The 840 PRO Series SSD is backed by a five-year warranty. What's in the Box. 840 PRO Series SSD, Samsung Smart Data Migration Software, Samsung SSD Magician software and manual CD, and quick user manual. Samsung 840 Pro SSD Review Conclusion. Published: 21st December 2012. Thanks to the more powerful ARM R4 MCX controller and better bandwidth the 840 Pro not only tops the charts in nearly all of our 'out and out speed' benchmarks, but the 4K results are a vast improvement upon the 830 and most other drives as well. We can heartily.

We have a MySQL database server running on an Dell PowerEdge R720 (PERC H710 Mini RAID controller) ( (Ubuntu 12.04).

We're considering upgrading the 2 x 146GB 15k SAS drives to Samsung 840 Pro SSDs.

The Dell ones are just far too expensive! (nearly 2k per drive), and with us putting them in RAID 10, we can just have spare drives standing by for if any fail?

Does anyone have an identical setup, and are we likely to get problems with this configuration?

Samsung Ssd 840 Pro

I've read reports online of the Dell RAID controller deciding it doesn't like the drives and marking them as offline randomly, but then other reports of people running 100+ of these in RAID and having no problems at all.

Should we just avoid this entirely for a pretty critical database server?

4 Answers

Bottom Line - You get what you pay for. Without going into a rediculous amount of detail, because I'll let the internet do it for me.

There is a huge difference between an Enterprise SSD like the Optimus or Sandisk Lightning or the Intel 3700 and the Samsung 840 or OCZ Vector. There's a pretty darn good review Tweak Town SSD Review.

That review highlights the differences chief among them SUSTAINED performance. There are also a few other points that I think make all the difference:

Reliability - Enterprise SSD are made to run in a datacenter environment which typically means a higher sustained operating and level. They are built to run all out for extended periods of time at higher temps in more demanding environments.So please consider a couple things when making this decision:

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- The use of your drives: The drives that are housing something very volatile will get beat up a lot more, stuff like caching drives or database tempdb. By the nature if those types of use those will get over written a lot and that may be worth the extra investment for extended life.

- How prepared you are to deal with replacement and such when the time comes. Depending on your architecture and it's built in reliability (fail-over clusters and the like) maybe you can live with it being down for a while as you order replacement parts. Maybe you can afford to have some the shelf just in case. If you choose to put all your eggs in one basket for what ever reason then I usually counsel people to make that basket as bullet proof as possible. In the end you have to do what is right for the business and your situation.

Data Protection - Enterprise SSDs have protections against power loss and the like built in. They will make sure all writes get committed before they go offline.

Samsung Ssd 840 Pro Firmware

The Dell controller should support mixed drives - it actually says it supports mixed drives.

If you have support on your server and you purchase your drives from them then your drives will be supported in your contract. This is a business database on a business class server in a Datacenter, so you have 24x7 support right. Oh and one other thing you should always have hot spares in the box ready to replace a failed device the second it fails. After that you just wait for the courier to show up with your replacement drive and pop it in. When asked how much extra that costs you just make a comparison to the amount of downtime you'll experience if you were to actually lose the server for however long it took. That usually justifies the expense.

I know that a lot of the time in IT the cheap quick solution takes a backseat to the proper solution. I would encourage you to talk to your management and find the money to do it right the first time, because when it comes to storage, the sacrificially lamb can oft times be the business itself.

Samsung Storage Controller Driver Ssd 840 Pro Software

I wouldn't use consumer SSD drives. While they will work, I think the better approach is to find a cost-effective SAS (not SATA) SSD. The Dell OEM drives are Sandisk Lightning (expensive, perform OK, last forever). A more affordable option is the Sandisk Optimus line (not expensive, perform great, endurance unknown)... See both at: http://www.sandisk.com/enterprise/sas-ssd/

Your Dell's controller is LSI-based, so most SSDs will work for you. Check to see if the LSI Fastpath option is applicable to your controller. In the case with any SSD you choose, LSI Fastpath would be a tremendous benefit to an all-SSD array.

Also see: Are SSD drives as reliable as mechanical drives (2013)?

I think the main problem is if you mix sata/sas on the same backplane on certain backplanes. The main advantage of expensive enterprise ssds is that they have a supercap to allow writes on power loss.

I am currently replacing our 6 Samsung 840 SSD's in Raid-6 with 850 SSD's due to performance issues with the 840 series. This worked well for about 1 year, but then performance tanked due to a firmware issue, and rather than update firmware, we are replacing. These are in a Dell R810. Flashing Orange lights went away with the last Perc H700 update, but there are still errors in the logs saying 'Drive not certified'. Dell hasn't been too pushy about support, but I don't ask them to fix drive performance issues either.

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Samsung Storage Controller Driver Ssd 840 Pro Driver

It's been exactly a year since Samsung released its 830 series solid-state drive (SSD) and today, the company unveiled the upgraded version, the Samsung 840 Pro.

This new drive is actually the professional version of the 840 series, so in a way it's a double upgrade since the 830 series didn't have a Pro version. The new drive differentiates itself from the rest of its SSD siblings by using Samsung's high-performance toggle-mode NAND flash memory, making it the direct competitor to the recently reviewed Corsair Neutron GTX, which uses the same type of flash memory.

In my testing, the new Samsung 840 Pro was very fast, but it wasn't faster than the 830 series in certain tests, making it hard to justify the new drive's current cost, which is some 35 percent higher than its predecessor's. Plus the drive doesn't come with any accessories such as drive-bay converter for use with a desktop, which makes it much less of a good deal than the 830 series. In the 840 Pro's defense, it does indeed use much less power than the 830 series, or than other other SSDs I've seen for that matter.

Samsung 840 Ssd Driver

That said, if you're a professional or a hard-core gamer looking for a top-notch SSD for your system, especially if it's a portable computer, the Samsung 840 Pro will still make a great investment. And it's not the most expensive SSD on the market, either, costing just between $1.05 to $1.17 per gigabyte. For others with less demanding needs, I still recommend the Samsung 830 Series.

Design and features

Samsung Ssd 840 Pro Driver

The new Samsung 840 Pro looks almost exactly the same as the Samsung 830 series; the 7mm, 2.5-inch drive looks great and supports the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard. It also works with previous versions of the SATA standard, though.

The new drive comes in a new package that's much more spartan than the previous model's. It doesn't include any accessories, such as a drive-bay converter (which would enable it to fit in the 3.5-inch drive bay of a desktop computer) or a USB-to-SATA adapter. In fact the only thing it does come with is the Samsung Magician (version 4.0) software, which lets you test and change its settings. While this is not a big deal, it does make the new drive that much less affordable than the previous model.

Samsung Storage Controller Driver Ssd 840 Pro Series

Despite the above similarity in design, on the inside, the Samsung 840 Pro is quite different. It uses a new 3-core MDX controller and toggle-mode NAND flash memory as its storage. This is high-performance flash memory, similar to the kind used in the Corsair Neutron GTX. The combination of the new memory, Samsung's firmware, and the new controller also means that the new drive uses much less energy than the previous model, which already requires very little power to operate. More specifically, per Samsung's claim, the new 840 Pro uses 0.068W when in use and only 0.042W when idle, compared with the 830 series, which used 0.24W and 0.14W, in respective states.

Like the 830 series, the new 840 Pro doesn't come with overprovisioning out of the box. Instead users can use the downloadable Samsung Magician software to turn this feature on or off. Overprovisioning is a feature that enables the use of part of an SSD's storage space to enhance the drive's performance. The 840 Pro allows users to reserve between 7 and 24 percent of its storage for overprovisioning, making it one of the most flexible drives on the market when it comes to choosing between speed or maximum capacity. Using the Samsung Magician software, you can also check the SSD's health status and securely erase its data.

Samsung Storage Controller Driver Ssd 840 Pro Software

In my trials, the Samsung 840 Pro worked well with all popular operating systems in our trials, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. For better performance it's recommended that you use the latest version of the OSes that support the TRIM command, such as Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6 or later.

Cost per gigabyte
The Samsung 840 Pro costs about 35 percent more than the 830 series. The 256GB capacity, for example, costs $270 compared with $200 for the 830 series. Compared with other SSDs on the market, however, the new 840 Pro isn't the most expensive, averaging about $1.10 per gigabyte. Note that this is the suggested retail price of the new drive, which, like those of nearly all SSDs, will get lower once the drive has been on the market for a while. Also note that the Samsung 840 Pro comes with a full five-year warranty, which is the longest among SSD warranties.