Samsung today released a firmware update for its latest 990 Pro SSDs. While the company has not provided official release notes, Tom’s Hardware says the update is likely intended to fix an issue that caused drives to report wearing out and failing at an accelerated rate.
Previous generation Samsung 980 Pro SSDs also received a firmware update in January to address an unrelated reliability issue. Boutique computer maker Puget Systems recently drew attention to the issues, announcing that it will be using third-party SSDs in its high-performance workstations in the future.
The downside of the 990 Pro firmware update (version number 1B2QJXD7) is that it does not reset the wear percentage counter on any SSD affected by the bug; if you have a drive that reports 72 percent wear, a firmware fix will prevent that number from increasing further faster than it should, but it won’t cause the number to decrease again. This could be because the bug was causing accelerated disk degradation, or because the drive simply can’t tell the difference between real disk wear caused by normal use and artificial “wear and tear”caused by a firmware bug.
If you have a 990 Pro SSD that is reporting abnormally high wear or if your drive has already stopped working, it’s possible that another firmware update in the future could fix your problem, but the safest thing to do is contact Samsung Customer Support . and try to repair or replace the drive under warranty.
The easiest way for most Windows users to install Samsung firmware updates is to use the Samsung Magician SSD software. For people using Linux or another operating system, for those who don’t want to install Magician’s software, or for those with lots of upgrade disks, the company also offers ISO images that can be used to create bootable USB installation disks.