Assistance - Calling all Samsung EVO owners

Surveyor · 12 Aug 2014 at 15:46

Deehjay said:
How do I download HD Tach with Windows 7?

You can download it here. The MajorGeeks download location works.

When installed you need to right click on the shortcut, click on the compatibility tab and set to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP.

Edit:

You also need to click that the program installed correctly at the end of the installation process.

Aurhinius · 12 Aug 2014 at 17:58

Your 1 TB drive is looking fairly healthy there surveyor?

How old is it? recently secure erased?

It's still showing signs of degradation compared to the 830 though but no where near yet as dramatic as others.

So it's on it's way to the lows of under 100MB performance but not there yet.

Surveyor · 12 Aug 2014 at 19:19

Aurhinius said:
Your 1 TB drive is looking fairly healthy there surveyor?

How old is it? recently secure erased?

The drive is a few months old but I only recently purchased it second hand.

I cloned my previous SSD onto the EVO a couple of weeks ago.

wazza300 · 13 Aug 2014 at 01:11

I don't think its degradation

could be driver or fw bug or the way the drive limits reads/writes to help maintain the drive idk

Toytown · 13 Aug 2014 at 15:01

Anybody know if "Secure Erasing" the drive fixes the issue temporarily? Is it possible to rollback to an old firmware (mine came with the latest)

Luke_Bowman · 13 Aug 2014 at 15:13

Never had any problems with my evo :confused:

Unlucky

Aurhinius · 13 Aug 2014 at 15:58

You probably don't know you have the problem Luke because you don't see it unless you look for it.

Doesn't mean it's not there.

Try running HDTune.

Ignorance is bliss in this case.

Selekt0r · 13 Aug 2014 at 16:17

No response from Samsung yet Aurhinius? Difficult to believe that this would not be a known issue to them...

Surveyor · 13 Aug 2014 at 16:25

Luke_Bowman said:
Never had any problems with my evo

Unlucky

I haven't noticed any problems either but the performance is a bit weird when compared to my other Samsung SSD (see above).

Post benchmarks so we can see if your drive exhibits this odd behaviour or if it shows all drives aren't affected.

A few minutes of your time would be appreciated.

Aurhinius · 13 Aug 2014 at 19:34

Samsung have come back to me and said they are double checking the issue and will come back to me

That's something though

Surveyor · 13 Aug 2014 at 20:02

Developments awaited...

fizzy · 14 Aug 2014 at 04:03

Just checked mine - an 840 EVO 500GB :-

That's mainly game files, and copied across from a HDD only a couple of months ago.

In comparison, my boot drive which is an 830 250GB :-

Still pretty solid across the board and been a pretty active drive.

Not sure what's going on with the EVO though - massive fluctuations?

Update:-

Found I had old firmware on mine. Updated from EXT0BB0Q to EXT0BB6Q (almost thought I had bricked it - required a full power off and restart to take new fw properly) using ISO image from samsung support pages.

Quick test again and results the same as before.

Performed a full format of the drive in windows, then did another speed test....

Better, but not the smooth high speed line as expected on a clean drive. Going to copy my backup back onto the drive and see if it gets as bad as before.

Aurhinius · 14 Aug 2014 at 12:22

Now that is interesting especially after a format.

That pulsing/step effect was something I was seeing and thought it rather odd.

Seems almost cyclic like buffer filling and being flushed over and over.

Unfortunately I can't secure erase my drive without major hassle so not going to do it.

Keep the tests coming. It's quite clear these drives are inconsistant.

The intresting thing is I doubt you would see this performance on a similarly cheap drive now like the MX100. Which makes the samsung drive pretty poor.

I think people are not reporting this issue because rapid mode helpds to mask it along with the rapid access time of an SSD even one that isn't working at peak performance.

Selekt0r · 14 Aug 2014 at 12:52

Could you provide a link to the form you completed to report the issue to Samsung? If a few others of us start to raise the same issue then perhaps it will prompt more action/response from them...

LordBarrass · 14 Aug 2014 at 13:43

I have passed the info from this post across to Samsung and I am also waiting on them coming back to me with an answer for you guys. I will chase them up and see what they say.

Aurhinius · 14 Aug 2014 at 15:35

I got the form e-mailed to me once I e-mailed their support and they have been really genuine and helpful so far giving me the impression they will look at it.

So I would just e-mail them because they ask for a few other things e-mailed. I also attached some HD tune comparrison runs against my equally full Sandisk to prove the issue.

The end result remains to be seen.

Excellent news Abarrass, please let us know

wazza300 · 14 Aug 2014 at 16:33

seems to always be slow upto 75gb then shoots up

^^ my 840 non evo fairs better

fizzy · 14 Aug 2014 at 18:42

It gets stranger - I've copied my game data back to the drive, which has about 60GB free at the moment, and ran another speed test..

Seems to be the same peaky pattern with the odd section at full speed which wasn't there before. Puzzling....

....and just to prove it's not a test application quirk -

rounddodger · 14 Aug 2014 at 20:10

Ah, well this is a shame! I was looking to buy a 500MB or perhaps 1TB EVO the end of the month.. After reading this thread I'm now leaning towards the 512MB MX100.

I will watch this thread with interest!

Aurhinius · 14 Aug 2014 at 20:29

Certainly unless they can fix this I would go with the MX100.

You get a proven marvell controller and proven MLC nand rather than the TLC nand in the evo which could be the source of this issue if it is not a firmware bug.