Samsung confirms that a 990 PRO SSD firmware fix is coming this month

Samsung are working on new firmware that will address 990 PRO health decline “anomalies”

There has been a lot of chatter surrounding Samsung’s SSDs lately, specifically their new 990 PRO series of high performance PCIe 4.0 drives, which many users have claimed are wearing out faster than expected according to metrics found in Samsung’s SSD Magician software or Crystal Disk Info. 

In response to these concerns, Samsung has released the following statement (via Computerbase), confirming that they stand by their product and that they are actively investigating the issue. The good news today is that it looks like a firmware fix is coming soon.

    Samsung stands behind the quality of its SSDs, including the new NVMe M.2 SSD 990 PRO. We are aware of reports of this issue and are currently investigating as user configurations vary.

What’s wrong? 

If we are honest, it is unclear what is wrong with Samsung’s 990 PRO SSDs. The problem that users of the driver are facing is that the drive’s “SMART Percentage” as seen in Samsung’s SSD Magician software (which can also be seen as Health Status in Crystal Disk Info) are deteriorating faster than expected. These percentages are designed to log the lifespan of an SSD, and users are stating that these percentages are lowering at an alarming rate.

At this time, we do not know what is wrong with Samsung’s drives. Are these SSDs wearing out prematurely, or is the way that the percentages are being logged on these drives incorrect? Are these SSDs wearing out prematurely, or is the drive’s SMART Percentage being logged incorrectly. As of right now, it is unclear if this firmware bug is destructive or non-destructive. I guess we will find out when Samsung releases their firmware fix. 

A firmware fix is coming this month

A moderator on Samsung’s community forum called DavidB has released the following statement to confirm that Samsung plans to release an SSD firmware update this month to address “anomalies related to the SMART Percentage Used”. This firmware update should address 990 PRO SSD reliability concerns, and make this percentage change at a more reasonable rate. Whether or not this firmware update will change the percentage of already in use drives is unknown.  

    Hello everyone, we have received feedback from our technicians on this:

Samsung is currently reviewing customer inquiries about anomalies related to the SMART Percentage Used (on Samsung Magician) and/or Health Status (on Crystal Disk Info) of the Samsung SSD 990 PRO.

We were able to recreate the error under certain conditions of use.

To fix the problem, Samsung is expected to release a firmware update in February.

You can join the discussion on Samsung’s planned 990 PRO SSD firmware fix on the OC3D Forums.