Samsung840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive

bought in December 2014, to run Linux Mint system. now showing significant slow down in May 2015.Disappointed Samsung pout out something like this. I though I was playing it safe sticking to this brand.Although SSD prices have dropped they still cost a lot of money so now I have to call Amazon to see if I can get a refund ...Firmware = EXT0CB6Q,hdparm -t Timing buffered disk reads: 310 MB in 3.01 seconds = 103.04 MB/secCompare to my magnetic HD : Timing buffered disk reads: 440 MB in 3.00 seconds = 146.64 MB/secUPDATE: Speeds continued to drop as low as 12MB/sec , I tried to apply the lastest firmware EXT0DB6Q but it would not run from the Samsung DOS ISO.The firmware would exit with a kernel32 error. I had to build a new ISO with a more recent version of FreeDOS, before it would run the update.I'm now getting 215 MB/sec via SATA II in IDE mode which is about the correct speed for Sata II (old mobo Asus P5Q -I potentially get 250MB/sec in SATA II AHCI mode but sometimes it doesnt mount correctly?)My vague understanding is that the new firmware does periodic refresh of the data to keep access fast but a downside is that it adds to the write cycles?I'll leave at one star though because if I could go back in time, I wouldn't touch this SSD for the price.

I chose this SSD because it was rated very highly by quite a few review sites. It came in a nice premium package with the Samsung Magician software.I cloned my hard drive OS install onto it and booted into it just fine without any problems. I did have to do a check to make sure Windows recognised it as an SSD and enabled TRIM and disabled Defragmenting.Another thing to note is you should have the partition 1MB aligned for faster read and write speeds. If you download AS-SSD and run it, it shows the alignment of the drive and if it's correct it'll show it in green saying something like Alignment: 1024KBSpeaking of AS-SSD the speeds are blisteringly fast! From boot to Windows was about 20 seconds. You can also enable RAPID mode from the Samsung Magician software where it caches frequently used software/data in RAM for you to speed up the system even more. However you need a spare bit of RAM to do so, and it only works on one SSD. So any RAID setups won't be eligible for that feature.Now for the downside...The original firmware has a flaw where it causes a slowdown due to not having the data refreshed on the disk, which causes reads/writes to slow down over time. Samsung recently released another firmware update that should reduce the issue and for most users it won't be a noticeable effect. However having such a flaw in the drive does make you think twice about choosing them. For their next range of drives, they'll have to offer something way above the others, either in terms of price or in speed to win the support of annoyed customers.

This is a great product but be aware about SSD Drives in General. If they have constant on/off states (sleep to wake multiple times, they will probably fail)I learned this at my peril! We put the office computer on an SSD and everything was running fine, but made the mistake of putting in the Ethernet cable in the back.Now when the computer went to sleep after 30 minutes (windows 7), it would wake again and go back to sleep every 30 minutes. This caused our SSD drive to fail and in the morning was totally gone when we found the computer had a black screen and said SSD Drive Error.Im guessing it must have done this cycle all through the night, which caused it to fail by the morning. It was 2 months old.SSD drives do fail, it is EXTREMELY important to back up your stuff to the cloud - i highly recommend using dropbox just so you are safe, and keep that folder as your main drive for your work at least. SSD Drives are actually quite flimsy and can mess up very easily as the contacts inside are very delicate. If you get surges of power and constant on/off states on the drive it can cause read failures. There are lots of help files in google on how to lengthen the life of your SSD.We stupidly did not back anything up and spent 500 quid with an SSD drive recovery company to fix it!! Took 3 weeks aswell and it was a nightmare.Learning point - If you have an SSD do not allow the computer to wake up with any of the devices except a keyboard. Not even the mouse as the mouse can be inadvertently hit and wakes the computer up. We have since put a USB mouse which does not wake (check google for how to do this) and just set the keyboard.Also check your bios for SWITCHING OFF Wake Sleep settings so that the Ethernet cable does not wake up the computer when it gets a signal from the router.http://www.howtogeek.com/70374/how-to-geek-explains-what-is-wake-on-lan-and-how-do-i-enable-it/

Brilliant SSD, had mine for 2 years now and it still works as good as the first day i got it.Samsung dominates the SSD market for the sheer quality and performance of it's SSD'S!The Magician Software for the SSD's also keeps you updatd as to when your ssd shows any sign of issues or a decrease in performance.It also allows you to run Disk Optimisation Software and Performance Trackers to check the Read/Write Speed of the SSD.The Magician Software also easily allows you to shift existing Data from one SSD to the other, making an SSD upgrade super easy and simple.