Samsung 850 EVO SSD Performance Issues.

[henchr]

Hello fellas, sorry for just barging in without introduction or anything; I'm in a fair haste.

I've got a 2ghz late 2008 MacBook (the unibody aluminum), with newly updated 8GB RAM, running the latest software. I just bought a Samsung 850 EVO SSD, in order to upgrade the original 160GB HDD. I duplicated the old HDD onto the SSD using SuperDuper!, and plopped the SSD right in. Problem is, boot-up takes about 38 seconds in order to get to the Apple logo, and another 20-30 seconds to reach the login screen. There's no significant difference in speed whatsoever, other than a bit quicker App-launcing of Word, Photoshop, InDesign and so forth. It also picked up the nasty habit of suddenly restarting or freezing from time to time, as well as overheating from mundane tasks. This is bad, seeing as my cat now has taken notice of a new sitting area, and I'm not comfortable with his genitals on my keyboard.. Is there any easy fix we can come up with, or is a clean sweep of the SSD and a complete reinstall of the OS X the only option? I'm really reluctant of having to reinstall the OS, seeing as I have no clue where half of my serial numbers to my applications are. I've seen other occurrences of this - and similar situations - here and there on the internet, so it's not all too uncommon it seems.

Pleases and thank youses in advance.

PS: I'll add in my Novascore, if it's any help at all.

 

[honestone]

Hi Henchr,

Welcome to the forums! Hopefully we can help you.

I did something similar about 1 1/2 years ago, when i replaced the slow, 1 TB, 5400 rpm hard drive inside my late 2012 Mac Mini with a Samsung 256 Gig 840 Pro SSD. Like you, I erased and formatted the SSD, and then used SuperDuper! to restore the last (and latest at that time) backup of the Mac Mini to the SSD. When I installed the SSD inside my Mac Mini, and booted it up, it was like a breath of fresh air with the speed increase. And, that is still the case.

I actually looked at the equivalent EVO (840 EVO) model from Samsung, and on the surface, about the only difference I saw was that the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) was better for the 840 Pro. Also, there were quite a few positive reviews of the 840 Pro (both for Windows and Mac machines). Finally, I got it for an excellent price at Best Buy.

I have hardly any knowledge of the newer 850 models (both Pro and EVO) from Samsung, but it certainly is strange that you are having issues. A couple of things you might consider:

1. Maybe enabling TRIM Enabler on the SSD might help (maybe already "supported", but possibly worth a try if it's not).

2. Is there something (or some things) in your Start Up Items folder that is slowing things up?

3. Do you have a more robust Disk Maintenance/Repair tool like either Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro? Either of those could help with Disk Maintenance/Repair.

4. Do you use a tool to "clean off" extraneous "crap" from your hard disk/SSD? I find that Onyx is helpful in doing that.

Sorry I can't be more definitive with ideas.

 

[henchr]

Hey Honestone, and thank you for the welcome.

I had a short discussion with myself whether I should go for the 840 or the 850, and quickly came to the conclusion that the new 3D V-NAND tech and the upgraded firmware would be the best to go, and knowing the fella behind the counter, I got it a lot cheaper than the 840, so there wasn't that much use of a debate over it.

I read up on TRIM Enabler, and it was my understanding that Yosemite didn't support the TRIM on third-party SSD's? I didn't dare try it before I could read up on it, but npw that mmy mac turns off every four minutes, it's hard to keep track of where and what I'm reading. Not to mention, I didn't expect I had to install TRIM Enabler right away when installing the SSD. I've had the disk since yesterday.

My two start-up apps are Mail and Spotify, and it should be noted that nothing at all has been changed since I copied the old HDD.

I used OnyX for a disk maintenance, verification of the system, deleting all cache and whathaveyou. Didn't do anything at all to improve anything. My macbook now randomly shuts off when I try to do anything in Safari (or anything else, really ), which is a massive step down from back when I multitasked the entire Adobe CS6 package as well as tens of tabs in Safari and Chrome.

 

[honestone]

I forgot about Yosemite not supporting TRIM Enabler on third party SSDs. I actually turned it off on my Mac Mini. For my Mac Book Air, which has a 256 gig "Apple branded" Samsung SSD inside it, even when I was using Mavericks, it would not let me use TRIM Enabler.

Yeah, Onyx is OK, but not that helpful in some cases. This is where I think you need either Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro to help with your issues. If you were close to where I am (near Seattle, WA), I could try and help you directly, as I have both of those fine products.

Finally, yes, it would appear that the 850 line, with the 3D V-NAND tech and upgraded firmware would be the way to go, especially with the good price you got. Too bad you don't have a way to test an 840 EVO (or Pro) model inside your machine.

 

[henchr]

I tried to copy the SSD over to the old HDD using SuperDuper again in case all goes adundas, but it just keeps shutting off. So, I'm booting it up in Safe Mode, which it seemingly is going to for the next fifteen minutes. I'll keep you fellas updated on the matter, in case anyone else falls into the same bad luck. And, really, thank you for the help so far.

Update:
Safe Boot went good, but didn't notice any difference when I turned it back on. Hasn't turned itself off for a few minutes, with Safari, Mail and SuperDuper running. As a minute cry for help, I hit up Terminal and sudo forced the Verbose booting; maybe that'll give me a few answers. If I get the chance, I'll buy DiskWarrior or Tech Tool in order to do a maintenance check, but I'm starting to get more and more convinced that I need to do a full system reboot as a final result. My cat doesn't seem to mind any of this, which I find extremely frustrating. I'll get back when I know whether or not the Safe Boot worked.

Update 2:
Safe Boot did nothing at first glance, and booting up in Verbose didn't make much sense. The boot-up still took just as long, even after turning it off-and-on three times. I've backed up the SSD, which also means that my Mac haven't bothered turning itself off yet; which is great news. I thought I might as well just splurge out on TechTool Pro 7 (It was the cheapest of the two, they had a better site and I hope to eat more than ramen for the coming weeks). It's currently checking the file structures, which I expect will end sometime tomorrow morning. Until now, the only solution that has proven to be slightly working is Safe Mode, so I hope TechTool does something more to whatever it does.

 

[honestone]

I find Tech Tool Pro very useful. You should do as many of the tasks that it has as possible. One "neat" thing about it is that if you follow the installation instructions closely, it will create a small eDrive on your SSD, and either via Tech Tool Pro, or holding the Option key at start up and seeing all your bootable volumes, when you re-start the machine from the eDrive, it is basically as if Tech Tool Pro was running off an external device. That is, you can do all the various tasks contained in Tech Tool Pro without having to boot it from an external device. That is much, much faster.

But, it looks like you have started using Tech Tool Pro already. I suggest you do as many of its tasks as possible (and those that are applicable).

 

[honestone]

Any update, henchr?

 

[henchr]

Sorry, I got busy restoring an old turntable and trying to set up a new amplifier, but there's been some progress.

Update 3:
I ran TechTool once more, but it came back totally clean again. I also re-indexed Spotlight, which seemed to do something, but not quite certain what. So I took it down to the Apple store, sat down in the workshop and forced the "geniuses" there to do a full check. They didn't find anything faulty with the hardware or the software, so they were just as clueless as me. But whilst booting it up in Verbose we quickly found the problem to be a random kernel panic, which shouldn't happen. We also checked DiskUtility, using Disk Verification, which came up with a odd problem.

Disk Utility tells me that the Startup disk is faulty and needs repairing, giving me the following message:
"Invalid directory item count
(It should be **** instead of ****) (These numbers change every time I do a disk verification)
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired/
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility."

No clue what to do with that. For some odd reason, it won't let me do the Command+R during boot, so that's strange. Tried the fsck-method, but it didn't seem to understand the "fsck -fy"-command. Any tips here would be appreciated. It doesn't make any sense to me why the Item Count changes and why TechTool can't find the same error.

However, after taking out the newly upgraded RAM and reinserting them, the problem of the random shut-down seems to be gone (I think), and the booting time is now down to 22 seconds. So I'm getting there, I just don't trust the MacBook with hard work such as InDesign or automated scripts in Photoshop; which is my livelihood.

Update 4:
It turned out that I was using the wrong fsck command. I never noticed that the - turned into / and that the + turned into -. It understood the command now, checked everything and after running it a second time it told me the disk was OK. However, when running Disk Utility once more, it came back with the same error, with a new set of item numbers. And it still won't let me boot up with the cmd+R command; can't fathom why.

 

[honestone]

Man, what a "weird"problem! You have certainly done quite a bit of detective work.

Just out of curiosity, when you say "won't let me boot up with the cmd-R command", what exactly happens?

Regarding the Recovery Partition and Command+R, I have read where the Recovery Partition does not always get created on an OS installation. Not sure, though, if that happens with an OS upgrade. But, you can determine if that hidden Recoverry HD partition is there or not by launching Disk Utility, and from its Debug Menu, "turn on" Show Every Partition. That will then show, via Disk Utility, whether that partition is there are not. If it is not, you can create one on your own by using the excellent freeware program called Recovery Partition Creator, which you can get by clicking on the top link contained in this article:

http://musings.silvertooth.us/2014/07/recovery-partition-creator-3-8/

(It says Recovery Partition Creator 3.8)

To use that, you must have the "Install OS X Yosemite" file in your Applications folder.

Additionally, you stated that you have "newly upgraded RAM". Maybe 1 or more of those RAM modules is still "problematic". Any way you can go back to the Apple Store and have them put in Apple-branded RAM, and then see what happens?

 

[honestone]

Forgot to add that via a search I just did for "Mac software to detect bad RAM", here are the initial "hits":

https://www.google.com/search?q=Mac software to detect bad RAM&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

From clicking on a couple of them, they talk about running Apple's hardware test. Not sure if any of those will help you, but maybe some of them can.