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Comment by henriquez | Hacker News Reader

The real 980 Pros have recently become notorious for premature degradation issues (resolved with a firmware upgrade that many users may not know to apply). How conveniently distracting that a fake version of the product is now hitting the news cycle. Instead of associating bad SSDs with Samsung we’ll henceforth associate them with cheap Chinese counterfeits. What a stroke of luck for an anticompetitive company like Samsung.

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You are confusing the 980 pro and the 990 pro. The 990 Pro had a firmware bug causing largely accelerated wear which was fixed by an update in January. The 980 Pro had a bug in firmware causing the drive to just fail (enter read only mode) after a certain amount of time, this had been fixed for well over a year in firmware but many people didn't update their firmware and so were surprised when the requisite amount of time passed.

Does windows update the firmware automatically? I may have a couple of these ssds but never thought to check firmware

No but the Samsung Magician software will automatically tell you to update the firmware and do it for you.

Ah, for the 6 people in the world who have that?

heh, yeah I installed it just for the update and immediately uninstalled it.

Someone who buys an evo pro knows to install magician, at least to update the firmware for the first use, or so i hope - it would be like buying a high-end nvidia and using the drivers from windows update.

There's a difference between a GPU that gets new drivers every week (and essential to gaming/working) and an SSD, which I personally have never even thought about checking the firmware for.

why would you assume you need to install software for a drive?

I've not done so and my SSDs work fine..

You can just straight downlod the fw file in a Linux .iso > make a flash drive bootable and update https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/t...

that software is absolute garbage crapware

the disk "migrator" doesn't even bother with the difficulties of migrating in-use files

it either just skips them or corrupts them

I just use it to update the drive firmware and as a convenient way to check the SMART data for the drive. It doesn't use hardly any resources in the background so I don't worry about it that much.

> The 980 Pro had a bug in firmware causing the drive to just fail (enter read only mode) after a certain amount of time, this had been fixed for well over a year in firmware but many people didn't update their firmware

I literally just finished putting all the parts of my new build in my basket but haven't ordered it yet. I was going for a 980 Pro (for it seems reasonably priced)... If I buy brand new from Samsung, would you happen to know if I'll get a SSD with the latest firmware or would I need to apply the firmware update by myself?

FWIW I ran a 950 Pro when it came out (2015?), then a 970 Evo (which my wife is now using). I've been very happy with these NVMe M.2 SSDs.

just get a wd sn850x

Oh wow... It is a bit pricier but I just checked on https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/ and it looks like a fine SSD, thanks for the tip.

fwiw I have both and both are fine with the latest firmware.

just fyi Userbenchmark is total useless and pretty much banned all around on PC enthusiast subs on reddit. They altered scores on a whim or what is "better" or not compared to something in their rankings.

What's a good alternative site to use? I really like their comparison feature.

They have been bsod & crashing in win11. Hopefully like Samsung gets fixed fast, but it's been an issue for 6 mo now.

Really quite impressed by the sn850x but also iirc it also bogs down under prolonged writes[1]. But great general speed, good price. Hoping WD can keep iterating well.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-black-sn850x-ssd-rev...

Most likely yes. I bought a new 980 Pro 2TB a few weeks ago and it came with the latest firmware. Manufacture date is Jan 2023. The firmware is already more than a year old so unless you get very old stock it should come with it.

Just got a 980 pro 2TB, it came with the latest firmware.

I just upgraded this week from a 950 pro to a 980 pro, it came with the current firmware.

Their data magician software (windows) will update it if needed, they also have an ISO. I had no luck getting the ISO to detect any keyboard till noticing I'm already updated.

You can simply extract the firmware updater binary from the iso and run it directly from your own linux pc. More complicated if you only have a single drive though.

https://blog.quindorian.org/2021/05/firmware-update-samsung-...

I’ve had my 980 pro disconnected for a long time. Is it safe to plug it in to update the firmware?

I think that the 980 pro issue came to light a month ago when the earliest made SSDs got old enough to trigger the bug. So you should be good unless you got one of the first ever made.

Yes. In general: if there's no battery/supercap, it doesn't have a clock that keeps counting when disconnected. Consistent with that, my understanding is that the bug hits when the power-on counter hits a certain threshold.

Nope, I've watched two 980 pro die already. But I wouldn't be surprised if both 980 and 990 had firmware issues.

Data point for readers: I was affected by the 980 Pro firmware issue. I had no idea there was an update available--Samsung did not post it to Windows Update--until my drive was read-only with only a few TBs written. Warranty covers 5 years/N TBWs [1], and the replacement process--albeit slow--does work. Just be aware you can't erase a read-only SSD...

[1] https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/w...

What is this tinfoil hattery about? The article mentions the fake ones having weaker sequential performance, nothing about degradation.

Fake products in China are so common it seems unlikely for this particular fake to be worth reporting.

The simplest answer of a slow news day is probably the correct one, but I can see why someone would think Samsung might want to push it.

990 Pro have the rapid degradation issue -> firmware update halts but doesn't reverse

980 Pro has risk of bricking -> firmware fixes if you catch it before it bricks. No degradation.

Samsung has had a fix for the wear degradation bug since January.

I missed that news so I appreciate the heads up. Looks like mine is on a safe firmware version, phew.

If anyone else wants details: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-980-pro-ssd-failur...

> However, the new firmware update from Samsung will prevent the failures from occurring in the first place if your drive is still functioning. So, if you have a 980 Pro running the 3B2QGXA7 firmware, you'll want to update to the newest firmware (5B2QGXA7) using the Samsung SSD Magician software (opens in new tab) ASAP. It should be noted that 980 Pro SSDs running the 4B2QGXA7 or 5B2QGXA7 firmware are not affected by this issue.

> The real 980 Pros have recently become notorious for premature degradation issues (resolved with a firmware upgrade that many users may not know to apply)

How does one find out if a particular 980 Pro needs firmware update or not?

> How does one find out if a particular 980 Pro needs firmware update or not?

I'm wondering the same and I'm also wondering if upgrading the firmware can be done from Linux or not. I could search online but certainly people here do know?

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Samsung_SSD_Firmware

> How does one find out if a particular 980 Pro needs firmware update or not?

seriously? you google "upgrade firmware samsung 980 pro" or you add "how do I know" and "version"

Check your SSD's firmware, SSD-Z is a good one under Windows for example http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/ Hardinfo is a good one under Linux, most distro has it in their repo https://github.com/lpereira/hardinfo

Then go here https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/t...

-> Samsung SSD Firmware and check what's the newest firmware file

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