Samsung fixes degradation problems for 840 EVO SSDs

Samsung has released a fix to resolve performance degradation issues for the 840 EVO SSDs. The fix and accompanying firmware upgrade ensure that the read performance of old data is also maintained.

The tool puts an end to the problems that owners of 840 EVO SSDs have been dealing with for months. Blocks of data more than a month old read 840 EVO SSDs only at 50-60 MB/s, while recently written blocks are read at 450MB/s or higher.

The ‘Samsung Performance Restoration v1.0’ tool requires 10 percent free disk space for its operation. Samsung recommends backing up the SSDs and rebooting the system after the firmware upgrade. The upgrade only works with the 2.5″ and msata editions of the 840 EVO and only chipsets from Intel and AMD in combination with Windows are supported. Versions for OS X and Linux will follow at the end of October. More information is available at found at Downloads.

TechReport and PCPer, among others, claim that the fix does indeed improve performance.