Samsung Magician 7.2.1 (7.2.1.980) as new version. And confirmed dying 980 Pro's.

[Papusan]

Samsung Magician 7.2.1 (7.2.1.980) as new version

good Morning January 30, 2023 

 

Briefly informed: Samsung has updated its own software Samsung Magician for monitoring and checking the SSDs. The new version is 7.2.1 (7.2.1.980). The last update came in early October 2022. The installer was digitally signed on January 16, 2023

 

Information and Download:

• samsung.com/
• samsung.com/Samsung_Magician_7_2_1_Installation_Guide.pdf
• If there are problems with the download: Samsung_Magician_installer_Official_7.2.1.980.zip (HiDrive)

 

 

Of course Samsung was forced to push out new re-hashed software with new lipstick. Their Pro disks ar dying. Not only the newest Samsung 990 Pro is riddled with problems. Their previous gen Pro drives are dying with older firmware. So be sure you have installed latest firmware. 

 

Samsung's QC and quality have dropped as a stone in Mariana Trench. They really should stop branding their best ssd's with the Pro moniker. All they produce now is cheapo consumer junk. Nothing smells like "Pro" anymore. 

Critical Samsung SSD Firmware Update

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Pudgetsystems.com Chris Newhart

 

What is Happening Despite historically being some of our most reliable parts, we have received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung drives, specifically with the 2TB version of the 980 Pro. We have been working with Samsung to investigate these failures, and they have recently confirmed that there is an issue affecting the older firmware that some 980 Pro drives were shipped with.

 

 

[cylix]

Oh man, what is going on with Samsung.. i was thinking to change my 2 970 drives with some 990 2tb for more space, but thank god i didnt go and buy them. Looks like ill stick with Kingston or Seagate from now on for SSDs.

[Papusan]

12 minutes ago, cylix said:

Oh man, what is going on with Samsung.. i was thinking to change my 2 970 drives with some 990 2tb for more space, but thank god i didnt go and buy them. Looks like ill stick with Kingston or Seagate from now on for SSDs.

It goes this way when you use newest chapo consumer tech. Samsung Pro drives have always used MLC nand for their procumer drives. Not anymore. Not so sure the other brads ssd's is so much better. They all use same cheapo tech. Always have a backup. Now more important than ever... 

 

Macrium Reflect 8.1 (8.1.7336) with improvements and newer Windows PE 10 released [Update]: And 8.0.7279 Free version

[Update 01/30/2023]: After Macrium had withdrawn the first version 8.1, version 8.1.7336 of Macrium Reflect has now been released. The release notes are identical to version 8.1.7280. Below are the links to it.

[Eban]

1 hour ago, cylix said:

.... Looks like ill stick with Kingston or Seagate from now on for SSDs.

 

Wait Seagate is now better than Samsung???   WTF? Whats happening? I dont understand....where am I?

 

 

 

(To be fair I've never used a seagate ssd...got bitten too many times by their crappy hdd's to trust them)

[sdmf74]

8 hours ago, Eban said:

 

Wait Seagate is now better than Samsung???   WTF? Whats happening? I dont understand....where am I?

 

 

 

(To be fair I've never used a seagate ssd...got bitten too many times by their crappy hdd's to trust them)

Of course Seagate is NOT better than Samsung, dont believe evrything you read. This business about failing Samsung SSD's is new to me. I own & have owned  many 2.5's & many NVME Samsung SSD's including the 980 pros & 990 Pros for many years & have NOT had a solid state drive fail on me since 1 Samsung 840 pro failed on me a LONG time ago.

The bit about Samsung no longer using MLC NAND in their Pro drives is true & unfortunate but Im willing to bet Samsung's TLC NAND is light years ahead of & more reliable than any other on the market.

[Ashtrix]

Oh boy what a DISASTER.

 

Samsung meant worry free, top quality Memory and NAND. Lately they are really falling short. They also nuked the Note line with SD card. Also their financials recently have also not been good either, Samsung LSI Semi is also a massive loss, Samsung 8nm aka 10nm++ was a bust only Nvidia used it because Jensen knew the mining boom and his GDDR6X with cheap die wafer cost he would mint money.

 

Anyways the NAND division as bro @Papusansaid MLC was TOP NOTCH. Class leading endurance. 860 PRO SATA was 4800TBW 4TB and today Samsung does not have a single drive with high endurance like that and ofc they even do not make them anymore but they have 8TB 870 QLC trash. the 1TB 970 PRO was too old for Samsung so they killed the MLC based last NVMe and now they give "PRO" branding as TLC with 1200TBW on the 980 PRO 2TB. Pathetic really because Micron high 176L denser NAND has top notch Endurance, Firecuda 4TB has 5000+TBW that's MLC class in TLC package. Why cannot Samsung do it ? Because their market branding, PR is huge for Samsung anyone will buy based off trust. Because Western culture is all about trust  (which is slowly fading), Samsung is abusing it for profit and greed. Look at 990 PRO it also has Firmware drive life reporting issues. Brand new drive...

 

The 980 PRO I have is from 10/2021, manufactured which means it is effected (because the quick Firmware search shows when it's released, more below). I did not use it yet because I'm waiting for some SATA cables for my machine (Chinese Lunar year delay), imagine buying this junk for massive price and then it dies off randomly after a few months. And 0E cannot be fixed at all, all the drive is dead and the pain of removing the SSD from the Mobo is horrific as you have to remove GPU and sometimes CPU if it's a DIMM.2 + Air cooler (in my case) lucky I did not install anything else I would have to remove all components,. Anyways now I'm buying an adapter for NVMe with tool free design like this to do a firmware upgrade on an another machine instead of installing any single bit of data to that SSD to avoid any of these errors show up in the SSD or prematurely damage the SSD with that broken firmware, hope that works.

 

 

Quote

"The newest one is one of the 2TB ones. Over 2000 errors already," reported user RaXelliX on Reddit. "And the middle one 2TB has already failed with over 32,000 errors and is locked to read only mode. I fully expect the two others to fail soon too."

 

Quote

However, the new firmware update from Samsung will prevent the failures from occurring in the first place if your drive is still functioning. So, if you have a 980 Pro running the 3B2QGXA7 firmware, you'll want to update to the newest firmware (5B2QGXA7) using the Samsung SSD Magician software (opens in new tab) ASAP. It should be noted that 980 Pro SSDs running the 4B2QGXA7 or 5B2QGXA7 firmware are not affected by this issue.

 

4B2QGXA7 Firmware is from 11/2021 (quick google search), so any drive with 2021 manufacturing year probably will have earlier SSD breaking firmware. The newer fixed firmware is from 2022. Pugetsystems also notes that Primary OS drive cannot be upgraded to new Firmware which is a potential issue which can happen, another disaster when using Samsung SSDs. Imagine your primary OS NVMe is in the mobo slot unlike DIMM.2 + AIO (easy swap) so you get shafted big time. Horrendous QC.

 

 

Quote

 

Potential Issues

What to do if the firmware update hangs or fails:

If the Magician firmware update indicator pinwheels indefinitely when attempting to update your primary drive, you may need to install the drive into an external enclosure and attempt to update the firmware from another computer. If you are experiencing problems updating the firmware on a drive purchased from Puget Systems, please reach out to our Technical Support, as we can help facilitate this process.

 

 

 

[sdmf74]

I cant remember how old my 980 pro is or where I bought it, cant find the reciept but I never had any isues updating the firmware when used in main M.2 slot OS drive. I just checked & Im on 5B2QGXA7.

Actually I did just find the box however & the production date is 2/14/2021. Never had any issues with the drive but I may need to rethink my loyalty to Samsung & research TBW/Endurance on current NVME drives & manufacturers

 

EDIT: I just noticed that my 2 year old 980 pro 1tb has less writes on it than my less than 2 month old 990 pro 1tb! Whats up with that? Assuming SMART is accurate.

Both drives were used as OS drives with hibernate turned off & similar windows settings. Samsung claims both drives are 600 TBW, smh