Samsung 840 pro SSD installation

[knucracker]

Just got one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

I plugged it into an open SATA port on my old motherboard (a GA-P55-USB3).

Now, any tips of formatting?  I suppose I should turn on AHCI in the BIOS?

[Grauniad]

Use Samsung Magician...should have come with your SSD, if not download it.

oh. And how come you are NOT running AHCI?

[knucracker]

It's a good question.  I was actually basing that off of what Magician was telling me.  I installed that (the latest 4.1 version) to see what it would do and the first thing is said was AHCI wasn't enabled.  Now this motherboard has two SATA controllers on it, so maybe I have it turned off on the one I plugged it into (or it was off by default in the BIOS and I never turned it on).  But I'm pretty sure I plugged the SSD into the same SATA controller as my current main hard drive (a Velociraptor).

I'll have to do around tomorrow morning.  I'll give the nightly backups a chance to run first :)

[Grauniad]

Just be very careful. If you had not installed on AHCI, then switching may (and I'm 95% sure of this) hose your system.

The other mode (can't remember what it is) is the old PATA emulation. Different drivers and all.

[Grauniad]

On second thoughts - I wonder is Samsung Magician would live up to its name and enable ACHI all by itself? I know if you change it in BIOS and can't boot, you can just change it back.

[knucracker]

Well, I just blew three hours on that experiment :)

To get it to work if the system was installed in IDE mode, you just have to turn back on the driver in windows before rebooting and changing BIOS.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

So, I did that.  Rebooted and changed the SATA controller to AHCI mode in BIOS and booted back up.  Booted normally and even logged in... then the super massive delays started.  The system would get a time slice of 1 to 2 seconds to do something, then go on vacation for about 30 seconds or so.  Took 30 minutes to finally get everything loaded at startup and for it to tell me it had installed AHCI for all of the SATA ports.

"Fine" I figured.  I'll reboot as it says and all will be well.  The shutdown was the same... I waited 2 hours and it never shut down.  Just sat on a black screen and the HD would rattler for a few seconds every 20-30 seconds.  Eventually I hit the reset button.  But it booted back up and acted exactly the same.
Reset button again, back in IDE mode, and am back in business.

Now I probably need to update the chipset drivers, yada, yada.  But, this system is 3.5 years old.  It's my mule, not a new racing horse.  I needed that SSD to do high speed video recording.  It currently benchmarks anywhere from 5 to 20 times as fast as my HD and I can successfully record 1920x1080 30fps fraps video onto it.  Sure, it benchmarks at a fraction of what the 840 pro can do, but it accomplishes my goals for the next couple of months.

Once CW3 is out, I'll be more inclined to put together a new system and the 840 can make its way over to the new system at that time...

[Grauniad]

Sorry to hear about that. I was a tad worried about something like that.

Do remember to turn on over provisioning in Magician. It will extend the life of your SSD if you're going to hammer it.

[knucracker]

Glad you pointed that out.  I just looked and realized it is not on by default.  I actually have to hit "Set OP" on that screen in Magician to enable it.  The rest of the screen does a fine job of making it appear to already be enabled, though.  The other thing about that Magician software, the Advanced tab under OS Optimization.... incomprehensible.  I look at that it it reminds me of Samsung Kies for Android phones.  Something got lost in the translation....

I can't tell if a row is enabled or disabled.  You can click the buttons in the set column to toggle between "Activate" and "Deactivate", and there is an Apply button at the bottom.  I don't know if it is showing the current status of each item, the opposite of the current status, if Apply sets the state on the button, or sets the opposite state of the button.

[Grauniad]

  The other thing about that Magician software, the Advanced tab under OS Optimization.... incomprehensible.  I look at that it it reminds me of Samsung Kies for Android phones.  Something got lost in the translation....

True, absolutely agree.

I think it is an Eastern (Oriental?) thing. :P  It is similar to the overclocking screens on VGA cards and motherboards from MSI, Gigabyte and ASRock.

Absolutely no guidance at all.

[thepenguin]

I can't tell if a row is enabled or disabled.  You can click the buttons in the set column to toggle between "Activate" and "Deactivate", and there is an Apply button at the bottom.  I don't know if it is showing the current status of each item, the opposite of the current status, if Apply sets the state on the button, or sets the opposite state of the button.

It is showing the opposite status.  clicking the button will set it to the state that it is showing. Here's your state from the picture:
Hibernation: ON
Indexing: ON
Prefetch: OFF
Cache Buffer: ON
Buffer Flushing: OFF
(It's a logical correlation, if you read the column headers, you know what they mean :))

[knucracker]

If that were the case, you would think they would flip when pressing "Apply"... but they don't.

The only one that changes when pressing Apply is "Write Cache Buffer".  If the button reads Activate and you press Apply, the button will change to Deactivate.  If the button reads "Deactivate" and you press Apply, the button doesn't change.  None of the other buttons change when pressing Apply.

It's like a puzzle, but one that is broken.

[Grauniad]

If that were the case, you would think they would flip when pressing "Apply"... but they don't.

The only one that changes when pressing Apply is "Write Cache Buffer".  If the button reads Activate and you press Apply, the button will change to Deactivate.  If the button reads "Deactivate" and you press Apply, the button doesn't change.  None of the other buttons change when pressing Apply.

It's like a puzzle, but one that is broken.

I don't recall, my memory is kind of leaky lately, but I think you have to click on each button, some of them takes you to a windows dialog, others are internal.

Some things are mysterious I have  32GB RAM, yet it wants me to allocate only 4GB paging file space. I compromised by moving the entire paging file off the SSD.

I digress. Once you have made all the various selections, you then click Apply and it applies them... But as I said, I may be wrong.

On a side note, here's some of my stats from the non-Pro model you should exceed these. Also I notice my random read/write performance is sucky and I suspect the small print that appears about "OS optimization" might be their hint I need to change things. Which I am unlikely to do.

General stats:


SSD performance


Compare with hard drive


What Windows Experience Index thinks:

[thepenguin]

If that were the case, you would think they would flip when pressing "Apply"... but they don't.

The only one that changes when pressing Apply is "Write Cache Buffer".  If the button reads Activate and you press Apply, the button will change to Deactivate.  If the button reads "Deactivate" and you press Apply, the button doesn't change.  None of the other buttons change when pressing Apply.

It's like a puzzle, but one that is broken.

precisely.  you activate or deactivate the modules beforehand, and pressing "Apply" merely executes the changes.
The only thing that seems broken is the "Write Cache Buffer" defaults to On.
(The interface is horrible, but it seems to be WAD)

[knucracker]

Bah ha ha .... I'm embarrassed to even show the benchmark scores I get.  Remember this is a 3.5 year old motherboard with 3.5 year old drivers, IDE mode SATA II.  No AHCI, no SATA III.  Right off the bat everything should be cut in half.

I get:
Sequential Read: 258
Sequential Write: 251
Random Read IOPS: 8000
Random Write IOPS: 19162

On my old Velociraptor HD:
Sequential Read: 35
Sequential Write: 40
Random Read IOPS: 219
Random Write IOPS: 381

The SSD benchmark that is most out of wack is the Random Read IOPS.  Best I can tell it's a combination or no AHCI, no SATA III, and an old MB.... that's what the internet blames it on anyway.

But, as you can see compared to my old battle-scarred HD, it is still a hefty amount faster.  It works for recording high res video right now, so that is good enough.  But in a few months and like General MacArthur, I shall return.

[Grauniad]

crud, my "drive of which I can't even remember the name" beats a Velociraptor??? That's funny.