Linux patch disables TRIM and NCQ on Samsung 860/870 SSDs in Intel and AMD systems

About two years ago, several users of the Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD started reporting issues on their drives in Linux. Later it was also established that the same or very similar problem also existed on the 870 EVO model. Linux engineers stated meanwhile that they were looking into the problem and while it took a while, earlier today, it was announced that patches for the issue have been sent upstream for final implementation.

According to the findings, it has been determined that Queued Trim commands on the 860 and 870 SSDs are causing such issues on Intel, ASmedia, and Marvell SATA AHCI controllers and the problem has been found to be the worst on older AMD systems.

As a result, Queued Trims have been disabled on the new patch for Intel, ASMedia, and Marvell SATA controllers and for older AMD machines, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) has been disabled entirely as a cure for the issue.

NCQ is a technology on SATA that allows the system to optimize queuing and movement of data as per workload for the best performance. TRIM on the other hand allows the drive to intelligently free up space that is no longer determined necessary for the storage device to hold on to, without deleting necessary data. This helps to avoid rewriting in used spaces and it is generally considered a good thing for drive health.

Curiously, it seems that Queued TRIM was already disabled on all Samsung 800 series SSDs but the South Korean giant apparently told Linux that it wasn't necessary for models outside of the 840 and 850 drives. However, user feedback on 860 and 870 drives has shown otherwise.

As a result, it may probably be best to avoid all Samsung 800 series SATA SSDs if you're an active Linux user.

Source: Bugzilla

Linux patch disables TRIM and NCQ on Samsung 860/870 SSDs in Intel and AMD systems