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Comment by snvzz | Hacker News Reader

This is some insanity that shouldn't be needed, when fwupd[0] exists.

Samsung is to blame for this.

I had run into the same problem with Kingston - no firmware on the web, update tool only for Windows. Had to ask local distributor to contact Kingston and ask for firmware. I was lucky to get it, but never bought another Kingston drive.

I don't understand how datacenter SSD manufacturer can so blatantly ignore Linux.

Would it work to update the firmware under Windows and then switch back to Linux?

Of course.

Likely. It would be very inconvenient, but I could pull it off on my home's desktop computer.

Now consider doing this at scale, in a datacenter, or just some office that has a lot of these drives. Ouch.

That's true. A good example of the difference between "scale" and consumer solutions. I can switch to Windows for that stuff and back to Linux afterwards. Doing so for a fleet of office machines is already out of the question.

Now I really have to check if I get firmware updates from Lenovo for all the hardware in my Thinkpad... I always assumed I do!

It also raises concerns about trust. What if I don't trust proprietary Windows and don't want to run it? It can potentially compromise my SSD during the update.

Bad news, the ssd firmware is also proprietary

At least it doesn't contain adware (yet?). I can choose to trust Samsung (I already did when I bought their SSD) and not trust Microsoft.

SSD firmware adding ads to the files you save would be peak ad industry.

I've got a better nightmare - processors injecting ads in realtime :D

Damn, you beat me there! Question is, how do we leverage the GPU and RAM for a fully inclusive, and delightfully brilliant, customer experience?

Yes but a thumb drive win10 is a pia to make and then an extra pia to try to boot on any machine other than the one it was created on.

Or, you could buy from hardware vendors that do the reasonable thing.

Those who know of such HDD/SSD vendors (esp. those supporting lvfs) please chime in.

Crucial offers bootable ISOs to upgrade. My goto SSD brand for years now. Usually second to Samsung in performance but cheaper.

> I don't understand how datacenter SSD manufacturer can so blatantly ignore Linux.

If you mean Sammy, they do provide support for datacenter SSDs:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/samsung-ssd-dc-toolkit

I don't think Kingston offers anything in that niche. I know very little about that, though.

I got a (consumer) SSD from SanDisk that says on the package "Compatible with Windows and Linux systems that take M.2 2280 PCIe 3 x 4 NVMe SSD's" yet I can't update the firmware from Linux. I would have to download the SanDisk SSD Dashboard which is only available for Windows.

I don't want to buy SanDisk SSDs anymore because of this, but I guess every SSD manufacturer is the same when it comes to firmware updates.

Half the time you can't take the machine down to run those updates on the disks, anyway.

One day a long time ago Dell actually sent us the cheapest server they made, R200 or R300 to flash disks in because we had so many to do.

I agree. It is easy these days provided that your device is supported. I updated my ThinkPad nvme SSD (my model is from 2018) using the fwupdmgr command[0], which fetches supported firmware data from LVFS[1]. It improved temperature control for sure. So I would say it was worth it. But, as always, keep verified backups, just in case. [0]: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/upgrade-update-samsung-ssd-fir... [1]: https://lvfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

The SAMSUNG MZVL2512HCJQ-00BL7 aka PM9A1 in this Thinkpad is supported by fwupd, I've had a couple of updates.

I also have a Lenovo (non-Thinkpad) with a PM981a drive and yeah, there's a pretty big difference between Samsung's Enterprise/OEM drives, and their consumer drives(EVO/PRO). Not big as in HW, they usually have the same NAND and controllers, but the FW on the controller is completely different, and on the Enterprise/OEM drives it cannot be updated via their Windows app (it doesn't even detect them).

The only way to get FW updates is through Lenovo's proprietary tool which only works on Thinkpads, even though my non-Thinkpad machine has the exact same SSD. What a shit show.

I guess I'll just have to stay on the FW it came out of the factory.

A pain Linux users know all too well.

https://robots.org.uk/ToshibaX30X40FirmwareUpdate

Not just Linux users. My wife got a Satechi On-the-Go USB-C hub for her MacBook. Satechi sells itself as a premium brand for Mac accessories. However, when the advertised 4k@60Hz support did not work, their support suggested that we update the firmware. They could only provide firmware updater for Windows. Unfortunately, even on Windows the firmware update would not work, spitting out completely uninformative error messages.

In hindsight, I found out that Satechi is now largely reselling cheap Chinese reference designs that can be had from AliExpress from 10-30 Euro/USD, repackaged in different casing [1]. Since they don't actually seem to control the firmware, they are just reshipping half-working Realtek firmware update utilities.

[1] https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.h...

Oof. That'd be an RTM for me--product not fit for purpose.

At least with Toshiba/Dynabook, it's vaguely possible for a techie to pull apart their firmware update process & hack something together that doesn't require Windows any more...

There is also driver delivery though Windows Update, but they dont seem to be using that properly either

Probably can’t resist the temptation to package their firmware in an always active 500mb .NET bloatware balloon that continuously phones home with ‘analytics’ and ‘telemetry’.

Are there common drive companies that support this better than Samsung, like Western Digital?

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