Samsung 860 EVO please help. Completely unresponsive

Question

Level 1

8 points

Samsung 860 EVO please help. Completely unresponsive

Hello! It's time to come for some real help. I have a 2012 pro 2.9ghz 8gb that I've had a Samsung 860evo in for over half a year, been superbly fast with no issues whatsoever. Had enabled trim in terminal. Until a week ago, it started randomly freezing every other minute for a few seconds , thought it odd, so I saw an update for high Sierra so I decided to hit that thinking that'll fix it. Seemed fine and then while updating it seemed to freeze, I opened the log and it kept trying something and failing over and over and over like 15 times and then it timed out and froze so I did a hard restart and then got to prohibited screen about 5 times. I then go to recovery reinstall high Sierra and that fails. Then i do internet recovery and upgrade to Mojave thinking let's try it maybe itll fix it, buggy high Sierra or something. And that install works. Computer boots up great, and then it does same thing. Beach balls every single click for dozens of seconds each time. Total unresponsive. Run avast scan. Takes 26 hours to complete because it kept freezing. Reset pram and other tricks. No ioy. Total unresponsive. Spotlight finally stopped indexing and when it did all seemed good. Solid hour of bliss. Then it came back for good.

Popped in my old hdd on Yosemite and viola, computer works just as I remember on it. Slowish, but fine. So sata cable ruled out.

I decided to wipe it and do clean install using a Yosemite installer from USB. Did the clean install yesterday on my now erased 860 evo and the install took 15 hours. Got hung up on extracting file something for 8 hours alone in the log. Meanwhile I also bought a cheaper sandisk 480gb ssd to use as a proper backup. Cloned my old hdd to that, booted it externally and it seems to run fine.

Now for the good stuff. Downloaded blackmagic, ran the Samsung as it's still inside my mac and write speeds over 300 at a few times at 5gb stress but read speeds? ZERO. well, actually 0.2. But ZERO . Connected the sandisk externally (should've mentioned using the affordable startech $10 sata USB connector) and it clocks couple hundred write speeds, and a few hundred read speeds .

So where do I go next with this Samsung 860 evo? I thought it software issue, corruption of sort, but that's ruled out since I wiped it and did a clean install and problem still persists exactly as it was. Old drive worked fine plugged inside it so it's not a sata connector. Is the drive officially bad?

Thank you thank you!

You can guess which pic is for which drive...

Posted on Mar 18, 2019 7:47 PM

Reply

Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

60,800 points

Mar 19, 2019 12:39 PM in response to AstonSenna

Please post a screenshot of all of the "Health Indicators" using DriveDX.

Have you tried booting your Samsung SSD on the USB adapter? If you have the 13" model, then the drive cable is a very likely issue here assuming the SSD's SMART Attributes ("Health Indicators") are all good. The symptoms of a bad drive cable are varied and the SSD will need a more reliable cable for the extra throughput compared to a hard drive.

Check the firmware version of the SSD using DriveDx and see if Samsung has a firmware update available.

When you ran the Avast scan, were you booted from a USB drive or running it from within macOS?

You may want to disable "Put hard drive to sleep when possible" in the Energy Saver settings. It really isn't needed for an SSD and can sometimes cause problems with some SSDs.

Reply

Answer 2

AstonSenna Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 19, 2019 12:51 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you for the suggestions! Soooo I did try booting from the samsung but using the external drive and...PERFECTION. Ran prefect. Blazing fast even using that connection. Ran the BlackMagic repeatedly in background for 10 minutes and was consistent 300 plus write speeds and 400 read speeds via the external. For laughs I ran it on my 750gb HDD and write speeds were like 15 and read 20 hahaha.

So it seems the cable did fail. It was replaced over two years ago when i got hte question mark icon one day. Because i got the prohibited instead of question mark this time i thought it something else especially since the hdd booted perfectly using the same interal connection , made me think the cable is fine. But you're saying the cable's are much much more sensitive when dealing with and connecting to an SSD which I had no idea about. In system report btw, the SMART status was verified when i looked on this drive, too.

Is DriveDX free? I'd use samsung magician to update firmware but it's only for windows. Unless i can use my friends computer for that

Reply

Answer 3

HWTech

Level 9

60,800 points

Mar 19, 2019 1:36 PM in response to AstonSenna

I believe Samsung provides an .iso image for a manual update option. If you cannot find it on the Support site, then Google it. I think Samsung lists it properly on the support site now, but at one time I think a Google search was the only way to find the manual updater.

You may want to put some electrical tape between the cable & the case when you replace the cable. Chances are you will receive the older style cable.

I believe DriveDX is a paid app, but it is free to try. If you want a free option and don't mind using the command line, then check out Smartmontools which I believe DriveDX may even leverage.

Reply

Answer 4

AstonSenna Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 19, 2019 1:45 PM in response to HWTech

i found a cable on amazon with good ratings on it 821 2049 a was part number on it, and doing some other reading on here or other forums, it was said that part number was the updated style cable for A1278 not the first designed used. Samsung site didn't have support yet for 860 EVO, had file downloads for older ones though. So this should be a problem solver i think for now once the cable gets here. I noticed the cable in there which i'm very interested to pay atttention to the part number listed on it, did have a slight kink/ripple in it between the motherboard and the 'steps' that i never liked the look of.

Reply

Answer 5

HWTech

Level 9

60,800 points

Mar 19, 2019 2:35 PM in response to AstonSenna

The number on the new cables from Apple were 821-00698A which were from the revised part number 923-00975. I looked a while back to see if I could find these cables and was unable to find anyone selling them. At the time I looked even OWC didn't mention having the revised cable which I found strange. Maybe if you use the electrical tape it will help prevent the issue from happening again assuming that all of the issues were due to the cable chaffing on the case.

Reply