Info [UPDATED] Samsung SSDs reliability :: Firmware fix available for 990 Pro, other drives potentially afected

[coercitiv]

[Update 2] More drives and multiple controllers potentially affected.
[Update] Firmware fix available via Samsung Magician utility

A number of concerning reports regarding 990 Pro drives have been popping up the web since December 2022. The drives are apparently losing serious chunks of drive health after only a few TB of writes. The issue is getting serious with more and more reports from users. Samsung themselves have recently announced they're looking into it while also getting more receptive towards product returns.

Samsung 990 Pro SSDs are apparently failing fast, and nobody knows why

Samsung has apparently yet to replicate the issue

www.techradar.com

Samsung refusing to acknowledge and replace 990 Pro SSD with rapid health drops [Update]

Multiple users around the web, including myself, have found that the 990 Pro, the latest and fastest consumer SSD currently, might actually have an issue with the reported drive health remaining.

www.neowin.net

Until this gets figured out and fixed via software or some type of recall, I would suggest avoiding the new 990 Pro. If I had to guess I'd say it's probably a firmware bug that manifests under specific situations or system configurations. It's a pity they didn't ctach this during internal testing though, for obvious reasons.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It shouldn't.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seagate-firecuda-530-m2-nvme-ssd-review/2

It wrote 3TB at a rate of 4 GB/s. I say that's pretty impressive.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The crappy thing about 990 Pro is that it will be limited to 1.4 GB/s writes once the SLC cache runs out. In that regard, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is better that it at least tries to recover the write speed during extended writes.

990 Pro is terrible on certain workloads. Database stuff, for example.

 

[fzabkar]

These SSDs all use the same Phison reference design:

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=3173&p=23127p23127

 

[coercitiv]

Bought a 990 Pro last week, yesterday I took the time to install it. Production date is Feb 11 2023, and the unit came with the latest firmware version.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Bought a 990 Pro last week, yesterday I took the time to install it. Production date is Feb 11 2023, and the unit came with the latest firmware version.

How are the temps? Did you feel any perceptible difference in speed compared to the previous SSD?

 

[coercitiv]

How are the temps? Did you feel any perceptible difference in speed compared to the previous SSD?

Temps are fine, didn't even bother to monitor them as the drive is mounted under a decent mobo heatsink.

As for speed, there is no subjective difference between 990 Pro and the 980 Pro on my system, none that I can easily observe anyway. You need to keep in mind this is a game of bottlenecks though, the move from 8700K + 980 Pro to 12700K + 980 Pro was both objectively and subjectively easy to judge as a speed upgrade, mostly because the new CPU removed a number of bottlenecks the 980 Pro had to work with before.

All that being said, I bought the newer 990 Pro because is was only ~$10 more expensive than the older model. For this price difference I'll take the faster drive.

 

[igor_kavinski]

For this price difference I'll take the faster drive.

Keep an eye on the life remaining counter, just to be on the safe side.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Bought a 990 Pro last week, yesterday I took the time to install it. Production date is Feb 11 2023, and the unit came with the latest firmware version.

Good to know. I got one of those 990 Pros on mega sale. Was gonna order direct from Samsung direct until I saw how long it was going to take for them to ship the drive to me. Got mine from NewEgg instead. Should be a nice upgrade from my 970 Evo for the new system.

 

[nOOky]

Thinking of getting a 990 Pro 2TB as I just want to increase my storage from 512GB I have currently. Currently the 980 Pro is about $30 cheaper and now reading this stuff makes me wonder if I shouldn't buy the older model...

 

[DrMrLordX]

Thinking of getting a 990 Pro 2TB as I just want to increase my storage from 512GB I have currently. Currently the 980 Pro is about $30 cheaper and now reading this stuff makes me wonder if I shouldn't buy the older model...

The older model also had some firmware problems:

Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs

Download the firmware fix ASAP if your 980 Pro is affected

www.tomshardware.com

As long as you get a 990 Pro that is new today (rather than used with unknown firmware), you should have the latest firmware version that will have no problems. And the 990 Pro isn't the only available drive out there. You can easily get one of the SK Hynix drives like the P41. It's $157 on Amazon. It's not a bad drive at all. The 990 Pro is probably faster for "gaming" workloads, but the p41 is no slouch.

 

[Super Spartan]

Thinking of getting a 990 Pro 2TB as I just want to increase my storage from 512GB I have currently. Currently the 980 Pro is about $30 cheaper and now reading this stuff makes me wonder if I shouldn't buy the older model...

I have both the SK hynix Platinum P41 and a WD_Black SN850X and they are superb drives with excellent sustained performance. Here are the benchmarks on my laptop (on a desktop they'd perform slightly better even)

 

[nOOky]

I decided to buy the 990 Pro 2TB along with a WD Black spinning disk for backup in my desktop. Just a slight upgrade until I maybe build a new PC next holiday season. I guess I'm used to the Samsung software and it's already on my machine so the swap will be painless for the OS drive.

 

[A///]

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/seagate-firecuda-530-m2-nvme-ssd-review/2

It wrote 3TB at a rate of 4 GB/s. I say that's pretty impressive.

WD's high end SSDs are great.

 

[A///]

The older model also had some firmware problems:

Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs

Download the firmware fix ASAP if your 980 Pro is affected

www.tomshardware.com

As long as you get a 990 Pro that is new today (rather than used with unknown firmware), you should have the latest firmware version that will have no problems. And the 990 Pro isn't the only available drive out there. You can easily get one of the SK Hynix drives like the P41. It's $157 on Amazon. It's not a bad drive at all. The 990 Pro is probably faster for "gaming" workloads, but the p41 is no slouch.

Between the top recommended SSD's you're splitting hairs thinking about those slightly different read and write speeds. Some drives I wouldn't recommend due to lack of extensive testing.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Between the top recommended SSD's you're splitting hairs thinking about those slightly different read and write speeds. Some drives I wouldn't recommend due to lack of extensive testing.

Read and write speeds don't tell the entire story. Depending on the drive's controller and some other factors, you'll get wildly different performance based on what you're doing with the drive. The P41, for example, excels in database testing on Linux while none of Samsung's drives do well there. In "gaming" tests, the 990 Pro does extremely well. There are some other scenarios where the SN850X, P41, and 990 Pro are all really close to one another. You can pore over some reviews if you like and make up your own mind as to which review best represents your use-case for your system.

 

[A///]

Read and write speeds don't tell the entire story. Depending on the drive's controller and some other factors, you'll get wildly different performance based on what you're doing with the drive. The P41, for example, excels in database testing on Linux while none of Samsung's drives do well there. In "gaming" tests, the 990 Pro does extremely well. There are some other scenarios where the SN850X, P41, and 990 Pro are all really close to one another. You can pore over some reviews if you like and make up your own mind as to which review best represents your use-case for your system.

You're splitting hairs here. Game loading is going to be .5 to a second difference or none at all depending on the game, and a geomean test only matters if you play the games tested. For direct storage.... when ds becomes standard the 990 will shine. For databases... most servers aren't using a single nvme. The largest jump in nvme from high quality to high quality is pcie3 to 4. The jump from 4 to 5 isn't a big enough jump to warrant the early pcie5 drives coming out.Give it 8 to 12 months for s tier cards to come out.

There's two P41 models I'm sure you're aware but for others sake clarify you mean Hynix and not Solidigm which is their US based subsidiary.

 

[CodeBeholder]

I bought two 990 Pros from Amazon back in Jan and have yet to install them... It's past the return window but now I'm wondering if I should just try and sell them at a loss and get the Sabrent drives Puget systems recommends.

I suppose if nothing else, I could try and flash the new firmware onto them before they acquire any actual wear, but it still seems sketchy to me considering they haven't said what the actual issue was.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I bought two 990 Pros from Amazon back in Jan and have yet to install them

Put them in RAID-0 and use as a Steam drive.

 

[CodeBeholder]

Put them in RAID-0 and use as a Steam drive.

Ah, sorry I should have mentioned that they were / are going to be the main drive in two new gaming PCs for me and my wife. I could always use them as backups / steam drives but I hadn't planned on even bothering with a separate steam drive.

Maybe I'll just use them and wait for PCIE gen5 drives to mature.

 

[Shmee]

Yeah, I would certainly just go ahead and use them, may as well if you have them. Thoguh upgrading the firmware is a good idea. But regardless of firmware issues or not, just be sure to have backups of any important data, as any drive can fail.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You're splitting hairs here. Game loading is going to be .5 to a second difference or none at all depending on the game

Somebody hasn't played anything Unity-based lately.

For databases... most servers aren't using a single nvme.

No, but for anyone doing homebrew db stuff with Linux it's going to make a difference. And there are some weirdos still doing that. Which is why I specifically mentioned Linux testing.

There's two P41 models I'm sure you're aware but for others sake clarify you mean Hynix and not Solidigm which is their US based subsidiary.

I specified that it's the Hynix model earlier in the thread.

 

[nOOky]

Installed the 990 Pro last night and another spinning disk for storage. Thankfully I have a huge case so working in it is easy, except it weighs over 50 pounds I think. I sat it outside and hit it with the leaf blower to clean it out lol, yes I did that. Cloning from the 970 Pro, 257 gigs took about 8 minutes, just under .5 gig a second, not too bad. Absolutely no discernable difference booting up or transferring files, although I haven't had time to go through and move some larger folders yet.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I have several 990 and 980 pro 2tb drives and the newest units arrived with the latest firmware already installed. This morning I replaced my 970 pro boot drive with a 990 pro 2tb and its a rocket in comparison on z790.