Samsung 840 PRO issues

Now I tried downloading (legally) two times with utorrrent. First time I tried the Samsung magician after the torrents was complete because I was curious if it somehow interfered with the SSD. Found out that my 840 PRO have throttled down to SATA2 just looking at the benchmark. Rebooted my computer and the Samsung 840 was back to SATA3 again.
Same thing happend today.

After the first "accident" I made sure to benchmark my SSD regulary (without using torrent) to be sure it was the torrent program that caused it. And that is what I have come to the conclusion of. No other process force it to go down to SATA2. Its not dangerous or anything because a quick reboot and I`m back to SATA3 again, but there might be someone who are unaware that it happens and continue to use their SSDs without rebooting and they are actually running SATA2.

Is it anyone who knows why this happens? Is it just my 840 PRO that does it (or my computer?) or is it some sort of feature for all SSDs?

 

Odd... well, I guess I can check my SATAIII Intel 330 with a Linux distro torrent to try to answer your second question. Trying to register for another class at the moment though, so I'll update this post when I can later today.

 

Well damnit, just came back leaving the laptop for sleep for 2-3 hours. Wanted to see if that caused it to go down to SATA2 too.
Is it the firmware? I`m gonna reboot and check the speed again.

Here is what I found out. SATA2 obviously

 

And after a quick reboot I`m up to SATA3 again. I`m lost
It it because of some weird sleep state the SATA3 is in?

 

How is that GT70 been treating you lately Cloud? Did the hinges snap yet or still rock solid?

 

Treating me pretty good so far. No hinges that are sloppy or anything that should alarm me. I`m a bit careful opening/closing it after hearing about accidents though, perhaps thats why

 

Well, I finished the test on my SATAIII drive. Not much of a noticeable difference between sitting idle and torrenting:

Idle:



Torrenting:



Maybe it's a problem with the 840 Pro? First-gen tech issues probably.

 

I like how your scores are slightly better when torrenting. I know, it is just normal variations, but it's still funny.

 

Lol, yeah. Not the first time I've had odd results that still fit in line with randomness.

 

Thanks man. I bet its something in the firmware thats not working properly. I wish someone who owned the 840 PRO could try to isolate if its the SSD or if its my computer that cause it though.

 

Cloudfire, does this happen if you disable sleep and just let it idle (for an hour or so)?

Instead of a reboot - try logging off and on - does that 'trick' it again?

If the above do anything positive (or even different...) then maybe your drivers are not up-to-date?

(I'm just grasping at straws now; just trying to help).



Sorry to hear about your issues - hope the fix is quick and simple.

 

It gets worse...

Suddenly today I was greeted with this message during reboot:
Sorry for the quality but the camera on my phone sucks and the message is only there for 1 second so its hard to get a good photo, Anyhow it says

Haven`t had this message before



This happens everytime I boot up now. Later it says the disk checking is cancelled and I have no idea why. I read a little on the internet and they suggested that it was because Windows7 was loaded. Fine, so I booted to DOS without loading Windows, chkdsk found no problems.


My problem is that the first message keep repeating itself after each reboot now, even if I have finished the manual chkdsk. Its almost like it want to finish the automatic chkdsk it does everytime (which cancels) before it is settled.
What can I do? Is the manual checkdisk good enough or is it some problems with the drive, which is why it is checking on every startup? I found a way to disable the checkdisk through the registry, but I`m afraid I`m then just ignoring what Windows is trying to tell me. I`m lost here

@tiller: Earlier I thought it was only because of downloading torrents and letting it sleep. Today I found out that after surfing some and enabling over provisioning (which was disabled before) it was down to SATA2 again. So it seems pretty random. Reboot and I`m back to SATA3 again. I haven`t tried logging off and logging on again though but if that is what it takes, its just as big of an hassle as the reboot.
My IRST drivers are the newest ones, my firmware too.

Is all of this a warning that my drive is beginning to fail???

 

Check your drive's SMART information and see if there are any warning signs there. Looks to be more than a Windows issue.

 

OK Samsung magician don`t have that so I tried HD Tune. It found a warning with something I don`t know what is. Something to be concerned about?

 

Ah, just found out there is a description there:
Communication errors? Is my computer the problem here? I`m 100% positive that the SATA3 PCB which I switched out with the mSATA Raid0 card is attached firmly and correctly. Did I recieve a faulty one?

 

That error is an indication that data is not copied and read back correctly to the drive. Could be the cables, the controller or sometimes random interference from the immediate environment.

You could try re-seating the drive/cables and/or using something like Deoxit to clean the contacts.

See:
DeoxIT® D-Series


I would be putting this drive on a 'death watch' unless it proves itself otherwise.

Contact Samsung and see if they can offer any help too - if nothing else they will know you are having issues and can hopefully be extra-helpful if/when a replacement drive is warranted.

I see that you're asking a desktop question? I think that is not allowed here...

Good luck.

 

Desktop question, lol where?

Anyhow, great advice MidnightSun. Thank you very much. Seems like its the SATA3 PCB that could be the culprint. I`m gonna start there. If that doesn`t help, its probably the motherboard or something. The drive itself seems intact. Scanned the blocks and all were 100% ok. No other message from HD Tune other than that communication error.
I`m gonna try reseating the interface tiller.

Thanks for the help

 

Wait, you're switching daughter cards on a notebook setup?

I must be really confused/behind the times...

 

lol yes. MSI ships a mSATA Raid0 card with their notebooks. My reseller was so kind to take a normal SATA3 PCB out of his notebook to sell me
msata card:
http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/15462/gt70_3.jpg.jpeg

 

Ah, MSI - I actually am familiar (a little) with those RAID implementations (though not impressed by the performance - obviously degraded SSD speeds - even vs. a single SSD and nowhere close to RAID0 speeds...).

How does the card attach to the notebook? Via mSATA? Check/clean all possible contacts in the 840 Pro's path. Hopefully this is just a speck of dirt and not a hardware issue.


Thinking about this a little - how does RAID'ing mSATA SSD's via a single port contribute to increased performance? Wouldn't the single port be a liability and keep the performance of the SSD's in check (when a single SSD almost saturates the port by itself in certain aspects)?

Or is this a custom mSATA port with double the bandwidth and all the limitations that 'proprietary' brings?

 

I changed out the Raid card you see to a normal one where my 840 is attached to. I`ll try cleaning them both.

In the lower right corner there is a weird plug which goes down on a plug on the motherboard (the small white one). That plug is connected to 2 x SATA3 ports which is why you can raid 2 mSATA cards. Pretty neat soloution but I didn`t want it because I`m don`t entirely like the issues that might occur with a raid.

 

Thanks Cloudfire, I was really curious about that (now I know).

If you have any quality contact cleaner make sure to not only clean both the connector on the MB and the connector end on the SSD and let them dry thoroughly before you attach them - but also insert/remove a few times while they're still 'wet' to really clean the connection between the two. Don't use normal cloths or your fingers to rub the cleaner on - they will leave them dirtier than what you started - use a new stiff brush instead for these type of electronics.

Hope to see this issue fixed for you (a lot of camera problems - shutter will not trip, lens won't focus and speedlight won't fire or fire accurately have all been fixed with a shot of Deoxit applied to the connectors involved (don't spray right on the equipment - use a brand new micro-fibre cloth instead for delicate instruments like cameras/lens).

 

Sorry for the late reply, Same thing happens to me with my (GT70 0NC-008). There's no problem with MSAHCI driver, but I'f you'll gonna use the IRST it will switch your ssd from SATA 3 to SATA 2. I think there's a compatible issue, but not sure. Right now I'm using the MSAHCI driver. Try the MSAHCI driver and observe.

 

Cloudfire any feedback?

 

Glad to see its not an 840 Pro issue... mine thus far has run great in two different laptops.

Good luck sorting the problem with the interface.

 

Actually its not a big issue. The drive is still running at SATA3 speed using MSAHCI. The issue is it doesn't run stable using IRST driver.

 

Allright, this is complicated stuff. I`ll post it here incase someone else encounters the same mess as I do and as a log for myself

1. First of all, the message I got that CHKDSK found consistency errors ( http://i.imgur.com/rcDXX.jpg) on every bootup but it never got a chance to start the CHKDSK because it was cancelled. I found the reason, its because the SSD is too fast. Meaning it will start Windows 7 much faster before the CHKDSK loads (its a timer that takes 10 seconds before it starts Win7). So what you have to do here is set the timer at 0 seconds and reset chkdsk. See how to do it here (post #21) Can't run chkdsk on Windows 7. CHKDSK cancels 1 second into count down..

2. CHKDSK found a lot of errors in my file system even though my drive is a 2 week old clean install. The errors it found was mostly "orphaned files". I don`t know what that is but I have a theory that it was my Samsung Magician Software that created this mess when I created overprovisioning on my SSD. It probably took some of the system files as "hostage" in the area I use as over provisioning hence CHKDSK had now to move these files back to the non OP area. That the consistency errors came after I did the OP procedure fortify this belief. So watch out for this for those who use the Magician software. It may not be as intelligent as one thought.
On the bright side I don`t think it found any SSD errors, only within the files I have on it now.

3. Then it was the connection error with the SATA3 port ( http://i.imgur.com/ksB3J.jpg). I have now used compressed air on both the SATA3 interface inside my computer and on my 840 PRO to ensure that there is no dust that clogs the connection off. I have monitored the connection error, and as you can see from the graph ( http://i.imgur.com/IB7en.jpg), I still get connection errors, a jump from 78 to 94 errors just today. But that was before I did the CHKDSK so hopefully it will stay at 94 error count now.


@defzone: Where do I get the MSAHCI drivers? How do I remove the IRST driver? I`m gonna monitor the SATA speeds to see if the CHKDSK error caused the degradation down to SATA2 first though

 

MSAHCI driver is the default driver of Microsoft. Remove it by uninstalling it on the control panel. Try to benchmark to see the speed using the MSAHCI

 

But I think this could be a bad sata controller, try to install the samsung drive to different bay and see if the count is increasing. Please remember that it will not reset the count. If its not increasing, no need to worry about the drive.

 

Back at SATA2 speed again. Have removed the SATA3 interface which I think is broken. Going to try to see if I get any more errors with this port, if I do, its either the SATA controller or the SSD
I logged the drive while on SATA3. The error count kept growing...

 

My 494US didn't come with the mSATA raid card. I've not had any issues with either Crucial m4 and Samsung Pro 840. I actually have the 7200RPM drive in that area where the mSATA was though and the SSD is in the 1st SATA port. Maybe you can swap the drives unless both are SSD.

 

Just made a test and used the OCZ vector but still I have the same problem(CRC error count problem and can't use the IRST driver). So I guess I have a bad sata controller. Try to change your sata 3 module and see what will happens.

 

You have that problem too defzone?? You have the MSI GT70 too but with a SATA3 interface shipped along with it right? Mine is working perfectly now, but on the SATA2 port.

Well I put the Samsung 840 back to the SATA2 slot to see if its was the SSD or the SATA3 interface my reseller sent me. Its not my SSD, thats for sure since I still have an error count of 150 and it haven`t increased a bit for almost 14 days. And HDTune says everything is OK now even the CRC error count. I`m still confused if you too had the SATA3 problem if its something about MSI notebooks.

 

The problem is SATA 3 module. I tried to switch it to SATA 2 like what you did and it's working with no errors. Probably we got defective module. Are you gonna buy a new SATA 3 module to replace and test it?

 

I don`t know. I`m sick of putting things in and out of this notebook and problem testing everything. 840 is still fast on SATA2 its just that it could be a lot faster on SATA3.
What are the odds that both get a defective SATA3 interface? Weird