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The tool to fix 840 Evo for Mac user is released

For what it's worth, I was unable to get any of the Mac versions of the Samsung firmware to work at all today. Even with the bootable CD method in my 4,1/5,1 Mac Pro, it would get hung up on "Detecting Samsung drives……" or something like that, and never detected my 840 EVO 1TB. It didn't matter if I was using the Restoration ISO or the Firmware update ISO. Both would hang at the detection phase. I thought that was strange, since the drive appeared normally on my desktop, verifying it was properly connected. The only thing I can think that I didn't try was pulling out my Areca RAID card and/or my FASTA-6GU3 cards, because when booting to the CD, I noticed some quick flash of info about a RAID card BIOS blah blah blah.

What I ended up doing was put the SSD in a PC and run the Windows exe version 1.1 of Restoration. Even that was a bit of hassle, as I had to reformat the drive into NTFS to run the restoration section. It's a bummer that the Mac versions are so touchy, but I suppose that's what we get for being a minority. There's something to be said for using both PCs and Macs! I used to think Macs were for non-techies when I was younger, but these days, one has to be even more nerdy to get things to work on a Mac sometimes, haha.

The good news is that my 840 EVO 1TB is now on the new firmware, restored, and all back to normal max speed in my 2012 MacBook Pro optical bay. I'm leaving my 840 Pro in the HDD bay alone, as it's working perfectly.
 
Addonics Quad mSATA PCIe card = No Joy

Does not work with Addonics Quad mSATA PCIe card.

This tool fails to search installed Samsung 840 Evo mSATA cards.
 
I thought I would try to update my 840 EVO SSDs using BootCamp Windows on my iMac. Since I use an external SSD for Windows via a LaCie "Rugged" Thunderbolt enclosure, I started out by booting Windows, downloading the Samsung updater, and trying it out on the SSD I was running Windows 8 from. It detected the SSD over Thunderbolt and proceeded to update the firmware and then cycle through the 3 stages of performance restoration with no problems.

I then tried another data SSD also in a LaCie "Rugged" Thunderbolt enclosure added to the iMac while running Windows. This time, the updater complained that the SSD was not NTFS (it was HFS+), so I had to reformat it NTFS at which time it proceeded as before to update the SSD. Once done, I booted the iMac back to OS X, reformatted the drive for OS X and reloaded the data backup to put it back as it was.

So ... it is good that you can run the Windows Samsung updater over a Thunderbolt connection to an external SSD.


-howard
 
h9826790 said:
There is a bug in the 840 Evo, when reading an old file (e.g. 6 months old), it may give you very low reading performance (e.g. 20MB/s), this tool is to upgrade the firmware to perminently fix this issue and restore the current data's reading performance.
Click to expand...

thanks for info.
 
wonderspark said:
The only thing I can think that I didn't try was pulling out my Areca RAID card and/or my FASTA-6GU3 cards
Click to expand...

Yes, it seems when using the DOS tool, it's better to pull all PCIe card except the graphic card.

Since my USB 3 card is getting power from the Tempo SSD, and I must pull the Tempo SSD out in order to use the restoration too. So that, when I was using the tool, my USB 3 card was not there as well.
 
I can't get the Samsung tool to work on my mid-2011 27" iMac w/840 EVO 1TB. I'm booting off a CD, and the program stalls on "Detecting 840 EVO...". Totally stuck.
 
Took 3 hours with the boot CD on my 3,1 to do the job on a 750 Evo.

----------
SweetPetey said:
I can't get the Samsung tool to work on my mid-2011 27" iMac w/840 EVO 1TB. I'm booting off a CD, and the program stalls on "Detecting 840 EVO...". Totally stuck.
Click to expand...


May want to try the USB method and try different boot sticks.

Worked fine on my MBP 2011 with OSX and bootcamp volumes, though I have that working on bootcamp in AHCI mode by modding the MBR within OS X. Not sure of the mod for the 2011 iMac is the same as the MBP 2011, in my case I have to insert the patched file by booting off an OS X stick and modding the MBR within terminal.
.
More info here - a lot to go through!

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...th-intel-chipset-in-ahci-win7-vista-xp-linux/

If you don't have a bootcamp setup perhaps removing the drive and booting the CD off a Windows box with SATA ahci enabled may be the only way..
 
wonderspark said:
It's a bummer that the Mac versions are so touchy, but I suppose that's what we get for being a minority.
Click to expand...

Actually, the reason for Samsung not producing a OSX version of this tool is because they can't.

Apple does not expose the necessary driver stack for such disk interaction. It's the same thing stopping them from making Trim drivers or firmware upgrade utilities for OS X, and is why you have to use Boot CD's.
 
Great info's here! BUT, who really experienced the degrading of the read speeds? Can it be tested somehow. I have several EVO's and two on a DUO X2 in RAID O running my OSX 10.9.5. Thanks for your input.
 
Chocomonsters said:
Does not work with Addonics Quad mSATA PCIe card.

This tool fails to search installed Samsung 840 Evo mSATA cards.
Click to expand...

I own these as well and I presumed that.
It should be possible to update the firmware putting SSD in mSATA->SATA adapter. These are just pass-through, no controller on board, so shouldn't interfere with updater.
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
Great info's here! BUT, who really experienced the degrading of the read speeds? Can it be tested somehow. I have several EVO's and two on a DUO X2 in RAID O running my OSX 10.9.5. Thanks for your input.
Click to expand...

I never experienced the bug myself on the 5 EVO's in my household and the loads and loads I have out there in the field. Nor had a single complaint about it. Though I never fit an SSD into anything without more than enough ram, on older Macs (bar possibly the DDR2-800 models which 4gb sticks cost a bomb) they are always maxed out so paging to the disk is minimised.

It was never a bug I noticed like some of the old Sandforce, M4 in the past to name just two which gave me grief.
 
It would be cool to hack the ISO and rename the drive something that would support trim
 
ssls6 said:
It would be cool to hack the ISO and rename the drive something that would support trim
Click to expand...

It would be fantastic if Samsung and crucial brought out a little flashing utility on a boot CD which would solely change the device ID string for 'testing purposes'. I would be a very busy boy changing all the SSD's I have out in the field for strings that looked remarkably like Apple OEM parts :D
 
It would be nice if #@$%% Samsung would just provide a proper bootable USB tool instead of advising: "2) For assistance on completing this step, please refer to USB boot utilities from a trusted internet site."

I spent six hours today going through endless different manuals how to create a bootable USB to update the firmware. None of them worked. In the end I had to go out and find a shop that still sold empty DVDs and buy a pack of five(!) recordable DVDs just to be able to run this one-time update.

If they'd just get some intern to create a bootable USB image they could use it over and over again for all future firmware updates and for any platform.

/rant
 
This is infuriating, unbelievably shabby support from Samsung. I'll never buy another ssd from them again.

In the meantime I have 4 1tb evos. Two are in a black magic multi Dock, connected via thunderbolt 2, the two other ssds are in Macally enclosures (Macally 2.5-Inch SATA to Firewire 800 and USB3.0 SuperSpeed Hard Disk Drive Enclosure) connected via firewire 800.

Anyone know whether this fix will work for these drives as they are connected?
I would have to create a USB flash bootable drive with the update I'm assuming. Thanks!
 
The internal 'magic' of a SSD...

Gav Mack said:
I never experienced the bug myself on the 5 EVO's in my household and the loads and loads I have out there in the field. Nor had a single complaint about it. Though I never fit an SSD into anything without more than enough ram, on older Macs (bar possibly the DDR2-800 models which 4gb sticks cost a bomb) they are always maxed out so paging to the disk is minimised.

It was never a bug I noticed like some of the old Sandforce, M4 in the past to name just two which gave me grief.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your insight! A better (easier) tool for firmware upgrades for the non-technical users is a must imho. Having to strip your SSD's from your Mac just for the sake of a tweak looks silly to me. :eek:

I need to learn much more about the internal 'magic' of a SSD! :rolleyes:

Is it possible for Samsung to make an update/upgrade tool for Mac OSX?

Cheers
 
Last edited:
mikeboss said:
nope, seems to be impossible ->
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20266324/
Click to expand...

Cindori said:
Actually, the reason for Samsung not producing a OSX version of this tool is because they can't.

Apple does not expose the necessary driver stack for such disk interaction. It's the same thing stopping them from making Trim drivers or firmware upgrade utilities for OS X, and is why you have to use Boot CD's.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's an OUTRAGE! :mad: Are we forced to go back to the stone age?

Nevertheless, let's enjoy our Sunday afternoon. Next week I'll force myself to go the bootable DVD way for the upgrade. Cheers :cool:
 
I'll have a boot CD for this lying around that I won't have a use for. The process has gone fine for me. If anyone in the US would like me to mail it to them, free of charge, I'd be happy to do that since it'll probably end up in the trash otherwise.
 
Your Idea worked for me.

wonderspark said:
For what it's worth, I was unable to get any of the Mac versions of the Samsung firmware to work at all today. Even with the bootable CD method in my 4,1/5,1 Mac Pro, it would get hung up on "Detecting Samsung drives……" or something like that, and never detected my 840 EVO 1TB. It didn't matter if I was using the Restoration ISO or the Firmware update ISO. Both would hang at the detection phase. I thought that was strange, since the drive appeared normally on my desktop, verifying it was properly connected. The only thing I can think that I didn't try was pulling out my Areca RAID card and/or my FASTA-6GU3 cards, because when booting to the CD, I noticed some quick flash of info about a RAID card BIOS blah blah blah.
Click to expand...

After many tries and making both a DOS CD and a DVD to run the update to my Samsung EVO 840. I read your post and the comment (line 6) about removing all other cards worked. I removed all external connections, all internal drives and my FASTA USB card. The Samsung Firmware update started and ran quickly and with out issue. Now all I have to do is get TRIM to work again with out killing my MAC PRO.
Thank You
Bob
 
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