Samsung Magician 4.6

Not even published on Samsung's own website yet, Enjoy it ahead of the crowd, this is the final version

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...loads/software/Samsung_Magician_Setup_v46.zip

No new Firmware yet (840EVO or 850pro)

PS: No support for RAID as usual

Link down but it has been uploaded to the Major Geeks Servers: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/samsung_ssd_magician.html

 

Meh I don't see why people bother downloading this software, its utterly useless.

It doesn't detect Intel Rapid Storage Technology RAID even if you aren't using RAID, the optimizations are useless, and it doesn't work with OEM drives.

Literally the only good part of it is the firmware downloads, and even so...don't update the firmware unless it fixes a problem you are encountering.

 

100% agreed.

 

Yes, I also have stopped using this useless utility, I don't even bother with the F/W updates from Samsung after the fiasco which bricked many SSDs.

 

I have to say, at least Sandisk Utility is good.. You can download firmwares, check SSD health, SMART readings etc and not to mention, do manual TRIM.. My Extreme II hasn't got any firmware updates and runs so well out of the box that unless it had all these tools, I wouldn't have bothered installing it .. Sandisk FTW!

 

I don't have my laptop with me ATM, but I could swear every function you mentioned I've seen inside Samsung Magician, including firmware updates, SMART and manual trim. Also 4.6 should have data refresh function for 840 evo as well, which could be important for those who experience slowdowns. Personally I don't use Samsung Magician since it is redundant to other programs I have that work with all drives, besides Samsung, but it's not any worse than other SSD maker provided utilities IMO.

 

within one month Samsung will release a new firmware for the EVOs that doesn't require a manual refresh every month as it does it automatically when idle, just like garbage collection. and you wouldn't even need to rely on Magician for it to be done, you can uninstall Magician.

stay tuned

 

See:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storag...40-EVO-EXT0DB6Q-Firmware-Review-Finally-Fixed


More Samsung BS; they won't tell me it's fixed. I'll tell them if it is.

 

This says AnandTech; All in all, I hope this fix will finally put an end to the performance degradation. The issue has been bugging many users for months and it's critical that the users get what they initially paid for. On one hand I'm confident enough to say that this fix is permanent given the way it works, but on the other hand I don't want to be too optimistic this time around because the first fix didn't turn out so great. Either way, I think this fix is the last chance for Samsung to provide a permanent solution because they already failed to do so once and it would no longer be fair to ask the customers to wait months for a fix that might or might not fix the issue. For now the only thing we can do is wait for user reports and hope for the best, but at least in theory the new firmware should be a permanent fix.
http://anandtech.com/show/9158/new-samsung-ssd-840-evo-read-performance-fix-coming-later-this-month

 

Given how the new incoming firmware is supposed to work, it looks to me like it will fix the problem. It's gonna re-write data on an ongoing basis to ensure that there is no old data to start with. From the pcper article it also looks like they've optimised the ability of the drive to read cell data which is old too - one of their tests showed that read speeds improved IMMEDIATELY after applying the firmware update and BEFORE the firmware would have had a chance to re-write the old data. I do agree with you though that we won't know for sure until we test it for a few months, but I reckon they'll have cracked it with this one.

 

You have a naïve view of Samsung's motives. Rewriting data on an ongoing basis is not a fix, it is a kludge at the firmware level for inherently faulty hardware. Further, with their penchant for high scores, I highly doubt (until I can test for myself on my 1TB EVO's) that those scores immediately after the firmware update are real. Samsung is known to game/cheat on these things before.

If the firmware update took about 2 hours like the first (fail) fix did, it simply re-wrote data then...

I also like how they try to spin this as a positive thing by mentioning the EVO's will read certain data faster than 'regular' SSD's (by basically defragging the drive as I've mentioned since 2011...) and all the while claiming that the plain 840 TLC drive will not be given the same treatment because they have no complaints about those drives (while the person writing the story says they've seen the issue in those drives and forwarded that info to Samsung themselves... lies, more lies and more damn lies).

I just tested one of my 1TB EVO's again... a 303GB folder is reading files (untouched for 2 months to the day) at 97MB/s with FileBench007a.exe by BrainSplatter. I was getting higher speeds in 2009 with my Hitachi 7200RPM Travelstars.

You know when this will be cracked? I do.

When I junk these drives once and for all.

 

I don't mind the extra writes that the new firmware will do in order to refresh old data - I won't be keeping the drive for 10yrs or anything. As long as the speed remains high & constant then I'm fine with their 'fix' even with the small amount of extra writes.

They should apply a fix for the 840 non-evo drives too, although the problems with those drives aren't as pronounced - I think I read they're 22nm rather than 19nm therefore any slowdowns take longer too occur, they should offer a fix though.

 

can't wait till someone releases a 1TB MLC mSATA SSD man! I wanna get rid of this Samsung crap!