Update: The new firmware is now out. DavidB, a moderator on Samsung"s EU community forum has announced that the new firmware is available, though the SMART values are not reset with this update. This means the health drop percentages your 990 Pro had will remain, though it should not drop further after installing the firmware. DavidB writes (translated from German):
Hello everyone,
Samsung has been investigating customer inquiries about anomalies related to the SMART of the 990 PRO SSD.
These anomalies were found to be caused by issues with the 990 PRO SSD"s firmware. Accordingly, a firmware update was released today, February 13, 2023, that fixes these anomalies.
(SMART values are not restored to factory settings after firmware update. Actual SMART values of each SSD vary depending on user environment and usage conditions).
The update can be downloaded from Samsung Magician or here:
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/
You can find our warranty conditions for the 990 PRO SSD athttps://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/warranty/.
The necessary firmware version is "1B2QJXD7" it"s labelled "*This is the latest firmware update. (published in February 2023)".
While Samsung SSDs, including its NVMe drives have generally been reliable (which is also why we have often recommended them to readers), a couple of recent fiascos are sure to leave a bad taste in the mouths of people.
First up, we had a major issue with the 990 Pro, the company"s flagship NVMe product. Our own reviewer Robbie Khan noticed that the new 990 Pro was rapidly dropping health, with around a 1-percentage point drop almost every single day. Although Samsung was hesitant at first to acknowledge any major bug about the drive, the South Korean giant was sort of forced to confirm the issue after realizing how widespread the problem was as many online had similar experiences. You can follow the saga in its entirety in this article.
Fast forward to now, Samsung has confirmed that it was able to reproduce the issue in its internal testing. The company is promising a firmware update that will fix the problem. A Samsung representative posted on its community forums the following message (translated to English):
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.
Hence a firmware update with the fix should be rolling out soon.
While this was the first major bug to hit Samsung"s NVMe drives, the 990 Pro"s predecessor, 980 Pro, which is also a very popular PCIe drive from the company, was found to be dying under certain scenarios. Samsung later fixed the issue with firmware versions "4B2QGXA7" and "5B2QGXA7" (via Puget Systems). The problematic firmware version was found to be "3B2QGXA7". Hence if your 980 Pro is on that firmware, you should definitely update it using something like Samsung Magician.
Via: ComputerBase