News Samsung 980 Pro 2TB - Critical firmware update

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coercitiv

coercitiv

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Jan 24, 2014
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Looks like Samsung is on a roll: the 980 Pro 2TB is susceptible to a specific failure, it enters a read-only state that cannot be reversed. The solution is to update the firmware before the issue appears. More about it at the link bellow.

www.pugetsystems.com

Critical Samsung SSD Firmware Update

What is Happening Despite historically being some of our most reliable parts, we have received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung drives,
www.pugetsystems.com www.pugetsystems.com
 
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gdansk

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Feb 8, 2011
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I have a regular 980 (non-Pro) that randomly reports 85C incorrectly. A different issue but it seems Samsung firmware is a mess.
I'll have to look if there is a firmware update for that too.
 
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fzabkar

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Jun 14, 2013
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Perhaps Samsung is doing what they did before ...

Samsung 840 EVO - how to easily lose your data forever:
https://forum.acelab.eu.com/viewtopic.php?f=227&t=8735

NAND memory in Samsung 840 EVO is TLC based, and it is VERY VERY Bad. After some time when you write the data on memory, the charge inside NAND cells is flow away. The voltage inside cells become worse and worse, and finally - flow away forever. It means that if you will not use your 840 EVO drive for some time, you will find that your SSD is EMPTY.

You ask me - are the guys from Samsung didn't know about that issue? Why they did not find the way to fix this bug?!
And I will answer - they release new FW, which make very simple thing - in background, when you working with your laptop or with PC, it just rewrite customer data again and again, again and gain by cycle, every time with the only goal - to keep the data and charges inside cells "fresh". When drive is not connected to power source, charge from cells is flowing away.
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TheCliff

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May 1, 2021
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mikeymikec said:
I wonder why the issue can't be reversed after the drive has gone read-only. Faulty cell integrity reporting, perhaps?
Click to expand...

Results of reverse engineering performed on older Samsung models revealed problems with the NAND flash itself. As consumer models often get some of the worst binned NAND (despite their "premium" pricing), the firmware is critically important to ensure NAND writes are carefully managed to avoid irreversible damage/wear. The problems are always there, but they are rarely revealed in a meaningful way through SMART.

As long as the drive can operate up to its rated workload level, then that is the goal regardless of the questionable quality of the raw hardware underneath.

If it turns out to be a similar issue with these models (980 PRO and 990 PRO), then if the damage has already been done it would be too late for a firmware fix. Alternatively, Samsung may choose to hide the underlying issues if the drive is still salvageable - and no one would ever know.

As usual, this is occuring due to the secretive locked down nature of the firmware which Samsung don't even provide proper changelogs for. Thankfully, some work is being done on reverse engineering these - but there is little incentive for those with the skills to dedicate the time with no compensation.

In any case, it's only a matter of time before discoveries are made outside of the Samsung "vault" so people can make more informed buying decisions, which can only be a good thing.
 
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fzabkar

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gdansk said:
I have a regular 980 (non-Pro) that randomly reports 85C incorrectly. A different issue but it seems Samsung firmware is a mess.
I'll have to look if there is a firmware update for that too.
Click to expand...
Your model was widely reported to have had a firmware bug which caused the drive's reported (not actual) temperature to spike at exactly 84C. This affected firmware versions 2B4QFXO7 and earlier. The problem appears to have been fixed in the 3B4QFXO7 update.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/zeyb5m/temperature_problem_with_samsung_980_500_gb/
 
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fzabkar

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Samsung's PM9A1 appears to be the OEM version of the 980 Pro:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-launches-pm9a1-ssd-cheap-980pro
https://www.newegg.com/p/1Z4-000R-00AJ9

This is a one-year-old Dell firmware update for the PM9A1:

Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen4 NVMe Solid State Drive Firmware Update (17 Jan 2022):
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-is/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=v22yd
https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER08056306M...-Drive-Firmware_V22YD_WIN64_3630.8229_A00.EXE

Fixes & Enhancements

- Improved the solid state drive data management to prevent data integrity issues.
Click to expand...

I wonder what that means?

The most recent update for the 980 Pro is also 1 year old. What is the implication of that?
 
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solidsnake1298

solidsnake1298

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What is everyone's opinion on who the "go to" SSD maker is now? Back in the early SSD days it was "just get Intel". In-house NAND, in-house controller, in-house firmware, in-house testing, peerless real world performance. As Intel started out sourcing everything, Samsung stepped in with in-house everything and consistently high quality and performance.

Now that Samsung has had some stealth revisions (not in a good way) and quality control issues, who is left that we can say "just go with XXXX"? Western Digital? They had a couple not great stealth revisions. But their last couple of generations of NVMe drives have in-house controllers and firmware. Their NAND is in-house via owning Sandisk. Sabrent came out of nowhere, but seems to be well made and high performing. But I really like the idea of a fully in-house SSD for some reason.
 
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fzabkar

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Sabrent appears to use reference designs from the flash controller manufacturer.

See the example in this thread:

https://ww.reddit.com/r/NewMaxx/comments/10sqswo/puget_abandons_samsung_990_pro_ssds_over/

The same Phison PS5018 reference design (Q175018HE008402F PCB + firmware) is used by Sabrent, Seagate, Corsair, TeamGroup , addlink, OWC, Netac, PNY, Goodram, MSI, Gigabyte, Zadak, and others. The only points of difference would be NAND/SDRAM, heatsink and warranty.
 
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igor_kavinski

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fzabkar said:
Sabrent, Seagate, Corsair, TeamGroup , addlink, OWC, Netac, PNY, Goodram, MSI, Gigabyte, Zadak,
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Seagate 520/530 SSDs do great in benchmarks and also offer higher endurance rating. Not sure about their reliability track record.

Teamgroup looks enticing because of their advertised endurance ratings being better than that of WD.

Haven't heard anything bad about Hynix/Solidigm yet. Crucial P5 is also good AFAIK.

The other brands, I would use them as a game drive but not for anything critical.
 
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mikeymikec

mikeymikec

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May 19, 2011
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solidsnake1298 said:
What is everyone's opinion on who the "go to" SSD maker is now? Back in the early SSD days it was "just get Intel". In-house NAND, in-house controller, in-house firmware, in-house testing, peerless real world performance. As Intel started out sourcing everything, Samsung stepped in with in-house everything and consistently high quality and performance.

Now that Samsung has had some stealth revisions (not in a good way) and quality control issues, who is left that we can say "just go with XXXX"?
Click to expand...

I'd wait it out with Samsung (assuming you don't have to buy right now). While making no mistakes is ideal, I'd choose a company that makes mistakes but fixes them in style to one that say makes mistakes then attempts to shoot the messenger. I'm pretty sure that Samsung can afford to fix mistakes in style, and maybe when they're sure they've got a complete handle on this problem then they'll do the best possible right thing for customers? It's situations like this where a company can really shine, e.g. every customer with a bricked drive (or drive with tonnes of CRC errors, assuming that's also an Samsung problem) gets a higher capacity upgrade.

Samsung and stealth revisions - the change with the 970 Evo Plus was a bit of an OK trade situation I thought? The revision IIRC did something like reduce burst performance but improve post-burst performance?

I think for the time being at the lower capacity end (<1TB) I'm still going to choose Samsung, but if the scenario arises that a customer wants a higher capacity SSD then I'll likely do some research.

PS - I'm not attempting to defend Samsung here. Iffy firmware that bricks products is unquestionably bad. A friend of mine got burnt by Crucial most recently and by Samsung before that apparently, and is wondering where to go from here too.

PPS - If Samsung ends up royally screwing up (e.g. denying warranty, blame messenger, a la IBM with the DeathStar drives), that would pretty much guarantee me finding a new SSD manufacturer right across the board.
 
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fzabkar

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igor_kavinski said:
Seagate 520/530 SSDs do great in benchmarks and also offer higher endurance rating. Not sure about their reliability track record.

Teamgroup looks enticing because of their advertised endurance ratings being better than that of WD.

Haven't heard anything bad about Hynix/Solidigm yet. Crucial P5 is also good AFAIK.

The other brands, I would use them as a game drive but not for anything critical.
Click to expand...
I was trying to demonstrate that all those OEMs used the same basic reference design, so the only real points of difference were the NAND, heatsink and warranty support.
 
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