Samsung Magician

MPSAN said:

OK...I just thought that the ISO may be more reliable. I guess I can try Magician 5.1. Will it now give me exm04 and not exm03?

It'll check your drive and update to the latest version if necessary. Just follow it's instructions and let it do it's thing.

BTW what "ISO" are you talking about???

sygnus21 said:

It'll check your drive and update to the latest version if necessary. Just follow it's instructions and let it do it's thing.

BTW what "ISO" are you talking about???

If you do go to the Samsung site and look at firmware updates, one of the options is to download the firmware in an ISO and you can create a bootable CD or USB that will flash you drive. I just thaough that since it is based on a small Linux OS, it would eliminate any Windows issues with AV software, etc.

The file is called...Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_EXM04B6Q_Win.ISO

OK, yeah, I don't use them. If a firmware update is issued, I just do it through the Magician software. I've four Samsung SSD's in my system.

...and your 950 pro does not support rapid mode?

No. Samsung doesn't support Rapid Mode on NVMe drives (yet). Still plenty fast though.

That said, I do have Rapid Mode enabled on my 850 Pro since I use that drive for my photo editing needs. I'm also a photographer.

Also be aware you can only enable Rapid Mode on one drive at a time. So the fact that I have multiple SSD drives, only one can have Rapid Mode enabled.

sygnus21 said:

No. Samsung doesn't support Rapid Mode on NVMe drives (yet). Still plenty fast though.

That said, I do have Rapid Mode enabled on my 850 Pro since I use that drive for my photo editing needs. I'm also a photographer.

Also be aware you can only enable Rapid Mode on one drive at a time. So the fact that I have multiple SSD drives, only one can have Rapid Mode enabled.

OK, I only have 1 SSD anyway. I did not change any options when I went from 4.9.7 to 5.1. I have not even selected Over Provisioning to see what that does. I may not even bother.

Unless you're hard up for disk space, leave over provisioning alone. BTW what size is your drive?

sygnus21 said:

Unless you're hard up for disk space, leave over provisioning alone. BTW what size is your drive?

I have a 512 GB 850 Pro. I never did set Over Provisioning. Are you saying I should?

Disregard my last post. Overprovisioning actually sets aside more storage space to better optimize endurance of the drive. In short you actually lose storage space when over provisioning.

That said, all SSD drives are already shipped with space set aside for garbage collection and other stuff. This is why your 512gig SSD drive is really a 477gig drive. Setting aside more storage space (overprovisioning) also increases a drives endurance. In keeping things simple, for the normal consumer, there's really no need to overprovision their SSD drive. For high drive usage like Data Centers ii may be useful to overprovision drives.

The short answer is if your not putting a lot of usage on the drive - moving lots of data to and from there's no need to overprovision. In the end it's up to you and how you use your drive. I myself have never overprovisioned any of my SSD drives and see no reason to do so now, but that's me.

Anyway you can read about Overprovisioning here - SSD Over-Provisioning And Its Benefits