Windows 10: Samsung SSD Firmware Warning - 960 Series

Anybody know if this firmware issue has been fully resolved across Samsung's product line?

I'm still holding on my original firmware. Given its been two months I would like to think Samsung has put this to bed.

 

Don't know which version you have right now Ken, but if your firmware version is 2B6QCXP7 I would NOT upgrade it. I've read many posts on Samsung's forums from people that updated their firmware, only to get slower speeds after. Choice is yours of course. They have released 2 updates, 1st one messed up lots of users, then a month later they have released the 2nd update to try and fix there mistake on the 1st one. I'm not updating mine, that's for sure. Mine is the SSD 960 PRO NVMe M.2 512GB

 

Here is a link to Samsungs forum, with comments from some people that did the upgrade ....interesting reading.
960 pro firmware 3B6QCXP7 its a crap !!!! - Page 17 - Samsung Community - 217627

 

I'm not going to risk it, 3/4 full and only 0.5% performance drop from since empty.

 

Most people that did the upgrade, are very upset with Samsung Mike.

 

Mine updated to EXM04B6Q -- all I did was refresh them. so far no problem

Mine are Both 850 1-PRO and 1-EVO

 

According to a week ago user is still having issues with the latest release 4 960 pro firmware 3B6QCXP7 its a crap !!!! - Page 17 - Samsung Community - 217627

I find it interesting that mine is still showing 2B6QCXP7 and up to date. I'm so thankful that I had been running this 960 pro in RAID mode on RST driver. I only clean installed and set up to use NVME drivers In AHCI recently and I guess Samsung had already blocked the firmware updates. This SSD I purchased in Dec 2016 when I purchased this G752VY So I guess it would be considered an older one?

 

I already posted same exact page....few msgs back... *Smile

 

Well yea Mike but this issue seems to be continuing on currently I linked the latest post on the Samsung forum which was a week ago and the issue continues so we need to keep this thread active

Yes, your link was the same as mine sorry to duplicate, Just wonder what is going on with the companies the last few years. I suppose they have grown to fast and quality control has deteriorated. Tech support has become nonexistent at least totally useless, We are seeing the same crap with MS and their updates and Asus is having some major screw-ups throughout there products lines affecting many people and they just don't seem to care unless its product wide. I'm not ranting here just noticing a trend with the large Tech companies. Were the lucky ones since were paying attention but I'm seeing my friends and other non techy type people getting hit with these huge mistakes and no way to resolve them. I guess its good for computer repair shops the few that are left.*Smile

 

Like I said....its the EXACT SAME Link I posted....

 

I'm not using a Pro, mine is EVO. Firmware 2B7QCXE7 which seems to be older version. Can't complain about speed





but thought I would ask.

It's gotten to the point that the vendors can't even fix their own technology. There has to be an industry wide "Slow down and fix what we got" phase. That wouldn't be good for sales and stock performance is how the CEO's get paid. Package it up and push it.

Thanks for all the answers.

 

Same Drive and Firmware here , so I am keeping 2B7 as well, though the EVO seems to have less issues , there are enough reports that I am not going to try the newer Firmwares.

It's only a personal observation but it seems like Drives that came with 2B7x don't handle the newer Firmwares Well (PCB/components change in newer drives?) and as far as I can tell the New 3B7 Firmware was only to support E-Drive (Bitlocker) which I don't use .

It has quieten down on the Samsung Forums , but I am not sure it is fixed either.....

KB

 

Just as a side note, and PCs that have been patched for the speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities, will have lower, even much lower, benchmark scores. This has to do with how the CPU uses the L caches(L1,L2; and L3) communicate with memory, chipset, and PCIe. PCIe is the interface used for the 960 SSDs, so....

Also I have updated to 3B as soon as it was offered and had no problems from the firmware update:

 

Yes mine is doing good to now after 18 months or so still on the 2B6QCXP7 firmware with no firmware offered!! So they must not have been able to fix it for this earlier SSD? BYW this drive was faster running on the IRS driver I lost read speed using the windows native NVME driver.

 

From my perspective, the latest Samsung firmware works just fine...

About three month the ego, purchased 2 x 960 EVO NVMe drives that came with the latest firmware:





The performance of the system is just fine with Asus Prime Z370-A motherboard and i5 8400 CPU. The noticeable performance decrease, at least in performance benchmarks, is due to the BIOS update for the CPU from Asus. .

C drive:





E drive:





The results are a mixed bag, mainly the write performance impacted by the BIOS update. On the other hand, some of the read write performance increased. The chances are that Samsung needs to update the drive to account for the CPU microcode updates.

The temperature of the EVO drives under normal use is on the low side:





The ambient temperature is pretty much indicated by the SSD 850 EVO, the SATA III drive is right next to the two front case fans. Even during the CrystalDisk benchmark, the E drive did not hit 40 °C:





And that's probably the highest utilization for the drives, other than the W10 updates...

The i5 8400 CPU seldom passes the 40 °C mark, mainly during benchmarking the system:





Yes, with air cooling and the C drive has a heat spreader, but not the E drive...