Does the Samsung 850 EVO have the 840 EVO's bug?

[IllusionaryInnocence]

Out of curiousity since I'm planning on buying a 120GB Samsung 850 EVO for my computer due to it being cheaper than an Intel 535 and using it as a boot drive.

I've heard how supposedly on the 840 Evo, there was a firmware bug where files that hadn't been accessed in 4 weeks or so would have reading speed issues and all that. Does that still exist in the 850 EVO without updates? Or would it be safer to buy the Intel 535?

 

[drixkarasu]

The 850 Evo is not affected by the 840 bug so it should be a safe buy.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I have two 850 EVO SATA drives, and have installed maybe twenty of them. None have had issues and I've not heard of any similar issues after much searching and research into it. The 850 is an entirely different architecture and uses different NAND than the 840 model.

 

[MarkW]

And I have the 840 EVO... I've never lost even a single bit of data, and I have used it for over a year now. It did slow down some, both times problems were detected, but it was still far faster than a hard drive at that point. In looking at Samsung magician earlier today, I have now pushed in excess of 500TB through this SSD. And its quietly sitting there smiling.

So I would still buy a Samsung SSD any day of the week. Even an 840.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I would not have a problem buying any 850 or future Samsung unit, but there are a lot of 840 owners out there that would vehemently disagree with you on the performance issues with the older drive. Myself included. By the time I got my 850, the 840 was performing much slower than my OCZ SSD that was a year older.

 

[MarkW]

I just ran this. I have not optimized my drive since the last BIOS update was released a few months ago...

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yep, that's pretty good. Unfortunately not everybody has had the same luck, but it probably isn't directly relevant to this thread aside from being a Samsung product since it's not the product being inquired about anyhow.

 

[IllusionaryInnocence]

Well, I guess I'm going to have to take the plunge when I get to that point and hope for the best huh?

So... what's Samsung's software like? What do I just install it after installing all the motherboard and GPU drivers or...?

 

[Darkbreeze]

The SSD will run even without the software, but Magician offers a few optimization tweaks, that could actually be done even without the utility, RAPID mode support which you can read about here:

http://techreport.com/review/25282/a-closer-look-at-rapid-dram-caching-on-the-samsung-840-evo-ssd

and simple firmware updates along with a quick and easy reference for how much of the drives useful life remains although for the average use this is probably rather moot since by the time the drive has outlived it's usefulness you'll probably be in the market for something newer by then anyhow or building another system. Unless of course you tend to transfer huge blocks of data very often.

I'd probably say to treat it as you would any other drive, and install the utility after you have it connected and windows is installed if you'll be using it for the OS. It's kinda hard to install Magician until then anyhow. Heh.

 

[MarkW]

Magician is really smooth. You can optimize your Windows settings for use with and SSD with a single click, it will benchmark the SSD for you, it tells you exactly how much data your SSD has written, and it will handle firmware updates for you when they become available.

The migrations software they offer I have never loaded, so I cannot talk about that. I do believe you need to download that from the Samsung SSD website though.