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Samsung Acknowledges and Fixes Bug On 840 EVO SSDs

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-presented-on-a-platter dept.

Lucas123 writes: Samsung has issued a firmware fix for a bug on its popular 840 EVO triple-level cell SSD. The bug apparently slows read performance tremendously for any data more than a month old that has not been moved around on the NAND. Samsung said in a statement that the read problems occurred on its 2.5-in 840 EVO SSDs and 840 EVO mSATA drives because of an error in the flash management software algorithm. Some users on technical blog sites, such as Overclock.net, say the problem extends beyond the EVO line. They also questioned whether the firmware upgrade was a true fix or if it just covers up the bug by moving data around the SSD.

2 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. A read disturb problem by TFoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is almost certainly a firmware bug with their read disturb compensation. At least they're owning up to it - but wow.

  2. Re:Wonder what brand is best now... Intel? by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd rather go with stable than EXTREME, so I go with Intel. It might not be the fastest around, but we rarely hear about Intel SSD problems.

    For SATA SSDs, there's no more extreme. All modern SSDs saturate a SATA-3 bus. If you wonder why they all benchmark at 540MB/sec reads and writes, that's why - SATA is the bottleneck, not the SSD.

    PCIe SSDs are where the "extreme" ones go, and even the most conservative ones are pretty damn fast - the old MacBook Air's SSD clocks in at 750MB/sec read and write. I think the newer ones can hit 1GB/'sec now easy.

    As for what to buy, well, Samsung, Intel and Toshiba are the general safe bets. Even with this bug, Samsung is still stable, just slow.

    Intel's got a history of failure as well, but they seem to have gotten beyond it, and while they're not stunners, they generally are solid.

    Toshiba's on the slower end of the scale, but Apple uses them, so they can't be TOO bad.

    And yes, I say Apple, but you can see what Dell uses as well. The big OEMs that ship lots of units will generally pick ones that give the least warranty and support issues and thus are more conservative. Plus, recalls are expensive.

    If you want to follow someone - pick Apple. Given the way news coverage is, if there's a problem with someone somewhere and their SSD in their Apple product, the whole world would know in a nanosecond. Someone as heavily scrutitinized as Apple (where even one failure in millions of computers sold would probably bring about SSD-gate) means if there is a real problem, you'd already know.