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The Samsung 840/840 Pro SSD thread

johnnnw said:
Is it possible the 2011 iMac isn't SATAIII? This would certainly explain the speed cut if it was running 3gb/s SATAII
Click to expand...

Yep, looks like the optical drive has been left at 3gb/s for whatever reason. You won't get any higher speeds in that bay - the only option would be to put it in the main HDD bay and get 6gb/s.

http://blog.macsales.com/10050-firmware-update-enables-6gbs-in-2011-imacs

From article:
Unfortunately, the optical bay remains at 3Gb/s.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, the Super Drive bay is limited to 3Gb/s. The 2011 iMacs have one free Sata3 connector though, so you can fit an additional SSD in, without removing the stock HDD (you can fit it behind the optical bay in the 27" model).
My config:
2011 2.5GHz Core i5 iMac
AMD Radeon 6750M
10GB RAM
500GB Samsung 840 Series + stock 500GB HDD

Here are my speeds on the 840:
Samsung%20840.png
 
Anybody know when Samsung will release the OSX installer for the firmware update that will allow those of us withou an internal optical drive to update ou firmware?
I recall somewhere in this thread that someone had contacted Samsung (abou 2 months ago) and they indicated they were working on one.

----------

When running blackmagic on fusion how do I know it is performing the test on the SSD instead of the HDD or a combination of both?
In the Blackmagic menu I have just been choosing a file I think would be using the SSD but I am not entirely confident it is
 
Early 2009 24" iMac

I'm looking to upgrade the stock HDD from my 2009 24" iMac with a Samsung drive.

  1. Have any of you done this using the NewerTech AdaptaDrive? Seems like a reasonable device to allow internal mounting without using tape.
  2. Any pointers for buying a compatible optical drive temperature sensor for mounting onto the SSD (to replace the stock HDD temperature sensor wiring)? Or should I just short the stock sensor?
  3. Does anyone have experience with Alex & Ome's Trash or Treasures? They are selling both the pro and non-pro versions at extremely low prices that seem too good to be true. I missed a recent wave of sales that I should have jumped on.

Thanks!
 
glenthompson said:
Sounds like the SuperDrive bay isn't running at full SATA III speed. Try putting the SSD in the primary drive location and put the original drive in the SuperDrive spot.
Click to expand...

That won't be so easy with a 3.5" hard drive. But you can always replace it with a HGST 2.5 1TB 7200RPM drive and use a 3.5" adapter for the SSD.

What does the System Information say about the link speed of the drive?


jwjsr said:
Anybody know when Samsung will release the OSX installer for the firmware update that will allow those of us withou an internal optical drive to update ou firmware?
I recall somewhere in this thread that someone had contacted Samsung (abou 2 months ago) and they indicated they were working on one.
Click to expand...
You can copy the iso onto a USB flash drive via Disk Utility's Restore tab.
 
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Had my Samsung 840 drive catastrophically fail on me the other day, to the point of no return on OS X, Ubuntu or Windows. It was absolutely destroyed, just from waking up the machine. It was only about 1 month old - there seem to be several reports (though not loads) of them dying after this kind of time, so I'll put it down to bad luck. It was related to the sleep/wake of the MBP, thread here.

My replacement 840 has got the latest firmware already on it, which the previous didn't, so I'm happy about that. However, I'm now nervous about enabling TRIM!

Might there be any problems with forcing a 2009 MBP to have TRIM enabled with this drive? I've just set the MBP up on this new 840, so have done a fair number of writes already...I'd like to get TRIM going ASAP, but am a little skeptical about compatibility.

Any advice?
 
Trim is software future,
So enabling it would not kill ssd.

Your original must be from early very early batch of 840.

Am I correct ?
 
nephron8 said:
Trim is software future,
So enabling it would not kill ssd.

Your original must be from early very early batch of 840.

Am I correct ?
Click to expand...

Well, that's what I assumed...but something killed the drive. It ran perfectly for 3 weeks, and with no changes to the system it crumbled pretty hard, pretty quick.

The firmware on the previous drive was DXT06[...], as opposed to DXT07[...]. It was certainly manufactured before December 2012, judging by the firmware release dates. I updated the firmware using the updater from Samsung, and it seemed to work fine too.

As I said, the new one is showing revision DXT07B0Q in  -> System Information.
 
finally upgraded to a ssd/hdd combo with 128gb 840 Pro and my 500gb wd blue in the optibay. now that it's all sorted out, I am pretty happy with the results considering it's still sataII

Mid 09 13" mbp5,5
2.26 c2d
8gb ram
128gb 840 pro + 500gb wd blue
Trim enabled/Disabled sleep image and local TM/noatime on
 

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Is it really an overkill? I also have a 2009 and i hear that very often. I suppose it will never take advantage of the fastesr ssd speeds, but having a pro would be better when the ssd it's in its slowest moment, right? Specially in the 128gb smallest ones, as they are slower. Also, price difference is very very little and 840 has some reliability issues, so i think 840 pro will always be better, even in sata 2 machines.

Please correct me if i'm wrong...
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Why did you waste money on a Pro when you only have Sata2?
Click to expand...

well,
a) it's not a waste of money when you pay less $1/gb as I did with a newegg promo. total was $121 US shipped to my door in two days which is only $11 more than what I would have spent on a non-pro version with 8gb less space.

b) I see nothing wrong with choosing a disk that I could migrate to another machine at some point in the future

C)because I'm a sucker for a good deal
 
SATA2 is not the most important thing on a MBP. The major reason for a 840 Pro can be the 5 year warranty and the extreme high random performance which is usually below the maximum of ~270 MB/s. Only sequential performance is limited, but it is hard to find a target where you can save your files with SATA 3 Gb/s or even SATA 6 Gb/s. For normal operation random is more important than sequential.
 
paul-n said:
SATA2 is not the most important thing on a MBP. The major reason for a 840 Pro can be the 5 year warranty and the extreme high random performance which is usually below the maximum of ~270 MB/s. Only sequential performance is limited, but it is hard to find a target where you can save your files with SATA 3 Gb/s or even SATA 6 Gb/s. For normal operation random is more important than sequential.
Click to expand...

-----> For short:
It means that you should still get the Pro version if you can afford it. Regardless of if you have SATAIII or not. SATAII is just a bottleneck for the best case scenario (when you'd get crazy sequential speeds). Though it won't influence the worst case scenario (4k random for example), so you'd still be way better of with the Pro.
 
My 840 Pro has firmware DXM03B0Q - is it really worth upgrading the firmware to DXM04B0Q (on the basis of 'if it ain't broke'...)?
 
wildatheart said:
My 840 Pro has firmware DXM03B0Q - is it really worth upgrading the firmware to DXM04B0Q (on the basis of 'if it ain't broke'...)?
Click to expand...

It does help improve speeds a little (wouldn't be noticeable though) and it's non destructive so it really can't hurt.

It's up to you whether you want to go to the hassle of doing it. I'd suggest it. It has some updates that improves garbage collection so that could be nice.

Do a backup just in case of course, never know what could happen
 
Thanks John - I now understand that in order to update I have to use an internal optical drive which I don't have (I have a DataDoubler) -so I'll have to give it a miss.
 
adiddas125 said:
Will this 840 SSD work in my mid-2009 13" MBP?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147189

Is that even a good price? 189 for a 256gb ssd...
Click to expand...

Yes it will work, only at SATA II speeds though - so advertised read/write will be roughly halved.

As for price, I can't really comment as I'm in the UK, technology is generally more expensive here. Changing that price to GBP, however, does match up with common UK prices for the 250GB 840.
 
Slow write speeds?

I'm getting really slow write speeds on my Samsung 840 120GB. I literally just got this after an exchange because another one went bad it seems.

edit: Looks like 130MB/s sequential write is correct per Samsung's spec. nevermind, it's just sorta slow I guess.
 
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portishead said:
I'm getting really slow write speeds on my Samsung 840 120GB. I literally just got this after an exchange because another one went bad it seems.

Image
Click to expand...

I just compared yours to 3 others on youtube and they are all in that range?

The 840 doesn't have the best write speeds, especially the 120GB one.
 
AUSTraveler said:
I'm looking to upgrade the stock HDD from my 2009 24" iMac with a Samsung drive.

  1. Have any of you done this using the NewerTech AdaptaDrive? Seems like a reasonable device to allow internal mounting without using tape.
  2. Any pointers for buying a compatible optical drive temperature sensor for mounting onto the SSD (to replace the stock HDD temperature sensor wiring)? Or should I just short the stock sensor?
  3. Does anyone have experience with Alex & Ome's Trash or Treasures? They are selling both the pro and non-pro versions at extremely low prices that seem too good to be true. I missed a recent wave of sales that I should have jumped on.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

  • Ended up getting the 840 with installation kit. It was less than buying the bare drive and AdaptaDrive. I did have to drill lightly with a 1/8" drill bit to get the stock pins to fit.
  • Without shorting the sensor, the fans were at full blast. Software fan controls didn't seem to have any effect. I then shorted the stock sensor, and it was still running high, but then the software controls worked.
  • I haven't been able to get the firmware updated even after trying various media to burn the Mac ISO from Samsung (which by the way has a disk image in it rather than the files themselves).

Before and after Black Magic Speed Tests attached.
 

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AUSTraveler said:
  • I haven't been able to get the firmware updated even after trying various media to burn the Mac ISO from Samsung (which by the way has a disk image in it rather than the files themselves).
Click to expand...

Mount the .iso you downloaded, then restore the image inside it to disc/USB via Disk Utility.
 
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