i've heard it's actually bad for a new SSD. can anyone comment on that?
Click to expand...

Yep. Life is too short! Relax, run some benchmarks. :)

Nothing lasts forever, and the SSD you just installed is meant to be used. By running the tests you will use a minuscule fraction of a minuscule fraction of a minuscule fraction of one percentage point of the life of the SSD. Maybe not even that.
 
i've been using Trim Enabler, but last night i downloaded Chameleon SSD Optimizer thinking that it would open with all of the options set to "off". however, it opened with all of them on (some of which were already activated via Terminal and obviously Trim via Trim Enabler) and i was concerned about some sort of conflict with the overlap there.


i appzapp'd chameleon and got rid of it but i was wondering if i might have caused some confusion in my system?
 
firmware update

I've been trying to up date my Samsung 840 Pro firmware without luck. Just got the drive a few weeks ago DXM03B0Q was on it and I see on the Samsung site the newest is DXM04B0Q.

Burned the DVD with the disk image on my other MBP, inserted the DVD and restarted-up holding the Option key, and nothing but my SSD drive and recovery drive showing up.

Guess I'll have to wait till Samsung gets a MAC firmware app ready unless you have any suggestions?

As it is things are running fine and very fast. Hope I'm OK...
 
elmarjazz said:
I've been trying to up date my Samsung 840 Pro firmware without luck. Just got the drive a few weeks ago DXM03B0Q was on it and I see on the Samsung site the newest is DXM04B0Q.

Burned the DVD with the disk image on my other MBP, inserted the DVD and restarted-up holding the Option key, and nothing but my SSD drive and recovery drive showing up.

Guess I'll have to wait till Samsung gets a MAC firmware app ready unless you have any suggestions?

As it is things are running fine and very fast. Hope I'm OK...
Click to expand...

Sounds like you didn't create the bootable CD properly. Does it boot on a different machine?

I created the disk on my new iMac, but used the cd to update the 840 Pro in a late 2011 Macbook Pro with no problems.
 
hfg said:
Sounds like you didn't create the bootable CD properly. Does it boot on a different machine?

I created the disk on my new iMac, but used the cd to update the 840 Pro in a late 2011 Macbook Pro with no problems.
Click to expand...

The Samsung 840 (non-Pro) firmware for Mac seems to be broken. I, and many others, couldn't update the firmware on a Samsung 840 SSD. Personally, I tried just about everything without success. I just could not update the firmware.

The Samsung 840 Pro is a different story altogether.
 
firmware update for 840 Pro

OK so I tried using a CD, but read that I needed to use a DVD. Made a DVD with the firmware disk DXM04B0Q and that didn't work, so made a DVD with the opened 'root' file BTDSK.IMG and that didn't work.

What am I doing wrong?

Can someone explain, step-by-step, how I should make the DVD with Disk Utility just to make sure I'm doing it right.

This is for the Samsung 840 PRO

Thanks ahead for any help.
 
elmarjazz said:
OK so I tried using a CD, but read that I needed to use a DVD. Made a DVD with the firmware disk DXM04B0Q and that didn't work, so made a DVD with the opened 'root' file BTDSK.IMG and that didn't work.

What am I doing wrong?

Can someone explain, step-by-step, how I should make the DVD with Disk Utility just to make sure I'm doing it right.

This is for the Samsung 840 PRO

Thanks ahead for any help.
Click to expand...

I have it on a simple CD-R ... it isn't very big at 2.9MB. As I recall, I downloaded the Mac file (scroll down to Mac files) from here:

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

There is the Dec. 2012 840 Pro entry: DXM04B0Q .iso file and a .pdf manual telling how to do it.

I then put the .iso file into the pane in Disk Utility and clicked "Burn". It appears to have put a file "BTDSK.IMG" on the CD and is bootable.

Hope this helps... :)
 
That's what I [thought] did on both a CD-R and DVD without luck.

Guess I try again from the start. I must be missing something.

Thanks
 
Hi,

I am going to swap my HDD (which is going into the superdrive slot) with the new 840 Pro I just received but I have a question. If I want to do a clean install of my OS on my SSD, what do I need to do beforehand ? Just stick the SSD in the HDD slot and OS X will download automatically or there's an extra step(s) ?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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