Not sure how to go about updating SSDs in a RAID OS drive

[Cyber Akuma]

I have two Samsung 840 EVO SSDs in my desktop, and I know there was an update recently issued to fix a read bug on the drives. Problem is, they are in a RAID0 that is setup on my motherboard's BIOS.

So I have to update them outside of the RAID, and I have several questions about that (And yes, of course I will backup my data first just to be safe):

First of all I am not sure what Samsung application to even use. There are three of them: Samsung magician. Samsung Firmware Update and Samsung 840 EVO Performance Restoration.

I assume the restoration one is the one that fixes the bug, but is this also a firmware update, or will I also have to run the firmware update as well? And is this a one-time fix, or do I have to run it every so often as maintenance?

I know that the magician software is a set of utilities that also performs a firmware update, but does it also have this specialized update, or no? There is also the issue that the magician software can't be made to run as a bootable disk.

Another issue is the fact that this RAID is also my OS drive, so I can't perform this update on the desktop itself. I was thinking the best way to do it would be to turn off the desktop, use a SATA data and power extension cable to temporarily connect the drive to my laptop, and use the bootable USB version of the software to perform the update on the laptop.

I have two problems with the above method however. First of all, it mentions that "Running the software packages provided will first update the firmware, then scan and calibrate all existing data on the drive. Note that the update time can be more than an hour depending on the amount of data. Please wait for the firmware update to complete before starting any other operations." It also mentions that you need at least 10% of free space in order to perform the update. The free space is not a problem, but this update seems to imply it does a lot of heavy re-organization to the data. Could this possibly somehow destroy or even corrupt the metadata the RAID0 setup uses after I reconnect the drives to the RAID? Would my motherboard even still recognize the drives as the same after the update if I use an outside system to update them with the desktop off?

Also, would I need an internet connection to get the latest firmware update package from within the app? Since, again, bootdisk so I am not sure if it will be able to use my networking hardware to connect online from there.

[Train]

Do you really need these
- Support advanced data security features(TCG/Opal and IEEE 1667)
- Optimizing TurboWrite algorithm

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...downloads.html

I maybe wrong, but with a couple of those tools, I think you could well end up doing a clean install if you ain;t real careful. Most likely you will break your Raid .
Read the .pdf files.

[Cyber Akuma]

It's not just updating the firmware for the sake of updating the firmware, there is a bug in the firmware causing the drive to slow down considerably when performing read operations on "old" files, this update app is specifically designed to flash a hotfix firmware that fixes the issue and then re-optimize the data properly to avoid it from happening again.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8550/s...-is-on-the-way

[jdc2000]

If I were performing this update, I would assume that all data on the drives would be lost and would need to be restored from backups, and the RAID setup would be broken. I would also perform the update with the drives in non-RAID mode on a direct SATA connection to a motherboard. Just the way I would plan to do it.

[Derp]

Here's the best solution: Do an image backup to an external drive, do the firmware update to both drives then reinstall the image if need be. I've done several firmware updates to Corsair and Samsung SSD's that didn't require a reinstall though but better safe than sorry.

[Shinma]

Article with details at AnandTech: Samsung Releases Firmware Update to Fix the SSD 840 EVO Read Performance Bug