Memory leak found in Samsung SSD Magician

[trparky]

So, here I am, and I found a memory leak in Samsung SSD Magician. And I mean serious one, the kind that only after three or four days, all of your system RAM will be used and potentially crash your system. How do I go about reporting this issue to Samsung because I can't for the life of me find a contact to send this to info to Samsung.

Oh sure, there's Customer Service but I need to get into contact with someone who can I send technical details about what's happening.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I take it off startup so don't believe it can do this.

I sure CS can receive data.

 

[trparky]

And now I'm betting you're wondering what this memory leak is.

In Samsung SSD Magician there's an option in the settings called "Collect data about drive's status and performance". This, of course, gives you pretty data in Samsung SSD Magician about things like Read and Write Speed along with Read and Write Queue Depth. This is where the memory leak comes into play. I was over a period of time watching my system memory get eaten so I decided to do some looking around and downloaded a utility called RamMap from SysInternals and I noticed a rather huge amount data being used for memory mapped files. So, I went to the Files Summary tab and sorted all memory mapped files according to size and there to my horror there was a history data file being used by Samsung SSD Magician located in "C:\ProgramData\Samsung\Samsung Magician" and it was using up to nearly 16 GBs of system RAM.

Turning off "Collect data about drive's status and performance" and rebooting fixes this issue, however I'd still like to report this issue to Samsung so as to get this issue fixed. Obviously, the driver that's responsible is not closing file handles properly and leaving them open.

 

[Bill_Bright]

And now I'm betting you're wondering what this memory leak is.

Actually, I'm wondering why you use Samsung Magician.

I have Samsung SSDs in 3 systems here and have never found the need to use Samsung Magician - except once early on to "Secure Erase" a SSD. So I installed SM, ran Secure Erase on the drive, then uninstalled SM and no problems running without.

FTR, Windows knows how to optimally use and maintain SSDs just fine. No 3rd party app needed.

You can call Samsung - see Samsung Complaints (complaintsdepartment.com)

 

[trparky]

True, it's not needed but it's nice to see what the SSD is doing behind the scenes. Current temperature, proper interpretation of SMART data, that kind of thing. But I suppose that it's not really needed.

 

[MachineLearning]

True, it's not needed but it's nice to see what the SSD is doing behind the scenes. Current temperature, proper interpretation of SMART data, that kind of thing. But I suppose that it's not really needed.

CrystalDiskInfo will do all of that without memory leaks.

 

[trparky]

CrystalDiskInfo will do all of that without memory leaks.

And it's guaranteed to interpret the SMART data properly? Because damn do these manufacturers have funny ways of presenting their data and giving you ideas of what is normal and what isn't.

Hell, a number of years ago the only reason why I found a drive was about to die on me was because I had a hunch and loaded Seatools (from Seagate) and told it to do a test, sure enough... dying drive. Yet, every other tool like HWInfo and CrystalDiskInfo said nothing. Apparently, Seagate was doing something very weird with their SMART data which was a red flag to indicate that the drive was indeed dying. Needless to say, I bought a new drive and pulled my data off the drive as fast as I could but in the end, I lost no data.

I don't know, has third-party software gotten better at interpreting this kind of data than it was like back a number of years ago?

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Seen some bad info from magician about 870 evo issues
It always stated normal/ good when the things were the opposite.

 

[A Computer Guy]

And now I'm betting you're wondering what this memory leak is.

In Samsung SSD Magician there's an option in the settings called "Collect data about drive's status and performance". This, of course, gives you pretty data in Samsung SSD Magician about things like Read and Write Speed along with Read and Write Queue Depth. This is where the memory leak comes into play. I was over a period of time watching my system memory get eaten so I decided to do some looking around and downloaded a utility called RamMap from SysInternals and I noticed a rather huge amount data being used for memory mapped files. So, I went to the Files Summary tab and sorted all memory mapped files according to size and there to my horror there was a history data file being used by Samsung SSD Magician located in "C:\ProgramData\Samsung\Samsung Magician" and it was using up to nearly 16 GBs of system RAM.

Turning off "Collect data about drive's status and performance" and rebooting fixes this issue, however I'd still like to report this issue to Samsung so as to get this issue fixed. Obviously, the driver that's responsible is not closing file handles properly and leaving them open.

What version if Magician you using?

 

[trparky]

What version if Magician you using?

7.1.1

 

[P4-630]

Using hibernate/fast startup?

I'm not using that and I uninstalled Magician 7.1.1 because it produced errors in reliability history.
Magician has still some issues on windows 11, I'm waiting for a new version to try...

 

[A Computer Guy]

you could try the service center

SSD Service Center | Support | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung Customer Service Center Information. Samsung values your business and always attempts to provide you the best quality of service.

semiconductor.samsung.com

 

[Bill_Bright]

And it's guaranteed to interpret the SMART data properly?

You could run both and compare.

That said, who's to say Samsung is doing correctly? I am not saying Samsung is fudging the data - but they could.

 

[delshay]

True, it's not needed but it's nice to see what the SSD is doing behind the scenes. Current temperature, proper interpretation of SMART data, that kind of thing. But I suppose that it's not really needed.

You forgot It also updates your firmware. It now supports firmware update for portable SSD, well it leased my SSD, updated my T5 a few months back. ..Besides all this I like to know any of my Samsung SSD are fake.

 

[MachineLearning]

And it's guaranteed to interpret the SMART data properly? Because damn do these manufacturers have funny ways of presenting their data and giving you ideas of what is normal and what isn't.

Hell, a number of years ago the only reason why I found a drive was about to die on me was because I had a hunch and loaded Seatools (from Seagate) and told it to do a test, sure enough... dying drive. Yet, every other tool like HWInfo and CrystalDiskInfo said nothing. Apparently, Seagate was doing something very weird with their SMART data which was a red flag to indicate that the drive was indeed dying. Needless to say, I bought a new drive and pulled my data off the drive as fast as I could but in the end, I lost no data.

I don't know, has third-party software gotten better at interpreting this kind of data than it was like back a number of years ago?

Literally just try it if you want to know if it works with your drives.

 

[ThrashZone]

You forgot It also updates your firmware. It now supports firmware update for portable SSD, well it leased my SSD, updated my T5 a few months back. ..Besides all this I like to know any of my Samsung SSD are fake.

Hi,
Magician also considers the utility it's self as firmware so I'd rather not blindly trust it to do anything personally.

 

[R-T-B]

You could run both and compare.

That said, who's to say Samsung is doing correctly? I am not saying Samsung is fudging the data - but they could.

Yes, but if anyone qualified is to read the hex smart value, I'd say the manufacturer is pretty high up there.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Yes, but if anyone qualified is to read the hex smart value, I'd say the manufacturer is pretty high up there.

I agree - or at least feel one would hope.

To be sure, I typically am one to recommend users use the drive maker's own diagnostics programs too (rather than 3rd party tools beyond chkdsk) when they encounter problems. I base that on the fact I would assume the maker is the most qualified. So we are on the same page with that philosophy; that is, the maker knows best.

However, SM is not really a diagnostics program and I personally consider it as yet another unnecessary, bloated and intrusive [nearly] "crapware" program manufacturers constantly try to "foist" on us under the pretense it is needed - very much in the same manner laptop makers pre-load extras we don't need, and especially printer makers who attempt to foist all kinds of junk on us - when the reality is, all we really need is the basic drivers which very often are already integrated with the OS.

So the part that bothers me the most is how these otherwise totally reputable manufacturers market all these extra resource consuming programs as though (1) we need them and (2) how they often imply they "improve performance" - when in fact, neither is true.

Again, today's operating systems know how to optimally use and maintain SSDs just fine without any 3rd party software stuck in the middle, starting with the OS , running in real-time, consuming resources.

It is foisting of extras that often cause users to complain (and rightfully slow) that their computers are bogging down and no longer run as well as they used to. No wonder! Every time they install a new program piece of hardware, some "auto-update" program gets foisted on the system too - if the user is being watchful.

You forgot It also updates your firmware.

Yes, be we don't need yet another program running all the time, constantly phoning home to check to see if a new update is available. I note that firmware and driver updates (with the possible exception of graphics drivers) typically fall into the category of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

For sure, I don't have a problem running SM "manually" to check for updates, or to check S.M.A.R.T. status, or run a utility command on it like Secure Erase. I don't like, or see the need to have SM start with Windows every time we start our computers.

 

[rethcirE]

As others stated, run it manually as needed for things like firmware or health checks. I suppose "as needed" are the magic words here (pun?). I rarely, if ever, need to know any information about my drive unless there is a problem. I check for firmware updates maybe twice a year; the software gets opened manually and then it's closed and sits dormant for another 6 months. If there was/is a memory leak problem I never noticed it in the 5 minutes I used it.

 

[Kabouter Plop]

Does it still have a memory leak ?

 

[trparky]

Does it still have a memory leak ?

I haven't tested it. I don't even actively run it anymore.

 

[Kabouter Plop]

I haven't tested it. I don't even actively run it anymore.

It always runs for me im playing a lot of wow lately and getting a ton of system freezes you think it may be related seeing lots of reports as well tho that wow is having a memory leak but if not seen my memory usage go up once.

 

[Marstg]

Running Magician 7.2.0 and Win10 and no issues. Tonight I deactivated that option. But I also had a memory leak but I was running with 0MB swap file and with 32GB RAM every 2-3 days my ram was getting full, had to reboot to solve the issue. The issue disappeared when I reactivated the virtual memory, just 2GB. I have a Samsung 980 500GB on the latest firmware.

 

[trparky]

Running with 0MB swap file and 32GB and 32GB RAM and every 2-3 days my ram was getting full, had to reboot to solve the issue. Issue disappeared when I reactivated the virtual memory, just 2GB. I have a Samsung 980 500GB on the latest firmware.

One might think that if you have enough system RAM you can disable the page file but that's not true at all. Windows still needs the page file no matter how much RAM you have. You could have 64 GBs or even 128 GBs of RAM, the page file is still needed.

Should I Disable the Page File if My Computer Has a Lot of RAM? (howtogeek.com)

 

[Vayra86]

When I got my 830, I wasn't very happy with Magician. Lots of frills, no necessity. Uninstalled within a month.

Its a good habit. Third party vendor specific app? Kill it! Get something universal or just let the OS run it. Principles we all know apply. Larger userbase, no commercial gain is the best location for these 'helpful' applications to exist in the market. Its either free, or you're the pawn and you will eventually run into some crappy or lacking update piece of code. Its a guarantee.