Assistance - Calling all Samsung EVO owners

fizzy · 26 Aug 2014 at 20:49

It's not just cloning - I used robocopy to copy my game files back to my freshly formatted drive and it had the same impact. It gets about half speed and spiky on any area that has data on it.

Some of it may be down to the flash memory used. I've been testing my MX100 256GB which is approx half full.

Test in HD Tach :-

Interestingly in HD Tune I get a far better result...

.........but that was on 4MB block size. Setting it to 64KB gives similar results to HD Tach.

Speeds are generally down a bit overall since I'm using the Marvell Sata 3 port as the two intel ones are in use with the Samsungs. Speed of first half only really starts dropping if I set block size to levels below 512KB.

On the samsungs I don't think it's the initial drop that's the main issue when fresh though, it's the spiking. Performance seems to drop drastically after a bit of use going by some of the earlier graphs.

Two differerent issues possibly on the evos - a caching issue for low block sizes and trim not working or going odd long term?

John24 · 27 Aug 2014 at 00:14

Aurhinius, so what next, send your old drive to samsung? You have told them the drives need to have some data on them to reproduce? Just copying data on is enough to trigger the issue, no need to clone or install windows.

Clearly real word speeds are effected, I think there is enough data here now to prove beyond doubt it's not a benchmark bug.

ChrisD. · 27 Aug 2014 at 06:51

wazza300 said:
I wouldn't mess tbh,with ssd's the less you mess the better imo

id just put it down to that benchmark being a bit buggy idk

My point is that I'm exhibiting similar symptoms on two different Crucial drives. Sure, they're not as bad, but one of the drives is only a few months old.

Dervious · 27 Aug 2014 at 10:43

I thought there was no need to defrag an SSD.......

BEFORE (Benchmark was run several times with almost identical results)

AFTER

Aurhinius · 27 Aug 2014 at 12:21

Abarrass is away at the moment but I am in contact with samsung and I have fed back all this information and directed them to this thread right from the beginning.

That way I don't have to compile information twice and do this in a transparent way.

Next step for me will be to leave it a few days and get the 2nd drive installed and do similar comparrisons in my partner's PC which is a totally different machine.

I expect to see exactly the same results and I am sure you guys do too.

I think we already have beyond reasonable doubt can show performance is not good with data on the drive but I'm not sure what samsung will have to say about it. Though I did ask the question.

I will send the old drives back but I want to leave it a few days/ a week and see what samsung want to do anyway because the new drives haven't really fixed the issue as such so I am happy to send the new drives back if they want.

Samsung did suggest my drive would go back to samsung HQ for analysis but as we can see all EVO drives seem to show issues so my specific drive doesn't matter but that just makes the mystery of them being able to recreate it a problem. Either that or they feel the performance degradation shown on the new drive above isn't an issue and normal operation but when it gets down to severe levels sub 50MB's then it is. So the issues for them might be why it gets that severe? Not sure at this stage.

I'll get that 2nd drive in my partners PC as soon as I can and will do exactly the same thing bench before fresh, bench after a clone. I won't bother with trying to trim it because that made no difference.

~Mike~ · 27 Aug 2014 at 14:52

I reset the OS Optimization to 'Maximum Performance' in the Samsung Magician software and re-ran HD Tune

Here is the new result (previous see post #129)

Andy7 · 27 Aug 2014 at 17:57

My 840 Pro 128Gb. Can anyone tell me if this is good or bad?

Toytown · 27 Aug 2014 at 18:39

Andy7 said:
My 840 Pro 128Gb. Can anyone tell me if this is good or bad?

The Pro doesnt suffer from the same problems as the EVO range, however your graph looks good, it does appear that you are perhaps on a SATA2 port as 375MB is 3Gbits/sec, so if your motherboard has a SATA3 port you could get a ever so slightly small increase if you moved it to that.

Aurhinius · 27 Aug 2014 at 19:25

You could also be using an on board marvell controller rather than the native intel controller.

You will see better results from an intel SATA 3 port.

John24 · 27 Aug 2014 at 22:18

Reason I ask is it sometimes helps to be short and consise with big companies, detail is easily missed if it's not hammered home. I'd be supprised if they have read through this thread thoroughly. If they have just scanned it, seen the screenshots, connected a new drive and ran HD Tune that would explain why they can't reproduce becasue as we know you need to have some data on it. There may be a language barrier aswell.

It would be a good idea IMO to reiterate what the problem is and how to reproduce it, simply and clearly in as few words as possible in one message.

Aurhinius · 28 Aug 2014 at 15:49

Hi John,

I have told them it is with data on the drive and to try cloning a drive to another.

Abarrass has done the same.

I haven't heard from them since I showed them a new drive isn't really doing much.

Mei · 28 Aug 2014 at 18:07

Aurhinius said:
Hi John,

I have told them it is with data on the drive and to try cloning a drive to another.

Abarrass has done the same.

I haven't heard from them since I showed them a new drive isn't really doing much.

there does seem to be a problem

i have some questions on the cause
i wonder if it happens even without using cloning software? when just copying data normally? it could be something specific the cloning software does
was over provisioning being used? i wonder if this makes any difference or not

i do have a 250evo and a 256pro but its pretty hard for me to do these tests when they are being used as main drives

fizzy · 28 Aug 2014 at 18:51

Mei said:
i have some questions on the cause
i wonder if it happens even without using cloning software? when just copying data normally? i

Noticed issues after simply copying the data back to a freshly formatted disk from another drive via windows and robocopy command (see earlier posts), and I've never cloned to the disk - so not specifically associated with cloning.

Aurhinius · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:04

Samsung have come back to me via their 2nd party CS and are asking for my old drives saying Samsung can't replicate the issue and they want the old drives. They did say they would come back to me about the new drive once they have spoken to Samsung but nothing on that yet.

So I'll need to get that 2nd drive installed and get them sent back bit busy until the weekend though.

~Mike~ · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:06

Mei said:
there does seem to be a problem

i have some questions on the cause
i wonder if it happens even without using cloning software? when just copying data normally? it could be something specific the cloning software does
was over provisioning being used? i wonder if this makes any difference or not

i do have a 250evo and a 256pro but its pretty hard for me to do these tests when they are being used as main drives

I haven't used any cloning software, mine was a fresh install of Windows.

Mei · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:24

ok thats worrying if it does it on a fresh install no cloning
ill test mine tonight or tomorrow see if mine shows the same

and if it happened on the 2 new drives chances are its something that affects all drives not just some!? because the odds on that are slim

anyone had it happen with over provisioning turned on?
i guess it could still be a windows driver thing i duno

tonytiger · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:33

I have the same issue ,my drive is a 500GB one and around 3mths old .My drive benchmarks are also like others here.Anyone tested a large copy from ssd to another? I have an older crucuial m4 128gb and when i write a 4GB from the 840 evo to the m4 i get about 58-68 MB/s !! The m4 should be able to write faster. Writing the same file back to the 840 evo is ok at 480MB/s.I had noticed that win8 had started to lag it is noticable.Rapid mode is on btw.

Aurhinius · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:35

You may find that it's not your write performance but the speed in which it has to read from the EVO mate.

That was my problem.

I tried copying to a sandisk ultra that should manage 400MB + write and it can but not when it has to read from the Samsung EVO.

The write speed in a file copy is also limited by how fast it can read the source file.

Aurhinius · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:36

Okay not a huge surprise here.

I secure erased the OLD faulty drive to go back to Samsung and benchmarked it without even a partition installed or a format.

Not surprised at all. I will be annoyed if Samsung come back and say "we can't find a fault"

They are still saying they need this old drive to replicate the problem! I don't get how they can't recreate this given all the evidence for a problem here on the forum but maybe they aren't waiting long enough. I don't know.

Tested new drive again today - same as 2 days ago but I haven't copied any more data to the drive.

Rroff · 28 Aug 2014 at 19:37

Mine with the 250GB 840 EVO - that big dip I'm 99% sure is reading from where the megatexture lump files are for Wolfenstein: The New Order.

(Took quite a few attempts to get a complete run without getting "read error! test aborted" mid way through).