On release of the Samsung 840 EVO SSD earlier this year, Samsung introduced a new ‘caching’ technology called RAPID Mode, a technology that could increase Samsung EVO SSD transfer speeds up to 1.2GB/s with absolutely AMAZING low 4K random write speeds as well. RAPID Mode could be enabled through the free download of Samsung’s SSD Magician and the initial release was disappointing to many 840 Pro SSD owners as RAPID was only compatible with the Samsung 840 EVO SSD. Our review of the 840 EVO was very impressive with RAPID Mode benchmark results as high as 1.1GB/s and transfer speed testing of ISO, program and game files in under 3 seconds.
I recently installed the Samsung 840 Pro in my MacBook Pro. There is a disk that comes with the SSD and includes the Samsung Magician software for the SSD to keep the firmware of the SSD up to date. It doesn't look like it's compatible with Mac. When it says “Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration completed,” it’s safe to restart the Mac. At this point you can just hold down the Power button on your Mac until it turns off, (there appears to be no way to do a soft reboot from this point.) then press the Power button again to start back up.
Earlier this morning, Samsung released information of their new 1TB 840 EVO mSATA SSD, an SSD with many firsts such as it being the first mSATA SSD that Samsung has made available to the consumer, the first capable of 1TB in storage, and the first capable of over 1GB/s speeds through RAPID Mode.
Samsung Ssd 840 Evo Mac Firmware Update
Hidden away in this ‘Samsung Tomorrow‘ posting, was this line confirming that Samsung RAPID Mode is fully compatible with the 840 Pro SSD lineup, “Samsung also applied Samsung Magician 4.3 and the RAPID mode on its previous 840 Pro SSD line-up”. We quickly downloaded the latest release of Samsung Magician software and checked out it’s compatibility:
Fortunately, our main system is running Samsung 840 Pro SSDs for both the main and backup drive so we started the new version of Samsung Magician software and immediately learned that the SSD firmware was out of date. Seamless firmware updates followed as well as the activation of RAPID mode on our Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD that we had reviewed some time ago.
This was followed by some rather impressive testing with both Crystal DiskMark and AS SSD:
These are impressive numbers by any standards and we should mention that they are similar to our other Test Bench, a system which has been running the original Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD since it’s review several months ago.
Even through AS SSD which is the workhorse of SSD synthetic testing, the Samsung 840 Pro SSD in RAPID Mode displayed excellent performance The only hitch we experience was the second result shown here in our Copy bench testing:
Samsung 840 Pro
To ensure the compatibility of the Samsung 840 Pro SSD with RAPID, our main system will remain as it is and any pertinent changes will be appended to this report. If you would like to see a number of opinions and further benchmark results, check out this thread over at Overclock.
Samsung also applied Samsung Magician 4.3 and the RAPID mode on its previous 840 PRO SSD line-up. – See more at: https://global.samsungtomorrow.com/?p=31060#sthash.kGm9PNuh.dpuf
- I didn't look at your link before. Its the generic link to Samsung's firmware update webpage, which has a variety of downloads including the just-released DOS version of the Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software that will work for Mac or Linux users. You have to make a bootable disc (CD or USB stick) and work from that.
- Mac; PC; Internal Solid State Drive Interface. SATA III (6 Gbit/s). Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive, 256GB. 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,382. More Buying Choices $88.00. Samsung 860 QVO 1TB Solid State Drive (MZ-76Q1T0) V-NAND, SATA 6Gb/s, Quality and Value Optimized SSD.
Check out our support resources for your 840 PRO Series SSD MZ-7PD256 to find manuals, specs, features, and FAQs. You can also register your product to gain access to Samsung's world-class customer support.
Samsung has released its 840 Evo SSD repair tool, as well as additional information on what causes the problem. It turns out that the issue is a bug in how the drive calculates what the voltage level within a cell should be in order to perform a proper data read. When data is written to triple-level (TLC) NAND, it’s stored at one of eight distinct voltage states. As time passes, the state shifts slightly and the drive has to compensate for that shift in order to read the older data. Auto-refreshing the data with a periodic re-write isn’t an option — TLC NAND already has lower durability than other form factors, and a periodic background rewrite would quickly exhaust the number of program/erase (P/E) cycles.
The 840 Evo’s problem was that the calibration algorithm that’s supposed to detect the voltage levels in the cells apparently wasn’t calibrated correctly. As the data in the cells got older (the 30-day window was something of a moving target), the drive had more trouble reading the information — what it expected to see and what it was actually seeing were two different things. This led to a quick succession of read cycles as the controller attempted to compensate, which substantially degraded performance.
Samsung Ssd 840 Pro Specs
Smaller gaps between voltage levels make precise software calibration essential.
The good news is that this aggressive retry cycle won’t have harmed the flash in any way — writes are destructive to NAND, but reads are not. The further good news is that Samsung expects the new repair tool to fully resolve the drive’s problems. While we don’t have any SSDs configured appropriately to test it, we can confirm that the flash process went off without a hitch.
Samsung Ssd 840 Evo Macbook Pro
The caveats
When it comes to flashing a product, its always a good idea to read the instructions; firmware updates remain one of the few ways to truly trash piece of equipment. Samsung has a list of 17 — here are some of the most important:
Ssd Samsung 840 For Macbook
![Ssd samsung 840 for mac pro Ssd samsung 840 for mac pro](/uploads/1/3/4/7/134763737/397440417.png)
- Only MBR and GPT partitions are supported.
- Performance restoration will not work if a drive is locked with a user password or if TCG/Opal or Encrypted Drive standards are in place.
- The application will not run unless at least 10% of the drive is free. This is non-negotiable.
- Firmware updates may fail if you are using an AMD drive controller. Samsung notes that the “latest” AMD driver prevents this, but doesn’t actually give the driver version number. AMD’s latest chipset drivers can be downloaded here; users also have the option to simply revert back to Microsoft’s AHCI driver before applying this patch. Any custom storage driver can cause the procedure to fail, so fall back to Intel, AMD’s latest, or Microsoft standard — or hook the drive to one of these ports if you’re currently using a different class of controller (Asmedia, Marvell, etc).
- NTFS is the only file system supported. Mac OS X and Linux patches are coming at an unspecified later date.
- RAID configurations are not supported. Drives configured in RAID cannot be patched at this time.
- Dynamic disks are not supported.
- Your PC will reboot 20 seconds after the procedure finishes. (Really? This is still a thing?)
And finally: If you need to update an 840 Evo with an OS installation on it, make sure you boot from that OS when you do the update. Dropping the 840 Evo in a secondary system and performing the update that way will kill the OS installation (Samsung only says this is due to a “Windows policy.”
The update can be downloaded from Samsung’s website; it doesn’t seem to be searchable from the standard 840 Evo product page.
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