Exactly.

Besides, lets be fair here. This is not something you can't fix with a $27.49 ChromeCast key ...

Politely: "State regulation" =! "socialism" ...

I think your 99,9% assertion is flat out wrong.

Any file regardless of size which is unchanged for several months will be subject to this issue. This is not isolated to "pro" stuff like databases and virtual servers, but also includes locally stored video files, games, photos, etc.

Out of curiosity I contacted them and asked about the benchmark. Turns out they simulated 5 high-load servers running concurrently by started the bechmark tool on 5 different virtual servers on the SAN and running them at the same time, taking the average values for about 7 minutes of benchmarks. Each server reported around 192.000 IOS at a QD of 16, for a total of approx 960.000 IOPS.

There was no other activity on the SAN an the servers were small so it's a pretty fair bet that 100% of the load was on the SSD tier, which contained 48 SSDs in two separate enclosures.

The bug does not affect your data for at least a couple of months. And running the Samsung tool fixes it completely - as does moving the data to new blocks (though OS files are somewhat harder to move around if they're not in a virtual disk file).

Not sure if you're trolling or just being contrary out of principle. But yeah, I'll take the EVO in your drawer if you insist it is unusable. Hell, I'll even make a donation to the EFF worth the drives second-hand value when I receive it. Let me know if you want my address for shipping.

For the 840 series, the EVO is almost as fast as the Pro. The difference is about 3-5% depending on sources. The price of the pro is almost double that of the EVO. So no, I'd say the Pro only makes sense if you want the added reliability and extended warranty.

The difference was bigger for the previous series, and I haven't checked the new 850 drives. But if you're in the 840 series then the Pro actually makes very little sense unless you get it at a bargain price.

No, that hasn't been true for quite a while. At least not on workstation or gaming-grade motherboards. They all come with an Intel controller and Rapid Storage Technology which performs quite well for simple raid volumes like 0 and 1. Probably because there is much less work for these volumes than for the complex ones, like RAID 5, 6, 50 and 60.

Generally speaking most "Enterprise" VMs on slow SANs suck. Really - seriously - suck!

And no, it does not represent real business workloads unless the company in question is either being cheap, or their infrastructure team has no clue what they're doing.

Don't get me wrong; VMs on a SAN can be fine if the SAN is any good. The best SAN I have seen to date was at one of our clients where it was used for the primary servers running a complex ERP solution. It provided almost a full million IOPS when benchmarked at its installation date (they bought it new when we started our project with them). I can't say for sure if the massive performance threw the benchmarking software off so it was actually lower, but it was fast as hell to work with as well.

My laptop gives me around 14.000 IOPS at random reads with a Que Depth of 1, and around 120.000 IOPS with a Que Depth of 16, for Random Reads. Data transfer for sequential reads is around 900 MB/s which is pretty fair for a laptop. Its based on an Intel RST RAID0 aray and to Plextor M5 Pro drives.

My previous array with 840 EVO's had slightly better random reads and somewhat worse sequential read performance. And the bug mentioned in TFA was very noticeable for large VM's... like a bloated 120 GB Windows server with a lot of concurrent services.

Really? I haven't heard that, and none of the drives used at our small company have failed in that way (I believe we have a total of around 40-45 EVO drives in various sizes). I also haven*t seen reputable sources criticize their reliability?

Feel free to share your source for this; if it's any good I'll certainly pass it on to our infrastructure guys.

Actually they perform as advertised when they're new, or when the data is refreshed. So your claim is wrong.

The degraded performance occurred when blocks of data remained unchanged for many months. And the fix was somewhat easy: Run the Samsung optimizer tool or alter the data.

You can criticize them for the degradation-bug, sure. But to claim they shipped drives that did not live up to claimed performance is wrong.

Hey, why the attitude man? Did it somehow offend you that I decided to replace the drives? Are you so emotionally attached to your own identity as an EVO customer that you must attack people who choose differently?

I used the EVO 840 from virtually the same week they became available. Performance was great, but it slowly degraded with time passed. The decrease was very visible for large blocks of data which were read often but not refreshed or updated. Not just on synthetic benchmarks. My usage pattern fits that bill because I use several virtual machines that are 40 - 120 GB large, and only a small portion of their virtual disk files are changed (SQL database files). Moving the virtual machine to an external drive and back on to the SSD's solved the problem, but shuffling around 120 GB virtual servers in order to "keep the memory cells happy" is a chore I'd rather be without.

Perhaps the issue was more visible to me because I run 2 drives in RAiD0 which means I get hit by the degradation twice - once for each drive. Never the less, the issue was very real to me. YMMV off course, but please accept that your own perception of this issue is not the universal truth.

In regards to your snarky comment about me being a "savvy consumer": Yes, I believe I am a reasonably savvy consumer when it comes to SSD drives. I am a Business Intelligence specialist and I am quite confident in my ability to understand and evaluate disk read performance. It is part of my job. When analyzing large amounts of data or operating virtual servers (booting or resuming), sustained data transfer is very important. The slightly lower random read performance of my Plextor Pro drives is a very good trade-off for the added sustained transfer rate. In addition the Plextor pro drives use a server-grade controller chip with a GC routine that works very well without TRIM. Since I operate in RAID mode that is also a concern when I buy drives. My Laptop does not support TRIM in RAID mode (desktop/gaming rig does though).

Not everybody on the planet uses their computer in exactly the same way as you do.

Why?

SSDs are pretty reliable. I also have daily automated backup of my entire drive, and all important documents are synced with a SkyDrive account.

And ... I need the extra performance for virtual machines. :-)

I think you can fully expect Samsung to apply the firmware fix to all subsequent EVO series if applicable.

Not quite. The specs on the EVO 840's are actually very good ... if only they lived up to them!

If this new fix actually works, the EVO's will be a very good buy. Pretty reliable too according to tests. I just couldn't wait (and had no idea if/when a fix was ever going to surface).

Six months is not an acceptable time to wait for a performance fix for an SSD drive. The very essence of an SSD is "speed".

I offloaded the EVO's on eBay (being honest about the reason) and got myself a couple of Plextor Pro drives. Running in RAID0 they are a bit slower at random reads than the EVOs, but faster at sustained transfer rates.

An SSD with slow/degraded performance is like a burger without the beef... something is missing...!