Samsung 840 EVO running slow in macbook 2012, how to fix?

Storage limitation is not a problem. I do not have data in the 750GB drive. I made a smaller partition of 150GB, which I cloned to EVO ssd.

I did not use windows machine to clone mac drive. EVO has rapid mode in windows which doubles the RW speed. I wanted to test if that is true. Also, samsung has migration software provided with ssd. I used EVO just for testing the migration software and rapid mode in windows. After that, I reformatted the ssd to mac extended journaled format, and then I used disk utility to clone mac hdd to ssd. The macbook was booted up in restore partition when cloning was done. The restore mode has the disk utility to clone mac hdd to ssd.

I followed the same procedure as mentioned above in hdd to ssd migration of macbook (snow leopard) with crucial M4. The macbook was booted on a bootable usb drive. There was no issue at all.

I do not know if the problems are due to mountain l or Evo ssd . If there is any tools or methods to test and fix this issue, I would much appreciate.

Hello,

I have tried clean re-install using the recovery partition. It takes hours to download the ML and then the reinstall process breaks afterward displaying a message "an error occurred while installing os x". I found two additional hidden partitions "OS X installer" and "Recovery Partition 10.8.5"; My originial recovery partition is "10.8".

I have tried twice without a success. Now I am out of ideas. Do you know how can I save the installer file to avoid hour-long downloading of ML throught internet?

If I make a bootable usb drive or a bootable DVD, or save the recovery partition, I can wipe out ssd and start clean install.

However, I hesitate to clean install because of office 2011. I have lost keys of it, and I have read that time machine backup can't restore office 2011 license.

After encountering all these troubles from ML, EVO ssd, Office 2011 combination, and wasting 100s of hours in unsuccessful troubleshooting - I am frustrated - it (the combination of ML+EVO+Office2011) *****.

Thanks for providing me help. As you have experience of handling samsung, corsair and crucial ssds, you definitely have more insights than myself. My appology for bringing 'windows' issues in the discussion, as I noticed that I have confused some readers, including you who are generously trying to help me to get out from this trouble.

1. This macbook9,2 is bought from my friend who sold it to me before leaving country to take his job in Europe. He installed the mountain lion and office 2011 mac in the machine. I was using it without any problem for some time.

2. The problem of slower response appeared only after migrating to SSD from HDD. I used Samsung 840EVO for this upgrade. In my old macbook (it is macbook5,1), I used Crucial M4, and all upgrade was done smoothly within 3 hours. I followed the same procedure of disk cloning, which was successful, except running the machine slower than hdd occasionally, and slower than macbook5,1 usually.

3. I do not have bootcamp or dual boot system in my mac for Windows OS and MS Office. I tested SSD in a separate windows machine (Sony Vaio). I do not have a windows partition to save in macbook9,2.

4. The office 2011 that I am trying to save is a mac version, which is still installed in the hdd and works fine so far if I put the hdd back in the macbook9,2.

5. When I cloned using disk-utility, it also cloned recovery partition. There were some permission issues resulting from change of admin ID. I used 'repair disk' and 'fix permission issues'. I also enabled 'TRIM' in the SSD.

6. Since, my all attempts of fixing slower response were not successful, I tried to do clean install using recovery partition. I can not restore Office 2011 license from time-machine backup because the license is tied to hdd id (that's what I learned from other threads), but I can try to re-activate by contacting microsoft customer service. Unfortunately, clean install attempt is also ended up in failure.

It downloaded the installation files through internet, and then started installation process by automatic rebooting. This all took about 2 hours and finally it hung with an error message "an error occurred while installing os x".

Now, I am thinking the following

A. I do have snow leopard disk used in macbook5,1. Can I use it to downgrade macbook9,2 to Snow Leopard?

B. If A is positive, then I would be able to restore everything from time-machine backup of MB5,1 to MB9,2. I have office2008mac in MB5,1;hopefully the office2008mac does not have license issues when restored from time-machine.

C. If A is negative, I would need to use online recovery, completely wipe-out ssd, and begin building it from scratch again. Perhaps, I may need to re-purchase Mountain lion ($20 is enough?) and use time-machine backup of MB9,2 for files, and MB5,1 for files+office2008mac. Does this works?

My appology for many questions, SSD migration is dragging me deep into troubles.

Update:

I used "Carbon Copy Cloner" too. But I am not getting any performance improvement.

Case 1: Clean Install of ML on SSD :- slow

Case 2: Clone to SSD using CCC from clean installed HDD: - slow

Case 3: Clone to SSD using CCC from clean installed HDD + TRIM enable :- slightly improved but still slower than HDD

Xbench Disk test score on HDD : results between 30 to 150; mostly random uncached read/write is too low. SBBOD rarely shows up.

Xbench Disk test score on Case 1: result once showed 567.60 (unbelievable), then, the computer started slowing down gradually and ended up being terribly slow. Subsequent Xbench test never showed such high performance results, and the score remained around 80.

Xbench Disk test score on Case 2: results between 3 to 50. SBBOD appears almost all time. Impossible to do any work unless you are testing computer.

Xbench Disk test score on Case 3: results between 30 to 160. SBBOD appears most of the time, but possible to work if you are ready to wait 10 to 15 seconds occasionally.

Also did Blackmagic disk test:

HDD scored around 65 ~ 70 MB/s write and 85~90 MB/s read.

SDD scored over 300 MB/s write and 500 MB/s read.

This means that SDD is not defective, but Macbook pro (9,2) and ML certainly has issues that are preventing the computer to take full advantage of SDD.

Please share if you have any additional experience or thoughts on similar cases of tests.

Also, I tested my own code (matlab code) to run a job that read/write data on disk, and use memory about 2GB and does math operations.

The job took 110 second to complete when it used HDD. The same job took 290 seconds to complete in Case 3 (that is TRIM enabled SSD). The same job took more 480 seconds in Case 2 (TRIM not enabled SSD), and over 1200 seconds in Case 1 (SSD).

So I ended up returning back to HDD for now. SSD in MacbookPro9,2 is not working for me, I do not know why?

I also have Crucial M4 512 in Macbook5,1 (I think it is 2008 model), and have never run into such complicated problems. I was also comparing between M500 and EVO before my purchase decision, and when I learned about RAPID mode (though it is for windows only), I was inclined to EVO, hoping that RAPID mode would be available for mac in future either through firmware upgrade or hack. But, at this point, I am badly disappointed with EVO. Worse is that I can not return it, because it was bought with exchange only return policy.

About the partition, yes I erased the drive and formated it as a single GUID partition before clean install mentioned above.

After spending a lot of time in testing various modes of install and cloning, my current insight is that the EVO does not match to macbook pro 2012 ML OSX.

When I was testing my own code (mentioned above), I noticed a clear difference in CPU use between running with SSD and HDD. When it was loaded from HDD, only two CPU windows of activity monitor were reporting high use (above 80%). When it was loaded from SSD, all four CPU windows of activity monitor were reporting high use, and there were occasional SBBOD freezing the computer and slowing down execution. This made me believe that EVO has a cost on cpu-use, perhaps re-arranging the data allocation in the SSD or some on-the-fly-operations not known to me. It is the same code I ran and, the code does have nothing to influence the hardware decisions.

I tried Crucial M4 in Macbook Pro 2012 model. It also performed lousy, in fact worse than EVO. So, I believe that the source of this problem is on Moutain Lion OSX or this macbook model.

Also, I tried EVO on Macbook5,1. The EVO performs fine, although not as snappy as Crucial, but definitely better than HDD.