The Samsung 840/840 Pro SSD thread

[photosmike]

Updated firmware using External Optical Drive

I successfully updated the firmware in my 840 EVO 250G using my external optical drive. The drive was the one in my iMac before I used the spot/ SATA Connection for the SSD. I put it in a cheap USB enclosures.

I wasted several disks until I read the information below. It worked for me.

"Creating bootable DVDs from .iso by converting to .cdr first"

http://tinyurl.com/kv7xl7u

 

[costica1234]

I successfully updated the firmware in my 840 EVO 250G using my external optical drive. The drive was the one in my iMac before I used the spot/ SATA Connection for the SSD. I put it in a cheap USB enclosures.

I wasted several disks until I read the information below. It worked for me.

"Creating bootable DVDs from .iso by converting to .cdr first"

http://tinyurl.com/kv7xl7u

That did not work for me unfortunately (perhaps because I was inserting the bootable DVD in the optical disk that came with my MBP ). I had to install Windows via Bootcamp and that did the trick for me (as an aside, I put 8.1 and the installation was flawless). Too bad that I have to keep this partition (small however) for updating the firmware of my 840 EVO ... Samsung should be providing Magician for Mac OS as well since there are a lot of people struggling with these firmware updates.

 

[Donfor39]

My Samsung Evo 240 has been installed 3 days now

speed is excellent battery life is fantastic 9hrs 15 v 6 hours at best with hdd

dissapointed the Samsung software is windos exe file -i;ve been very happy NOT using windows for the past few years

I take it if i make a bootable iso of the samungs software it will still require windows/bootcamp to run it?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

My bootable Mac disc worked fine for booting, but then it just hangs and doesn't continue from what appears to be a DOS promt.

 

[amoergosum]

I installed a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB in my Mac Pro (early 2009, TRIM enabler is installed).
Shouldn't the benchmarks be much higher? Here's a screenshot >>>

 

[kurtStiewens]

I installed a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB in my Mac Pro (early 2009, TRIM enabler is installed).
Shouldn't the benchmarks be much higher? Here's a screenshot >>>

Image

It seems that your Mac Pro does not have SATA 3 so you are limited to 3 Gb/s.

 

[amoergosum]

It seems that your Mac Pro does not have SATA 3 so you are limited to 3 Gb/s.

Thanks a lot for the explanation.

 

[hfg]

I installed a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB in my Mac Pro (early 2009, TRIM enabler is installed).
Shouldn't the benchmarks be much higher? Here's a screenshot >>>

If you put your 840 EVO SSD on a SATA-III PCIe card such as the Velocity Solo X2, you will see much better test results. However, you may not notice much difference in real-world use as a boot/OS X system drive.

http://www.apricorn.com/vel-solox2.html

Enjoy your new 1TB SSD ...



-howard

 

[choupimab]

Hello everyone

I tried to read the entire topic but I may have not seen my answer !

So I would like to have your opinion if possible !

This is my configuration :



My computer seems pretty slow when I'm using softwares like Final Cut Pro x or the Adobe Suite CS6...
I can't understand why. My Samsung 840 Pro is in a Firmtek miniSwap/U3 case, in USB 3.

Here is the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test results :



Thanks a lot in advance !

 

[jwjsr]

after a year I finally got firmware updated

Now, anyone know how I can be positive the Black magic speed test is writing and reading to only the SSD in a fusion setup. fusion being the keyword and the samsung SSD is not list as an option in the BM target drive menu.

Had been following this thread religiously from march till i gave up in about october. I have the samsung 840 in 2012 mac mini setup as fusion and have win 8 running under bootcamp/bootchamp and i went into windows today and noticed an alert for a samsung magician software update. ran the update, and bam, my firmware is finally up to date.
But my Blackmagic 5g stress test selecting downloads or documents as the target drive still really really suck, getting about 50 write and 150 read.
As I said i am in a fusion setup and the samsung ssd is not offered as an option in BM under select target drive so i don't know which damn disk the BM is using.

 

[hfg]

Now, anyone know how I can be positive the Black magic speed test is writing and reading to only the SSD in a fusion setup. fusion being the keyword and the samsung SSD is not list as an option in the BM target drive menu.

....
But my Blackmagic 5g stress test selecting downloads or documents as the target drive still really really suck, getting about 50 write and 150 read.
As I said i am in a fusion setup and the samsung ssd is not offered as an option in BM under select target drive so i don't know which damn disk the BM is using.

You can't ... you no longer have two distinct drives (SSD and HD), you have a single logical Fusion drive. You cannot see or manage them individually while they are joined with CoreStorage into a Fusion drive.

Fusion maintains a 4GB write buffer on the SSD prior to writing to the hard disk, so keep your test file size below that for best results. If your total OS X environment is smaller than the SSD, then you WILL probably see the SSD portion in the DiskSpeedTest results, or close to it.

 

[modiolo]

i received my evo 1tb ssd from b&h and it had the latest firmware.

hello sunny
just wanted to ask you if the latests firmware you say the EVO brought was EXT0AB0Q or the one on the website

Also I would like to ask people here about My case.
I have a late 2011 15¨ MBPro i7
I have replaced the startup hdd with a 256 840 PRO SSD and it works very good but I did also replaced the optical drive with a 840 EVO 250. This is behaving really strange, as it just disappears when dealing with big files (or at least it always happened when I tried to move or use 30 gig or more) then I have to switch everything off and on again to find it back.
Maybe I should update to the new firmware, and also enable trim (do I have to enable trim in the 840 Pro too?)(should I use Chameleon for all of this?)I ask this because in the system report it says the ssd`s are not trim compatible...well
Some people were ¨solving¨ this by changing their ssd`s from the optical bay to the regular hdd slot, but I already have one there, and works perfect
Well I wish I could fix this soon as Im working with those big files and I cannot trust my EVO lately
Thanks for your help!

 

[Marty62]

Interesting, I burnt the .ISO in Roxio Toast 10.x ( to update Samsung 840 EVO 750Gb )
Booted from the CDR, had to press "Y" a couple of times to accept the process
and also that it might erase my drive ! = scary moment.

It then said "confirm after power cycle SSD?" - so I was thinking, does the
updater do that or do I have to take the Mac apart and unplug the SSD ! ?

I just typed Y again for Yes.

Then I had a "software mismatch update failed" message.

BUT on reboot of the Mac I now do have EXT0BB6Q version, before it was
EXT0BB0Q

Very confusing, and now I don't know if it was properly "flashed" at all.

Anyone have similar weirdness going on ??

System> Macbook Pro 8,2 late 2011 15in i7 quad 2,4 with integrated Optical drive.

M.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Hello everyone

I tried to read the entire topic but I may have not seen my answer !

So I would like to have your opinion if possible !

What size is your SSD?

 

[glenthompson]

hello sunny
just wanted to ask you if the latests firmware you say the EVO brought was EXT0AB0Q or the one on the website

Also I would like to ask people here about My case.
I have a late 2011 15¨ MBPro i7
I have replaced the startup hdd with a 256 840 PRO SSD and it works very good but I did also replaced the optical drive with a 840 EVO 250. This is behaving really strange, as it just disappears when dealing with big files (or at least it always happened when I tried to move or use 30 gig or more) then I have to switch everything off and on again to find it back.
Maybe I should update to the new firmware, and also enable trim (do I have to enable trim in the 840 Pro too?)(should I use Chameleon for all of this?)I ask this because in the system report it says the ssd`s are not trim compatible...well
Some people were ¨solving¨ this by changing their ssd`s from the optical bay to the regular hdd slot, but I already have one there, and works perfect
Well I wish I could fix this soon as Im working with those big files and I cannot trust my EVO lately
Thanks for your help!

There's a known issue with that vintage MBP with using a SSD in the optical bay. You can run a Sata II drive but Sata III gets errors. Your only choices are to find a Sata II SSD or use a spinning drive in the optical bay. OWC sells compatible drives but are relatively pricey.

 

[whitedragon101]

hello sunny
just wanted to ask you if the latests firmware you say the EVO brought was EXT0AB0Q or the one on the website

Also I would like to ask people here about My case.
I have a late 2011 15¨ MBPro i7
I have replaced the startup hdd with a 256 840 PRO SSD and it works very good but I did also replaced the optical drive with a 840 EVO 250. This is behaving really strange, as it just disappears when dealing with big files (or at least it always happened when I tried to move or use 30 gig or more) then I have to switch everything off and on again to find it back.
Maybe I should update to the new firmware, and also enable trim (do I have to enable trim in the 840 Pro too?)(should I use Chameleon for all of this?)I ask this because in the system report it says the ssd`s are not trim compatible...well
Some people were ¨solving¨ this by changing their ssd`s from the optical bay to the regular hdd slot, but I already have one there, and works perfect
Well I wish I could fix this soon as Im working with those big files and I cannot trust my EVO lately
Thanks for your help!

Ditto what glenthompson said. Here is the full explanation.

http://blog.macsales.com/11895-2011-macbook-pro-sata-problems-resolved

 

[aslam89]

My Macbook Pro's hard drive just died on me today. And I intend to put in a Samsung 840 since it's on sale at Amazon:

Samsung 840 Evo: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...F8&qid=1394375189&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+840

I've never done this before so I've watched some Youtube videos etc. Here's what I will need.

1. #00 Philips head screwdriver
2. TORX T6 screwdriver
3. Samsung 840 SSD


A few other questions as well
1. Do i need any special caddy for the aforementioned SSD?

2. Since I'm doing a clean install (i.e, not cloning an existing drive) can i simply put in the SSD and rely on Internet Recovery to download the Mac OS?

3. Do i need to format the SSD prior to physically installing it into the Macbook Pro? If so, software needed etc? This may be a bit tricky because the dead Macbook is my only computer.

Any additional advice on what i may have missed out, or precautions on what i should/should not do is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advanced!

 

[Weaselboy]

A few other questions as well
1. Do i need any special caddy for the aforementioned SSD?

2. Since I'm doing a clean install (i.e, not cloning an existing drive) can i simply put in the SSD and rely on Internet Recovery to download the Mac OS?

3. Do i need to format the SSD prior to physically installing it into the Macbook Pro? If so, software needed etc? This may be a bit tricky because the dead Macbook is my only computer.

1. Nope... it will directly replace the HDD with no brackets.

2. As long as your MBP is on this list or newer and has firmware updates applied, then yes you can just use Internet recovery. Otherwise you will need to make a recovery USB key with this tool from Apple and use that to recover. Make this recovery key before you pull the HDD from the MBP. You will need a 1GB or larger USB key to do this.

3. No... you can install the new, blank SSD and format it with Disk Utility from the recovery console.

It is pretty straightforward and it sounds like you have it covered. Just make a good backup before you start in case things go badly.

 

[aslam89]

1. Nope... it will directly replace the HDD with no brackets.

2. As long as your MBP is on this list or newer and has firmware updates applied, then yes you can just use Internet recovery. Otherwise you will need to make a recovery USB key with this tool from Apple and use that to recover. Make this recovery key before you pull the HDD from the MBP. You will need a 1GB or larger USB key to do this.

3. No... you can install the new, blank SSD and format it with Disk Utility from the recovery console.

It is pretty straightforward and it sounds like you have it covered. Just make a good backup before you start in case things go badly.

Thanks for your help.

I won't be making any backups because I can't even boot into my hard drive. All I can do is hold down ALT on boot up and prompted Internet Recovery :/

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for your help.

I won't be making any backups because I can't even boot into my hard drive. All I can do is hold down ALT on boot up and prompted Internet Recovery :/

Before you pull the drive, try a test. I don't want to see you get stuck.

If you are seeing recovery with a option key (alt) boot, that sounds like it is seeing the 650MB recovery partition on the HDD. Try a command-option-r boot and that should ask you to join a wifi network, then you will see a spinning globe like below. That globe means you do have Internet recovery built into firmware and the recovery console is downloading.

If you do have that, you can just use Internet recovery on the new SSD and you are good to go. If you do not have that we will need to figure out a way for you to boot to what I think may still be a good recovery partition on your old HDD. When you option key boot does it go right into the recovery screen without the globe?

 

[aslam89]

Before you pull the drive, try a test. I don't want to see you get stuck.

If you are seeing recovery with a option key (alt) boot, that sounds like it is seeing the 650MB recovery partition on the HDD. Try a command-option-r boot and that should ask you to join a wifi network, then you will see a spinning globe like below. That globe means you do have Internet recovery built into firmware and the recovery console is downloading.

If you do have that, you can just use Internet recovery on the new SSD and you are good to go. If you do not have that we will need to figure out a way for you to boot to what I think may still be a good recovery partition on your old HDD. When you option key boot does it go right into the recovery screen without the globe?

Image

I helped down Cmd + Option + R as u said and that page showed up. In a sudden twist of events, i managed to enter Disk Utility and detect the presence of my hard drive. I wasn't able to in the past few hours.

I clicked Repair and everything went fine (surprisingly!). I clicked Repair and everything is OK. Am now able to boot up normally and back up files to an external hard drive. Backup up important contents at the moment.

Will proceed with SSD installation in the coming days. Thank you very much!

P.S My apologies to everyone as this may have sidetracked from the original SSD discussion.

 

[gochi]

does anyone know why the evo was released when the pro was doing such a good job?

 

[Weaselboy]

does anyone know why the evo was released when the pro was doing such a good job?

The EVO uses TLC NAND chips that are cheaper than the MLC NAND in the Pro model. This allowed Samsung to lower the price on the EVO to presumably capture more sales and greater market share.

 

[aslam89]

I am currently torn between the Samsung 840 Evo and Intel 530. Price wise they're about the same.

However, the latter offers international warranty and allows me (from Singapore) to purchase it from online retailers like Amazon etc.

Can anyone advise? So far I've done a bit of Googling and seem to not encounter any mass issues with the Samsung but some have reported issues with the Intel 530.

Thanks in advanced!

 

[Weaselboy]

I am currently torn between the Samsung 840 Evo and Intel 530. Price wise they're about the same.

However, the latter offers international warranty and allows me (from Singapore) to purchase it from online retailers like Amazon etc.

Here is chart comparing performance of the two. The Intel drive uses a Sandforce controller and for that reason will have lower write performance with incompressible data like video files. If you do a lot of work with incompressible data, the Intel may not be your best option. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with going with the Intel.