Samsung corrects the problems of its latest SSDs through an update

A few days ago, users began to report operating problems in the new Samsung 980 Pro . These new high-performance SSDs had (and have if you haven’t upgraded) several issues that caused them to malfunction. Through a firmware update, Samsung has fixed these issues on these SSDs.

It was in mid-December when Samsung launched the new 980 Pro storage drives. They are M.2 format SSD drives that work through the PCIe 4.0 interface. This unit offers us a reading speed of up to 7000 MB/s and a writing speed of up to 5000 MB/s, being one of the most powerful on the market today.

Samsung corrects the problems of its latest SSDs through an update

Samsung corrects the errors of its new SSDs through firmware

SSDs integrate SMART technology that, among other things, allows you to monitor the status of the storage unit. Such technology is important, as SSDs degrade faster than HDDs. Specifically, reading processes and, above all, writing, affect the integrity of the unit.

These Samsung 980 Pro have been released with firmware 3B2QGXA7 , which has issues mainly on 2TB drives . It should be noted that units with lower capacity also present this problem, but to a lesser extent.

The first error is relative to the value “0E” , which is the “integrity error and a half” flag that seems to be wrongly triggered. The value “03” indicating “spare available” is also activated with a value less than 100. If you don’t know how to access this data, you can do so with the CrystalDisk Info software .

ssd Samsung 980 Pro

There are many users who in the value “0E” report a value greater than 2000 and in some cases, it has shot above 32000. This error causes the unit to block itself to protect itself and become read-only, preventing the writing. Also, the value “03” would drop below 5% after use and with a few TB writes.

Sure, the values “0E” and “03”, make if a certain value is passed, they make the drive read-only . Prevents writing to continue memory degradation and thus protect user data. It allows the user to extract the information, which is important.

Samsung has released firmware 5B2QGXA7, which fixes these two mentioned issues . But there is a problem and that is, if the SSD unit has entered read-only mode, the situation cannot be reversed. We will only be able to read the data from the drive, we will not be able to use it to store new data.

Samsung 980 Pro

A big problem for users

Currently, if you have a Samsung 980 Pro and have not seen this problem, you should update as soon as possible. To do this, you must use the Samsung Magician software, which allows you to update the firmware to the latest version. If you are affected, you should make a copy (if you can) of the critical data and process the guarantee.

This is a critical problem that should not occur, especially in such a prominent company in the SSD industry. But, on the other hand, it is the first time (that we are aware of) that something of this nature has happened. The normal thing is that Samsung, when it receives the RMA of these units, changes them directly.

On the other hand, once again the need to have a backup of critical information is evident. Any file (photos, documents, videos, etc.) of high value that we have should have a copy in an unconnected drive. Thus, in case of any problem, we have a backup of important data and the drama is minimized.