Samsung to fix slow 840 EVO SSDs with ''periodic refresh'' feature

Shawn Knight

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evo nand patch firmware flash memory fix samsung 840 evo 840 evo evo ssd read speeds periodic refresh firmware fix

Some Samsung 840 EVO SSD owners noticed their drives were slowing down last year, specifically the read speeds. Samsung issued a patch to fix the problem in October but it was only a temporary solution as slowdowns returned a few months later.

In February, Samsung acknowledged the nagging issue and vowed to release another patch in March. That date came and went but alas, we’re now being promised that said fix is due out later this month. When pressed on the matter as to what exactly will be changed in the update, Samsung offered up the following information.

  • Samsung revised the firmware algorithm to maintain consistency in performance for old data under exceptional circumstances. Therefore, read performance was restored without the need for Magician. This algorithm is based on a periodic refresh feature that can maintain the read performance of this older data. The algorithm does not affect normal user scenarios (I.e. occasional PC performance degradation due to background work of SSD) or the lifespan of an SSD and can actively maintain its performance without the help of Magician. However, this algorithm does not operate when the power is off.
  • The read performance has been improved by the revised firmware algorithm. If performance recovery is slow in instances where the SSD did not have enough run-time for the firmware algorithm to reach normal performance levels, or similarly, had been powered off for an extended amount of time, the performance can be recovered by using the Advanced Performance Optimization feature in Magician 4.6. This is a supplementary feature to maintain normal performance for a few exceptional circumstances.
  • Users can upgrade to the new firmware through Magician 4.6, without using the performance restoration tool.
  • evo nand patch firmware flash memory fix samsung 840 evo 840 evo evo ssd read speeds periodic refresh firmware fix

One of the key takeaways here is that systems that are frequently turned off without a lot of idle time will still need to rely on the Advanced Performance Optimization feature in Magician to restore performance. No word yet on just how much idle time will be required for the drive to optimize itself.

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Let me get this straight: even if I do turn off my computer during the night, but then it's up and running throughout the day with plenty of idle time, does that mean I don't need to do anything?
 
And still nothing for the vanilla Samsung 840 SSD.
Samsung is playing a dangerous game by claiming the issue does not exist on it.
Well Samsung, here is a friends 120GB 840 with the issue: http://img.techpowerup.org/141020/27-september-2014_10-08run2.png
There are plenty more in the link below:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1519058/the-we-want-our-840-non-evo-ssd-fixed-also

And Samsung Germany already confirmed the issue months ago:
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-10/samsung-untersucht-problem-mit-alten-daten-bei-ssd-840-basic/
 
Let me get this straight: even if I do turn off my computer during the night, but then it's up and running throughout the day with plenty of idle time, does that mean I don't need to do anything?

From what I understood, it looks like this process is going to happen on the background. But I could be wrong.
 
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