A firmware update for Samsung 840 EVO SSDs that should finally resolve performance issues with the drives is slowly released to users. Last week we reported that Samsung was about to release a firmware that should resolve the much discussed performance degradation issues with 840 EVO SSDs.
Meanwhile Samsung has released the firmware update and the accompanying Magician 4.6 software. However until April the 27th, Samsung will limit the amount of downloads for unknown reasons. The SSD manufacturer is possibly afraid the firmware still contains bugs.
The issue, which lowered the readspeed of older data, was solved by a new algorithm that performs a periodic refresh on the drive. In the accompanying Magician software there's also a feature called Advance Performance Optimization. This feature makes it possible to do the periodic refresh at once, without waiting for the SSD to have had enough idle time to perform the refresh in the background.
The bug was caused by the fact that voltage differences between bits in flash cells slowly decrease over time. Because the 840 EVO SSDs use TLC NAND (with uses 3 bits per cell) this happens relatively fast. This made the drive to perform a lot of error correction which in its turn decreased read speeds of the SSD. The periodic refresh should keep the voltage on the right levels which should prevent performance degradation.
Todays download slots of the Magician 4.6 software and the new 840 EVO firmware (EXT0DB6Q) have all been used. Downloading the software from other sources also isn't a solution as in many cases the software has the firmware update feature disabled.
The first tests have been performed by the German website Computerbase and these confirm the new firmware fixes the issue.
