Samsung's magician all smoke & mirrors ?

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,376
762
126
http://techreport.com/review/25889/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-500tb-update

Worryingly, Samsung's Magician utility seems unaware of the 840 Series' degrading condition. The software can access the SMART data, but its main interface still proclaims that the drive is in "good" health. The 840 Pro, which has recorded only two reallocated sectors and no unrecoverable errors, has the same "good" health rating.

Makes you wonder what other maker's utility says about their own drives...

The most troubling issue that I see is the failed CRC checks, which is saying that their ECC logic couldn't correct the error...
 

Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
998
0
0
Well, I can't say Samsung's magician has done anything useful for me apart from letting me easily deallocate 10% of the drive (over-provisioning and all). All it's features are not really needed. That green "good" mark is pointless. All I need is the SMART data really, and even then, I don't really bother with it.

Not this early in the SSD's life anyway.
 

996GT2

Diamond Member
Jun 23, 2005
5,212
0
76
I use Crystaldiskmark to double check drive info anyway, so it's no big deal if Magician has a few bugs in the status reporting.

The RAPID mode in Magician is very useful. Definitely a good speed boost.
 

john3850

Golden Member
Oct 19, 2002
1,436
21
81
Samsung is a cutting edge memory company so they knew their TLC NAND would have the shortest life out there and tried to cover it up.
That so called short lifespan is still hard to kill for the average users.

They use a status icon for the drives health example Normal (Yellow) — Indicates that your Samsung SSD is in normal condition. Some Reserved Blocks may be used, but it is within the normal range etc ?.

Why does magician have so many dam updates that looses your last ssd info and setting even if coppied and put old into the update.
Everytime I did a clean install I would use the Samsung's magician to do SE.
There Over Provisioning and there Performance Optimization do help to keep it up to speed.
 

Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
998
0
0
SSD usually last longer than HDDs right?
I don't think so. I keep hearing people talk about how their SSD's controller died on them or something. And there's the limit of writes (which is very high).

For a normal user a SSD should last upwards of 15 years. If the controller doesn't die first. HDD last longer than that, I think.
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,048
4,807
136
I'll take an ssd over a spinner any day of the week and my samsung 840 pro has been a great drive for me.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
62
91
I've had some issues with Magician...

I ran a health/SMART check on my 840Pro... all was good... and it died that very evening. Not very SMART, eh? I don't really know what failed on the drive, I RMA'd it and got a Gen-u-Wine spanking new Refurb for my trust in Samsung.

The newer version of Magician kept messing with my power settings... activating sleep mode and such, so I've uninstalled it on every computer except the laptop with the refurb 840Pro in it.

As far as useful tools, the benchmark utility was pretty nice; I found the optimization utility to be a can of worms, better off adjusting the system settings yourself. Magician is a pretty decent toolbox, compared to, say, Plextor's... which is a joke.
 

Fred B

Member
Sep 4, 2013
103
0
0
It is al weird stuf happening when running the Magician , i am on xp and have no Samsung ssd but always tryed the magician software . When the magician runs my game keeps om minimilizing when conecting to server. Why is that happening , i don t know and it is weird .
 

Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
998
0
0
It is al weird stuf happening when running the Magician , i am on xp and have no Samsung ssd but always tryed the magician software . When the magician runs my game keeps om minimilizing when conecting to server. Why is that happening , i don t know and it is weird .

Happened to me too. I simply disabled its autorun feature and only use if I want to.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
SSD usually last longer than HDDs right?
Yes, usually, they will. They wear out differently.

HDDs wear out mechanically usually, so home users and small business users get several years, typically, while big businesses get less per drive, due to so many drives being in servers suffering from lots of vibration from fans and other drives. Some likely suffer from RAM going bad, PSUs feeding them bad power, and latent controller problems, too, but there's no practical way to troubleshoot for those (you can only really tell w/ PSU, when PCs of the same series chew through HDDs quickly).

Typically, assuming the SSD firmware is fine, either a flash error or other electrical problem on the SSD will cause failure long before the flash has a chance to wear out, in a client system. The flash effectively wearing slow enough, typically, to last 10 years, 20 years, or more, will mean that such an SSD will be more likely to suffer a different kind of failure.

When or if you get out of the enthusiast bubble, you'll realize that all non-volatile storage devices should be treated as wear parts, and not to be trusted. Get some DBMS exposure, and you'll be jaded .

Anyway, having a toolbox is nice, I guess, but it's not something ever needs to stay running, and it's not really special, either. It primarily makes a few things you might want to do easier than without it. The drives work fine without it, though. I really don't get people complaining about it so much, when they can remove it, and solve their problems; or never install it in the first place, which will prevent them. I have no plans for my workstation's new 840 Pro to use anything but MSAHCI.sys, and maybe an occasional check w/ CrystalDiskInfo . That's just one more annoying thing to keep up with, and should not be necessary.
 

996GT2

Diamond Member
Jun 23, 2005
5,212
0
76
I didn't know so many of you guys were having problems with Magician. It's been running great on my laptop with a 840 Pro and RAPID mode enabled. Never given me any crashes or anything. I think Samsung's Magician toolbox is almost as good as the gold standard (Intel's SSD toolbox). Certainly way, way ahead of the useless Plextor software that came with my M3.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
2,980
126
SSD usually last longer than HDDs right?
This hasn't been conclusively proven yet. It's one thing for an SSD to not brick itself with 500GB writes, but something else entirely to retain data if it's powered down. If it's not retaining data then it's useless as storage.
 

MoInSTL

Senior member
Jan 2, 2012
392
0
76
The thing is, it doesn't do anything useful! It just eats RAM up...

I think it's useful for people new to SSDs and to regular consumers. The dashboard with the System Information is good. It lets the user confirm it's on SATA III port, AHCI mode, etc. Can use it to upgrade firmware easily. It enables RAPID mode.

I have it installed for my laptop and desktop. It's easily prevented from starting up so it's no big deal.

Edit: I use it to make the bootable flash drive to do Secure Erase.
 
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Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
998
0
0
It enables RAPID mode.
Which is useless unless you are using some very specific software. I tried it out myself, and from the benchmarks I've seen and my experience, it doesn't make the slightest difference. Not faster or slower.

I have it installed for my laptop and desktop. It's easily prevented from starting up so it's no big deal.
I have it too, exactly as you. I just don't use it unless I need to update the firmware. Which I don't.

Edit: I use it to make the bootable flash drive to do Secure Erase.
It does that? Nice.
 

Hdgamer

Member
Feb 25, 2013
54
0
66
My OCZ Vertex 3 just died on me this weekend. Out of nowhere my os started hanging up and became unresponsive. I tried a reboot got into windows a few times after 20 minutes of booting up then it dissapeared. Also had an Intel Gen 2 80 gig drive fail on me after 6 months after a power failure. Same thing drive wouldn't even show up in bios after that. I'm 2 for 3 so far. Got a Samsung 840 non pro or evo installed in my htpc. Seems to be going strong still. Point to this story is, even with this so called "endurance" issue, I'm not having luck with the ssd's sticking lasting more then a few years anyways. They go just like regular hdd's.
 

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,840
617
121
It's one thing for an SSD to not brick itself with 500GB writes, but something else entirely to retain data if it's powered down. If it's not retaining data then it's useless as storage.


My G.Skill sniper has a little over 4 Terabytes written to it. LOL I guess it passes that 500 GB test. And get this! It's a Sandforce drive!

This is the laptop drive.

 
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Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
998
0
0
I have an old and abused Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII with 8MB cache up and running with upwards of 40k running hours, no reallocated sectors or problems or whatever, it's like new (well, not really, but you know what I mean).

From that experience alone, I think HDDs last looong. This one is 12 years old this year...
 

WhoBeDaPlaya

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2000
7,414
401
126
I don't trust SSDs all that much. Yes, I do use them but primarily as OS, VM and "fast app" (eg. games) drives. Any non-disposable data is backed up religiously to offline spinning platters.
 
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