News Samsung 990 Pro Firmware Update Addresses Failing SSD Health

[Admin]

The update fixes the underlying cause of the rapid health declines, but it's not all good news. Customers may still need to RMA their Samsung 990 Pro SSDs.

Samsung 990 Pro Firmware Update Addresses Failing SSD Health : Read more

 

[atomicWAR]

Pretty sad that Samsung went from SSD golden boy to town pariah pretty much over night from these 980/990 drives. Hopefully these fixes will be the end of it.

 

[TechieTwo]

As far as I can tell we don't know if the drives are actually degrading or if the buggy firmware caused them to appear to be degrading when they actually are not.

 

[Amdlova]

Remember the samsung 840 series with high amount of problems. These new ssd will have the same destiny ( user problem). I lost my faith in samsung ssd long time ago.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

Samsung has become a garbage brand.

Samsung SSD issues.
Samsung QD-OLED monitors that all suffer from colour artefacts.
Samsung phones with batteries that become bloated and dangerous.
Samsung washing machines that had to be recalled last year because they could short circuit and catch fire.

All of these issues are widespread, recent, and very well documented.

I will no longer buy any SSD from Samsung. I had 2 SSD from them, both broke within a year. They weren't even my main drive, just back up drives that I wrote to maybe once a month.

My WD SSD is still doing fine.

 

[TechieTwo]

Remember the samsung 840 series with high amount of problems. These new ssd will have the same destiny ( user problem). I lost my faith in samsung ssd long time ago.

I'm no Samsung fanboy but most all of the SSD brands have experienced issues at one time or another. Until we know the actual cause of the 980/990 issues it's foolish to condemn all Samasung products when millions of people use them daily without any issues. It would be like condeming AMD or Intel CPUs because they occassionally have an issue. It's not very logical.

People who feel that one brand or another is superior get to vote with their wallet.

 

[bit_user]

As far as I can tell we don't know if the drives are actually degrading or if the buggy firmware caused them to appear to be degrading when they actually are not.

If it were really the case that the wear was fake, it seems like the firmware update probably would've reset the counters.

 

[bit_user]

Samsung SSD issues.
Samsung QD-OLED monitors that all suffer from colour artefacts.
Samsung phones with batteries that become bloated and dangerous.
Samsung washing machines that had to be recalled last year because they could short circuit and catch fire.

It's an enormous company, with lots of completely independent business units. I think it's a mistake to conflate any issues between them. I just don't believe Samsung, overall, is worse than other brands. Specific products or product lines might be exceptions.

That's not me defending any one of those products, and certainly not Samsung SSDs.

 

[bit_user]

most all of the SSD brands have experienced issues at one time or another.

Have Intel SSDs? Just curious. I have 3 of different vintages, and they've all run rock-solid for many years.

Even so, it's an open question how they'll be as Solidigm.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

Have Intel SSDs? Just curious.

Intel SSD had problems years ago. They could fail when power was shut off and then quickly turned on again.

SSD are very vulnerable to sudden changes in power

HP LABS:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast13/fast13-final80.pdf

So if you live somewhere where power is cut off suddenly, maybe don't use an SSD to back up anything.

This problem doesn't really manifest itself with HDD. HDD are very good at handling power outages. But SSD are very vulnerable to power outages, especially when the power suddenly flips on again.

This is the reason you need to be careful about claims like from Blackblaze and data centers about SSD reliability. Datacenters have back-up power and lots of fancy power protection systems in place, consumers generally do not. Datacenters also generally don't reboot their systems a lot.

SSD suck at handling power failures or changes in power.

Also keep stuff like pointless rebooting to a minimum if you value your SSD lifespan.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Great. When are they going to offer replacements to those who now have 50% life left? Crickets

 

[digitalgriffin]

As far as I can tell we don't know if the drives are actually degrading or if the buggy firmware caused them to appear to be degrading when they actually are not.

Firmware fix could easily resolve that by retesting cells that were marked as bad. But no one has reported recovered drive life. This suggest damage is permanent.

 

[bit_user]

SSD suck at handling power failures or changes in power.

Some, like Crucial drives I have, incorporate capacitors specifically for power-loss handling.

 

[pointa2b]

X3D coming out longer than expected saved me from buying the 990 too early lol. I wouldn't be surprised if this screw up resulted in demotions/firings in their engineering department. Reputation is a key pillar for large companies.

 

[BogdanH]

..to those who now have 50% life left?..

-yes, I agree that isn't really a fair-play toward customers. Actually, with new firmware, Samsung solved only their trouble (so people stop complaining in future), and left previous buyers in cold.
I have three SSD's in my PC: two SATA (830 + 850PRO) and NVMe 970PRO. I bough them soon after they came to market, so they're not that new anymore and they all work fine so far.
But when buying next one, I will really think twice... the way Samsung deals in case of troublesome products just isn't worth the money we pay.

Bogdan

 

[kyzarvs]

As far as I can tell we don't know if the drives are actually degrading or if the buggy firmware caused them to appear to be degrading when they actually are not.

Does it matter if the firmware uses those stats to put the drive into read-only failed mode? You still can't boot.

 

[Amdlova]

I had 3 drivers from ocz when it's bad and never had faulty one. Barefoot 3 raid 0 good times.

 

[ottonis]

If it were really the case that the wear was fake, it seems like the firmware update probably would've reset the counters.

What you say sounds very plausible. On the other hand: how can an SSD wear by 50-80% within just a couple of days or weeks??

And moreover: how comes the internet has not been flooded with thousands of reports about faulty Samsung SSD drives, leaving the question wether or not this error occurs in all drives or just sometimes?

 

[ottonis]

Puget abandoned Samsung 980/990 Pro SSDs from their custom systems and is replacing them with Sabrent drives.

What is the current opinion among the tech specialists here on Sabrent SSDs? Are they generally deemed reliable and durable?

 

[LOUTZ!]

What you say sounds very plausible. On the other hand: how can an SSD wear by 50-80% within just a couple of days or weeks??

And moreover: how comes the internet has not been flooded with thousands of reports about faulty Samsung SSD drives, leaving the question wether or not this error occurs in all drives or just sometimes?

That's right, so someone with a 990 won't apply the firmware update, drive the life to 0%, and then we will find out. It will be on YouTube soon.

 

[setx]

I needed to buy SSD for system drive recently and initially thought of getting Samsung for reliability (no problems at all with old 850 pro/evo) as previous semi-random pick of Plextor ended up in utter disaster of data corruption. But with all recent mess, I've abandoned the idea of getting client Samsung SSD.

Looked at enterprise Samsung SSDs and they seemed quite nice until I accidentally found out that they have no support at all. You can't even get a firmware update from Samsung (they reroute you to get it where you bought the drive). So, no-go again.

In the end I decided to go with Micron enterprise SSD: reasonable price, completely stable write speed, power loss protection. The only drawback is 22110 form factor – many Asus motherboards absolutely hate them (give it old PCI-E version, cut SATA slots if used, cut main x16 PCI-E slot to 8x if used,...)

 

[Sluggotg]

Have Intel SSDs? Just curious. I have 3 of different vintages, and they've all run rock-solid for many years.

Even so, it's an open question how they'll be as Solidigm.

I bought an early Intel SSD, (I believe it was part of the 600 series?), it had a FUN feature. When you turned off your computer it would sometimes die, lose all data and show it was 10megabytes in size. Intel came out with a program you could run to restore it back to its normal capacity... But Of Course you permanently lose all data regardless.
I used it about 1 month before it did this. This was caused by a Normal Shutdown of the computer, not a loss of power or a forced shutdown. Intel's answer to everyone's inquiry "When are you going to replace these?" was "We will never replace them, what's the big deal". (Ya OK that was not real quotes but ultimately that was how they treated it). I Threw it away and will never buy another Intel SSD. (I do buy other Intel Products, but never another SSD).

 

[InvalidError]

Firmware fix could easily resolve that by retesting cells that were marked as bad. But no one has reported recovered drive life. This suggest damage is permanent.

The wear indicator has very little if anything to do with bad cells, it is all about each page's write-erase count. I have an SSD with 80% of its life remaining and zero bad blocks.

Either the wear is real or it could just be that the scratchpad used to track writes cannot be rolled back.

 

[USAFRet]

SSD are very vulnerable to sudden changes in power

HP LABS:

A decade old paper.

 

[Deleted member 431422]

I'm no Samsung fanboy but most all of the SSD brands have experienced issues at one time or another. Until we know the actual cause of the 980/990 issues it's foolish to condemn all Samasung products when millions of people use them daily without any issues. It would be like condeming AMD or Intel CPUs because they occassionally have an issue. It's not very logical.

People who feel that one brand or another is superior get to vote with their wallet.

Well said. It's easy to say "I won't buy another X product from Y company, having bought only a single thing". I'm no stranger to it.
However, this time I'm somewhat on those complaining side. Regular SSD I understand. It's volume over performance, but Pro version is for demanding consumers. Buying one I'd expect reliability and performance. Turns out a regular Smith with it's cheap SSD is better off.

EDIT:
I myself buy GOODRAM SSD's or WesterDigital. The first is a local brand and I wholeheartedly support local business. Second is not the top performer, but it's predictable.
Even if they fail I'll buy another one. It's not that something breaks, what matters it's what I expect from the product the brand offers.