A while ago I had asked about recommendations for a consumer SSD that would be suitable for running VMs off of it on XCP-ng (or really any other hypervisor). With the input (thanks!) I decided to go for EVO 990 Pro 4 TB.
The early versions (2023?) of the EVO 990 Pro seemed to have had a severe issue with the firmware, which affected longevity. So it seems that back then a firmware upgrade was basically a mandatory exercise.
Is this is still needed today? Since upgrading the firmware would be a considerable effort in terms of available hardware for me right now, I was wondering whether I can skip that.
As far as I have seen, samsung firmware issues always ended up in results where the drive becomes locked (like read-only) or the drive disappears completely from OS point of view. Also the issue appears suddenly, by the time the user realizes it, its already too late.
Now; from a risk assessment perspective, please consider the following:
Unlike HDDs the failure to SSDs could appear overnight.In most of the cases, it is like either you can access data or it totally inaccessible.
These firmware updates are supposed to address such failures due to bugs in their older version. Ignoring that could be a matter of âwhenâ and not âifâ, you will encounter the disk failure.
What really matters is how important is the data and the impact of delay in recovery.
May be having a proper backup is enough in some cases, where you do not mind the downtime for recovery & cost of replacement storage.
May be a raid mirror with a different model disk is a better choice if the downtime for recovery is costly.
Also make an estimate the effort for updating firmware v/s effort for recovery in case of failure.
Hope this helps in making a better decision based on your situation.
I had a problem with an Windows 2022 server with two â2TB Samsung 990 Pro with Heatsinkâ
in a mirror where both SSDs in that mirror failed a the same time with no warning signs whatsoever. You really want to have a good backup in this situation. This issue took the server and that cad department down until replacement ssds arrived (WDâs, not Samsung). I managed to revive the SSDs, so time was lost, but no data, and I performed the necessary firmware update on them. Iâm still hesitant to place them in a server again. A coworker serves as my guinea pig right now - he got another one (also with updated firmware) in his new Win 11 workstation.
@ChrisRJ I fail to understand what you imply by âis this still needed today?â.
Older firmware versions had issues, some of them severe.
Current firmware is supposedly (?) fine.
So of course whenever you buy such a drive you want to make sure itâs on the latest firmware. You never know how long that SSD has been lying on some resellerâs shelf. It will still be considered new, sellerâs guarantee applies (if in the EU), manufacturerâs guarantee applies starting with the date of the purchase, not the date of manufacturing âŚ
So just make sure you run current firmware. Simple as that.
What am I missing? Not intending to be snarky, seriously
The drives are from Dec 2024 and Jan 2025, assuming the stickers on the packages donât lie. So my assumption was that whatever firmware they have is without the durability issues reported in 2023.
Updating them would incur considerable effort, given the currently available hardware. Hence my testing the waters.
And no, I didnât perceive your question as snarky.
There is also Samsung Magician for Windows that can check and upgrade firmware. Mine have been stable for a while without new firmware. It looks like the latest on my 990PRO is 4B2QJXD7 for the 990EVO Plus it is 2B2QKXG7.
I make it a point to try to stay up to date, especially when the firmware updates solve issues I may face.
Do you perhaps have a link? Something like that is exactly what I have been trying to find, but so far without success. The software for consumer SSDs seems to available only for Windows and Mac, whereas the DC versions also get Linux.
