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The tool to fix 840 Evo for Mac user is released

Excuse my ignorance here...

I had an 840 EVO that is ran this on about a month ago and everything went like clockwork with it connected to the empty Optical Bay in my MacPro 5,1 when I booted from the CD.

Today I got another 840 EVO and tried the same procedure, but I could not force the Mac to boot from the CD-ROM? I was however not using the same CD (which I threw away last month). So, now I am wondering if I am even burring the CD correctly from the disk image supplied by Samsung? What is the exact procedure for burning the .dmg to the CD to create a boot volume? Is the CD named "Untitled" when complete? Does it need to have a certain "name" to be recognized as a boot volume? It does mount on the desktop and all files are present.

I finally removed my internal drives even and still it would not boot from the CD I burned this time? Tried re-burning it two more times in different ways.

ALSO...

Is there a way to tell if this update has been applied already to an 840 EVO that is connected to an Apricorn Velocity-Duo x2 PCI card? i.e. is there a way to verify that the update was applied?
 
The disk should named "CDROM".

CDROM.jpg

And there is only one folder in it named "ISOLINUX"

Root.jpg

with the following files in it.

ISOLINUX.jpg
 
Just got a 2012 Mini with a 840 Evo (128 GB). The write speed with Black Magic is 350 MB/s, then it drops to 150. I already have the newest firmware (EXT0CB6Q). Should I still run the fix or anything else?
 
Skoopman said:
Just got a 2012 Mini with a 840 Evo (128 GB). The write speed with Black Magic is 350 MB/s, then it drops to 150. I already have the newest firmware (EXT0CB6Q). Should I still run the fix or anything else?
Click to expand...

Do you have TRIM enabled?
 
h9826790 said:
Do you have TRIM enabled?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I'm still not sure if I want to use it with Yosemite.

Edit: Enabled TRIM, no difference in Black Magic. Benchmarks in Trim Enabler however do show a difference.
 
Last edited:
might be normal

Skoopman said:
Just got a 2012 Mini with a 840 Evo (128 GB). The write speed with Black Magic is 350 MB/s, then it drops to 150. I already have the newest firmware (EXT0CB6Q). Should I still run the fix or anything else?
Click to expand...

The point of TRIM + Garbage Collection is to have a pool of available pages for writing.

When that "ready" pool is exhausted, the drive has to GarbageCollect as it writes, slowing the writes down.

What you describe is normal for a disk that's been in use for a while - especially for extraordinarily large writes (you didn't say how many GB you wrote), and if it's reasonably full of data.

One test would be to do the hardware "secure erase" function - that erases the drive and makes every byte in the "available page" pool. The first time you write after the erase, it should run at full speed for most of the 128GB.
 
AidenShaw said:
The point of TRIM + Garbage Collection is to have a pool of available pages for writing.

When that "ready" pool is exhausted, the drive has to GarbageCollect as it writes, slowing the writes down.

What you describe is normal for a disk that's been in use for a while - especially for extraordinarily large writes (you didn't say how many GB you wrote), and if it's reasonably full of data.

One test would be to do the hardware "secure erase" function - that erases the drive and makes every byte in the "available page" pool. The first time you write after the erase, it should run at full speed for most of the 128GB.
Click to expand...

The drive is brand new, got it today. I did my test with 1 GB and 5 GB.
 
Skoopman said:
The drive is brand new, got it today. I did my test with 1 GB and 5 GB.
Click to expand...

I agree with what this lad is saying. I have a Samsung evo 500gb and before I paid a guy to put it in my imac, I used the performance restoration tool on a Windows pc. However after I installed osx 10.6 I was getting reads and writes in the 250's mb and I don't understand why.
 
osirus08 said:
However after I installed osx 10.6 I was getting reads and writes in the 250's mb and I don't understand why.
Click to expand...

OSX 10.6.

It seems your iMac is 5 years old or more.

Most likely your iMac only has SATA 2 port which max bandwidth is around 250MB/s. That's why you can't fully utilise your SSD's speed.
 
h9826790 said:
OSX 10.6.

It seems your iMac is 5 years old or more.

Most likely your iMac only has SATA 2 port which max bandwidth is around 250MB/s. That's why you can't fully utilise your SSD's speed.
Click to expand...

What way can I be certain that its sata 2 and. .. (I know the answer but ) is there a way to upgrade sata to 3 in a imac. And is the ssd speed any different from a regular hard drive i'd have in there then?
 
osirus08 said:
what way can i be certain that its sata 2 and. .. (i know the answer but ) is there a way to upgrade sata to 3 in a imac. And is the ssd speed any different from a regular hard drive i'd have in there then?
Click to expand...

Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 03.07.48.png

Check the controller's link speed.

3G = SATA 2

6G = SATA 3

I don't think there is an easy way to upgrade to SATA 3 on an iMac.

And the answer is YES, huge difference (improvement) when compare to HDD because the high IOPS (the main advantage of SSD).
 
I created a USB stick with the DOS-based ISO version of the Performance Restoration Software with Rufus on Windows (running in Parallels). No CD/DVD required and worked like a charm. Well at least after disabling FileVault and unplugging my 2nd internal disk.

I've written down the steps for the Firmware Update / Performance Restoration in my blog for those interested in a more detailed tutorial.
 
On the Dos CD version I get an error after the "Download firmware" question saying it cannot download.

Any suggestions? The SSD is recognised but the firmware update fails after the next question is answered..
 
I have the 840 EVO on a Thunderbolt (Lacie Rugged) external disk... ehm, is the same for the upgrading?! I think the upgrade CD is only for an internal disk, right?!
 
^^^^Yes, and as said earlier in this thread, it can't be updated from a PCIe interface either. It has to be directly connected to a MB connection internally.

Lou
 
flowrider said:
^^^^Yes, and as said earlier in this thread, it can't be updated from a PCIe interface either. It has to be directly connected to a MB connection internally.
Click to expand...

Great, so I am going to have to pull all 4 of my internal drives out since they are striped RAID-5, LOL!

I'm not sure I have any issues with this drive, I think I will wait until a new FW update.
 
Last edited:
imorton said:
I burned two DVD's with Disk Utility, one was a ISO and the other with a converted ISO to DMG.

Both of the dvd's only booted up to the attached "screenshot" below. It says loading Btdsk.img and stops there :(

Any clues?
Click to expand...
This tip of changing the iso file to .dmg really works to boot the system. This worked for me. The DVD was then able to boot and start the program.

But as in my case I was using a external SSD connected with seagate thunderbolt adapter, it didn't recognized the SSD. I was just able to update the firmware just in windows with a SSD formated as NTFS.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1837623/
 
How to fix when I have 2 Samsung 840 EVO SSD's in my Mac Mini? Is it true that the fix is only working with 1 disk connected? Please give me some advice?!:(
 
The performance restoration tool is now offline from the Samsung website, it seems the now tool is coming.
 
I have a Mac Pro 2008 running an 840 Evo 250gb in a Velocity Solo x2.

I am not having any issue with read speeds its write speeds. I have Trim enabled, I then had boot issues so followed these instructions https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

Once booted I used this this command sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1

Now it boots fine. My problem is write speeds I am getting over 500mb/s read speeds my write speed fluctuated between 40mb/s and sometimes up to 280mb/s via Blackmagic speed test 5gb.

On mavericks I was getting over 450mb/s I have been away for 5 months and have only just updated to Yosemite and found out all these issues Apple has created for SSD users.

I have just followed the instructions to update the firmware it only took a few minutes and seemed to work but performance is the same.

I have only used 130gbs of the 250gb available.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem is? Any info would be great!

Cheers

Tom
 
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