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Thanks for your response! I would love to keep my optical, but honestly it'll be just as useful in an external. I'm currently deployed overseas, but everything is waiting for me at the house! One week and hopefully I'll be attempting the install. Fingers crossed it goes well.

When I need more than 500gb space, I'm pulling the optical. Until then, it's nice to have. I figure I'm good for at least a year.

Flying a C17? Guess based on username. My son is training in a SH-60 for the Navy.
 
hey guys,

i was waiting for the crucial m500 480gb to drop in price before i went SSD, but i think i've decided to get the 840 500gb instead since i'm out of hard drive space and it's already at the price range i'm waiting for. i've read through numerous SSD threads, but i'm still unsure of whether trim is necessary. can anyone shed some definitive light into this?

also i'm hoping that buying a drive now will already have the latest firmware loaded so that i won't have to create an ISO disc - i'm guessing you can check the installed firmware once you plug the drive into your computer?

thanks in advance!
 
hey guys,

i was waiting for the crucial m500 480gb to drop in price before i went SSD, but i think i've decided to get the 840 500gb instead since i'm out of hard drive space and it's already at the price range i'm waiting for. i've read through numerous SSD threads, but i'm still unsure of whether trim is necessary. can anyone shed some definitive light into this?

also i'm hoping that buying a drive now will already have the latest firmware loaded so that i won't have to create an ISO disc - i'm guessing you can check the installed firmware once you plug the drive into your computer?

thanks in advance!

Yes you will need TRIM to install on your computer once the SSD is installed.

There are two to choose from:

Chameleon SSD Optimizer

Groth's TRIM Enabler

Chances are that by now your SSD will ship with the latest firmware. I bought another 840 about a month ago and it had it. But if not, here is the link to download and install it.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html
 
Yes you will need TRIM to install on your computer once the SSD is installed.

There are two to choose from:

Chameleon SSD Optimizer

Groth's TRIM Enabler

Chances are that by now your SSD will ship with the latest firmware. I bought another 840 about a month ago and it had it. But if not, here is the link to download and install it.

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

i just installed my ssd, so far so good. startup was 30-40 seconds though, slower than others' reported ~15 seconds, so i'm not sure what that's about. one speedbump i encountered was that i initially tried to restore my ssd via disk utility, and i got a 'restore failure device not configured' error message after 3 hours. i used disk utility to initialize my ssd beforehand, so i don't know what the issue was. installed ccc and it was straightforward. i also used groth's trim enabler to enable trim just for safe measure.

my ssd's revision # is DXT08B0Q, which is different from samsung's current version label on their site (DXT07B0Q) - i'm assuming mine is current, but am curious if they're loading minor running updates on the newer manufactured drives.

anyways, big thanks to everyone on this forum!
 
I received a low disk space warning from Windows 7 yesterday regarding the 840 SSD I put in about a month ago. I thought it was strange as I know there is plenty of space available on it.

I don't have too much on the drive and most of the stuff I have are Office documents and no audio, video and only a handful of images.

I have Samsung Magician installed and it reports the drive is in good health.

It just did this to me again a minute ago.

Would anyone know why it's doing this?

840diskspaceWin7.JPG
 
Installed a 840 Pro 256GB in an Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro. Trim Enabled.
Here is the result!
 

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I received a low disk space warning from Windows 7 yesterday regarding the 840 SSD I put in about a month ago. I thought it was strange as I know there is plenty of space available on it.

I don't have too much on the drive and most of the stuff I have are Office documents and no audio, video and only a handful of images.

I have Samsung Magician installed and it reports the drive is in good health.

It just did this to me again a minute ago.

Would anyone know why it's doing this?

Image

Hmm, this is odd, I've not seen this before. Does the drive still work normally, i.e. you can boot etc? To me it sounds like this is Windows related.

Have you tried deleting stuff in the SSD and seeing if that message goes away?
 
Hmm, this is odd, I've not seen this before. Does the drive still work normally, i.e. you can boot etc? To me it sounds like this is Windows related.

Have you tried deleting stuff in the SSD and seeing if that message goes away?

Aside from the message I received, the computer and SSD operate normally as expected. No boot or performance issues. When the message comes up and I dismiss it, Windows does it's drive clean up task to remove all the temp stuff and then it says I have xMB's available.

Without being at the PC right now, I seem to recall the MB number being equal to what the free space in GB is. It seems as if Windows is confusing the free space in GB for MB and reporting that the drive is full, when in fact it is far from it.

Edit: When I posted the image here I realized that the AHCI mode wasn't enabled in my computer. I went ahead and turned it on and re-ran the performance benchmark. We'll see if I get that Windows drive is full message again or not.
 

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Huh - hope mine will work without issues - but we'll see tomorrow. Now I have a question regarding going dual drive in my 17"mbp. Does it matter where I put ssd and where I put my storage drive ? Which one should go into optical bay caddy ?

Thanks
 
Huh - hope mine will work without issues - but we'll see tomorrow. Now I have a question regarding going dual drive in my 17"mbp. Does it matter where I put ssd and where I put my storage drive ? Which one should go into optical bay caddy ?

Thanks

From what I've read you're supposed to put the SSD in the traditional hard drive spot because that's where the boot drive is supposed to be according to OS X. I don't see why you couldn't just put it in the optibay because you can tell OS X what drive to boot from. I installed mine today, and I did put the SSD in the normal hard drive spot and put the HDD in the optibay just in case. It's a couple extra steps but it's not a big deal.

And here are my BlackMagic results before and after the install. Stupid SATA II
 

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Can someone plz post the result \ BlackMagic pic for Samsung 840 500GB SSD (not the pro version) inside USB3 enclosure ?

Im thinking going this root instead of installing a second SSD inside the MacMini as my primary audio drive\sample library...
 
Anyone suffering freezes for small amounts of time? I installed a fresh copy of Mountain Lion three times already, but after some hours Finder starts to freeze :-/ I have the 840 (non-pro)
I'm using an 840 non-pro 500 GB with a late 2011 MacBook Pro. It's been running for a few months now and I haven't had any of those issues. At this moment I have 150 GB free space. What capacity is your drive, and how much free space do you have?

From what I've read you're supposed to put the SSD in the traditional hard drive spot because that's where the boot drive is supposed to be according to OS X. I don't see why you couldn't just put it in the optibay because you can tell OS X what drive to boot from.
Up until the late 2011 MacBook Pros were released the difference was due to the link speed. The normal HDD slot operated at SATA III while the optical bay was at SATA II. Even with the late 2011 MacBook Pros people were having speed or stability problems with their SSD (primary system drive) in the optical bay. I think that issue disappeared with the 2012 MacBook Pros.
 
Install complete and running smoothly! CCC HDD to SSD with both installed in their bays, still have access to bootcamp, and the superdrive appears to work well externally.

Not sure how my read/write speeds are but it appears to be running much quicker! Thanks for all the help guys! I'm sure I'm not out of the water yet, so I'll tackle the problems (knock on wood) as they come along!

H03iXol.png


I've might have stopped the test prematurely but let me know if you guys need any additional info from me.

Early 2011 Macbook Pro
2.2 i7 8 gigs of RAM
SSD in standard bay, original HDD in Optibay
OS Mountain Lion
 
5 months in with my 840 Pro. Best decision I ever made computer wise!

Lightning fast. When I use my friends MBP at school I almost laugh at how slow it is, hard to believe how slow the 5400RPM drive is.

Did a speed test just now and compared it to the old one I took when I first installed it, only 2 mb less, so that's cool :)

trim enabled using trim enabler tool
 
Glad you like it. I've upgraded all but two of my computers to an SSD and I've not regretted it once.
 
So, possibly dumb question with me being new to the SSD world.

Currently running Chameleon
Trim: ON
Sudden Motion: ON (I still have the HDD in the optical bay, not sure if this matters or not)
Disable Local TM: ON
Disable Time Machine: ON
NOATIME: OFF
Set Sleep Mode: B

Are these the right settings for the 840 PRO? And I guess most importantly, I got into the habit of just closing the screen on the laptop and opening it back up when I needed it before the install. Is this incorrect now? Since the SSD install I've been shutting it down and starting it up when I needed it. I guess I'm worried that if I close the screen like I usually do, something could happen to the SSD.
 
Your fine in closing the lid rather than shutting it off. That's what I do and there isn't any problems with it.
 
So, possibly dumb question with me being new to the SSD world.

Currently running Chameleon
Trim: ON
Sudden Motion: ON (I still have the HDD in the optical bay, not sure if this matters or not)
Disable Local TM: ON
Disable Time Machine: ON
NOATIME: OFF
Set Sleep Mode: B

Are these the right settings for the 840 PRO? And I guess most importantly, I got into the habit of just closing the screen on the laptop and opening it back up when I needed it before the install. Is this incorrect now? Since the SSD install I've been shutting it down and starting it up when I needed it. I guess I'm worried that if I close the screen like I usually do, something could happen to the SSD.
I have my sudden motion sensor set to off. As I understand it, the sensors are around the primary HDD bay. I don't know if it would even trigger an emergency park command to the HDD in your optical drive. I suppose there's no harm in leaving it enabled, though.

Local time machine disabled is good, as it will prevent some wear and tear on the drive. I have Time Machine enabled.

The big change I would recommend is setting your sleep mode to A instead of B. Sleep mode A suspends the system without writing the content of your RAM to the SSD, while sleep mode B copies the data from the RAM to the SSD. The benefit of sleep mode B comes with a full power loss, such as if your battery completely runs out; the system can restore from its previous state by copying the data from the disk drive back into the RAM. With sleep mode A, a full power loss results in the contents of the RAM being lost, and there is nothing to restore from. Any unsaved data would be lost, as would your work session (all programs you had open would need to be opened again).

The sleep mode setting has implications for wear and tear on the SSD. The sleep image can be gigabytes in size, and while there's some debate about whether gigabytes are truly written each time the system is put into sleep it still represents write operations that occur for a feature that most of us never use. A side benefit of changing the sleep mode is that going into sleep is near instant with sleep mode A, whereas there's a small delay of a few seconds with sleep mode B as the contents of the RAM are copied.
 
I am super happy as just got my first ever ssd. I picked up the Samsung 840 pro 256gb after migrating all my iTunes media library to an external drive on the network.

Anything I need to know, also what about updating firmware?
 
I am super happy as just got my first ever ssd. I picked up the Samsung 840 pro 256gb after migrating all my iTunes media library to an external drive on the network.

Anything I need to know, also what about updating firmware?

It likely has shipped with the latest firmware, but you can check it with this URL - scroll to the bottom of the page for the Mac versions.

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

Also you may want to use a TRIM enabler like Chameleon or Groth's.
 
Cheers already downloaded Groths version, what is the benefit of Chameleon? Just restoring from a time machine backup currently so will be done in about 1/2 hour.

They both do the same thing, though Chameleon has a few additional performance options.
 
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