I'm a PhD student and my entire thesis backup for all my work in the last 4 years of my life was on a 980 pro 2TB with firmware starting with 3. Thank you so much for this video, I've updated the firmware now, you may have potentially saved me an incredible amount of work.
I have a 980 PRO 2TB that failed due to this, replaced it with a new 980 PRO thinking I just had a bad drive. Decided to double check the firmware thanks to this video and the one had bought had the bad firmware. So I'm super glad for this Video Jay!
@@VladK-1i had to call Samsung back. Lady told me I cant it's two years old. Got it October 2021 so it's not done. I call back after a long hold n bs with the supervisor. Guy a guy. Told me 5 years!! So I was more than granted to get it looked at or replaced
@@mosely25I'm not surprised Samsung customer service played you like that. I wasted about 5hrs of my life trying to get some service from them. Nothing but constant transfers, repeating my details, "that dept isn't open now", & 1 guy even hung up on me. I never did ask for a manager though. Guess I should've. I'm never buying Samsung again. Hope they're happy with the $ they saved on a service call they never gave me.
It is now January 2024, my drive failed, and I was using it as my boot drive with everything on it that I could not afford to lose. You are right, I'm sitting here watching your video on my phone wondering WTF just happened to my 2t 980pro... made in 5/2021 ... and now it is bricked. Wish I had known about this 10 months ago. I wouldn't have lost thousands of hours of work :(
same here, happened when playing, totally blocked pc, rebooted, and ... can't boot. Same SSD, will check the number but i've bought it in 2022 so .... if i new that could happen :(
Wow, I had the exact same ssd with the exact same firmware version. I ran the test and all blocks were blue and I updated to the newest version. Man, what a video, thanks Jay and thanks to your team.
Hello I also have a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro drive with the firmware "3B2QGXA7"! I also did the short Sacan and everything was fine. Is it bad if I do not update the BIOS first? Or can I easily update the drive to the latest version without updating the BIOS first?
@@ismailselimi update your BIOS no matter what, it will also update your ME (Intel) which is very important, then update all of the other drivers and firmware including things like CPU Coolers, external devices, VR Headsets, peripherals, even keyboards, also update all drives (spindle & SSD), then update your video card firmware at the end, then you can do the SAMSUNG drive(s)
I installed that exact drive as a secondary data drive 2 weeks ago. The samsung magician reported I have a version 5. Thank you for the tip off. I have been using computers since 1972 with an IBM pc, 32 k, and two floppy drives. At age 74 I decided to create a dream machine. Basically I have no idea of what I am doing and your videos, though not always understood, have been a godsend.
I literally purchased this yesterday. It hasn't even arrived yet and this video was recommended in my feed. The one time I'm grateful my phone is intrusive AF. Thanks for the video
.. all the affected people that I've heard about were crypto miners. Are you doing crypto mining and rewriting your 980 Pro M.2 SSD daily?? I have two of the 980 Pro 2TB and both were absolutely fine. Hopefully I didn't make them. "unfine" by updating my firmware.
@DJaquithFL I have bad sectors on one of mine which has my os and starcitizen on it the other with my steam library on it is fine. No mining here of anytype.
I'm just seeing this video 10+ months after it was created. Thank you so much for making it! Turns out all of my Samsung drives needed firmware updates. Fortunately I got to them before they were locked.
Mine failed about a month ago. Hopefully you can save someone else from the headache I went through with this video. Samsung sent me a new drive under their warranty program but they were a pain to deal with (took about a month) and I was afraid to install it so I brought a different brand. I feel better about the new drive now. Thanks, Jay!
Same shit here. SSD failed after just over one month of use, so outside the return policy by literally FOUR DAYS. That was five months ago and I'm still awaiting my replacement from Samsung
@@erikhendrickson59 you poor thing you should have had Samsung magician installed and kept your firmware up to date well now you know to do it so this never happens again
Mine failed a month ago also, I woke up to my computer hung up at the bios, read state locked in, had to power cycle the device to read data off of it, thankfully I back up daily, but still, reinstalling and getting everything back how I need. It to be was a major PITA
Wow, I've been living under a rock. Just ordered a new 980 Pro 2tb online to use as a game drive without knowing about this issue. This will definitely be the first thing I do when I get it!
This video saved me. I was one of those people with a 2TB SSD from 2021 where the firmware did start with a “3.” I had been getting some CRC errors copying data out of my Samsung 980 Pro drive and I thought that was strange. I came across this video and followed the instructions….and thank goodness because according to the SMART diagnostics I had over 207,000+ CRC errors on my drive! 😱. Thank you for this video! ❤❤❤
Thanks for this video, Jay. My 980 Pro was being used as an external NVMe drive for all my backups, and as you mentioned in the video, was one of the affected ones and I was probably about to lose all my data. Everything was as simple as you outlined, and I’m happy to report that everything seems to be fine since updating the firmware. Looking forward to more amazing content ahead!
@@teardowndan5364 ...actually (with whiney nasal voice), Diskpart 'cle' still erases file system info from it. It doesn't delete partitions, and you can't delete files from it while file system is still intact, cant update firmware. So your files are safe, unless you go poking around. I had this happen last summer (2022, time is relevant). I found no info it on internet, besides single reddit post with same lockdown happening. I was able to return the SSD for full purchase price, and since the price had gone down quite a lot, made a profit on it. Bought almost same model again, one with heatsink already attached. Updated the firmware because that's what I do with new drives, and got the same version update Samsung is offering as fix now. So they had the fix already last summer, I've triple checked the versions, and no new firmware is being offered to my 2 TB 980Pro since
@@teardowndan5364 Not all drives fail the same way. Some go into read only mode, others stop working, and even worse, some were known to say they were working, but they were simply overwriting data until all the flash finally failed (making data recovery impossible).
nand flash(SSDs) are no place to keep backups. because the technology depends on the ability of electrons to hold a charged state. so long before any significant wear from writing can normally take place you will be losing data from "bitrot". HDDs are naturally more resistant with data being etched in metal. even better if the drive has Shingled Magnetic Recording(SMR). where the layers flip to reduce the chance of damage to the surface of the discs.
Had a friend snap me about his drive dying today. Turns out I have 2 computers with the same drive and firmware myself, and one of them had 52094 Media Errors and 96 Available Spare. I read that these drives usually die at around 32000 Media Errors, am I just lucky or what?
I appreciate you Jay. I have a 980 pro 2 tb NVME. Just built my pc in January. My firmware did start with a 5. Good looking out for us keep up the hard work.
Thankfully I installed Samsung Magician while I set up my PC originally so it was updating the firmware as soon as updates became available. I highly recommend to everyone that already has or is installing a new Samsung drive to install Samsung Magician as soon as possible just so that you can periodically run diagnostic scans and updates at least once a month. Thank you for this video, Jay and JayzTwoCents team!
HOLY CRAP. I have the 2TB version and my FW was EXACTLY what you showed. I did the scan and luckily I had no red blocks. I did the FW update immediately after. THANK YOU JAY. BEST CHANNEL ON YT.
Even before watching the entire video I want to a) thank you for actually making a video about this since most IT content creators and websites seem to ignore it (just like Samsung does!) and b) that there is an issue not only with the 980 Pro but all 870 EVO and 970 EVO drives as well, commonly kown as the "5E Media Error". This is when the drive suddenly rapidly loses percentage on the "Available Spare" but has a quickly increasing amount of "Media Errors". This issue first made its rounds in 2022 (there are reddit topics and a ycombinator news + comments about it), but Samsung has been ignoring it.
Thinking about buying a Samsung Ssd cause my one sucks. Can you recommend which 2tb Samsung SSD would be the most reliable now? My XPG gaming X S 70 blade 2 Tb died after 3 months It won't boot and when i check it in the nvme configuration it shows as MN-5236 and disk size shoes 2.1 GB and sometimes when i remove the drive and install it again it shows S 70 Blade 2TB and when i run a device self test ( controllor only ) my bios freezes Also my nvme idles around a 50 C and the max reeding i have seen on hw monitor is 62 C
@@dragoonxgamer I haven't heard of any more issues with the 990 PRO since Samsung released new firmwares for it. A friend of mine had a 970 EVO Plus that died recently, I have two of those myself (500GB and 2TB) and I check SMART values (available spare and media errors) regularly to ensure that everything is fine. If you need a Samsung then the 990 PRO is probably the way to go, but there are other manufacturers that have great SSDs too (like the WD SN850X, for example).
Thank you for this video! Have been using mine 980 Pro 2tb as my primary game drive for about a year now, and my firmware started with 3! Scanned and thankfully there was no bad zone. And once again thank you for notifying, so that I could update mine and avoid a future disaster!
I wished I had known about this video 3 months ago, or at least 2 weeks ago. I have two of these drives, and the one with my OS took a dump a week ago. Now I'm hoping that Samsung honors their 5 years parts replacement warranty and I can get a replacement. Thank you for making this video Jay!
Hey did you have any luck with Samsung? A friend of mine just had one these fail over the weekend and he said Samsung won't RMA it because he bought it through Amazon, and Amazon won't do it because 12 months have passed since purchase.
I have a 2 TB 980 Pro and I had heard about the problems that were being found with them but I couldn't find anything on what to do about it. Thanks for making this video, mine was fine and already had the latest firmware, but now I have the peace of mind and actually know that instead of wondering and waiting to see if it died.
My drive was the exact problem child, firmware and all. Thank you Jay for creating this video! Another reason why I keep coming back and watching your vids. Awesome work!
As you mentioned in a previously published work; Defragmenting a SSD is risky and best avoided. Discovering the weak points then having the knowledge to begin to approach a problem like this is worthy of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Good pointer! Thanks. 🐾
Thanks for the heads up on the drives. I had 2 of them all fixed now. Its awesome that guys like you help us to save us from a huge issue down the track. You count on your fingers like i do.
I have 970 evo for 4 years. I will never buy another Samsung, sketchy company. There are so many better ssd out there, SKhynix also South Korea, Kingston fury 2tb with 2pbw, high speed high endurance. WD is my personal favorite have 3.63 TB wd red plus, 1tb wd blue sn570.
What great timing for this video! I’m expecting a new NVME in the mail today. I got a western digital black so the main point of the video is not pertinent to me. I didn’t, however, know how to set up a new drive and your little tutorial has saved me the time of having to search it up on Google. Thanks for the video Jay!
I had this failure happen to a 970 Pro I had that I was using as my main OS drive and was less than a year old. To say that I was beyond frustrated to unexpectedly lose everything would be an understatement, so thank you for showing everyone this quick and easy fix! I would've absolutely hated to have had this happen to my 980 Pro too.
hey @surelynoah I saw your post and my son is in a similar state. He's using a 980 PRO 1TB NVME system as his main OS disk with Windows 11. Did the Samsung tool help you upgrade your firmware and you were up and running? Did you lose any data? or did you have to re-install the O.S. from scratch?
@@DinoRiveraSamsung Magician updates the Firmware for all Samsung drives. It won't remove any Data, you just have to reboot after updating. It's a nice peace of software with lots of handy features, it will take you easily through the process. And even if your drive is "toast" it will still be in a readable state, so you can buy a new drive and clone the data from the old drive to the new one. @surelynoah so your failure was probably a different one since you appear to have lost your data
@@DerRusher I guess my drive is "toast" just now... It suddenly ran into blue screen and can't reboot anymore. Will Samsung warranty covers it (bought 2ys ago, just 13TBW so technically should be covered) ? Or should I just go ahead buy a new ssd?
A moment to appreciate your efforts. The value that I see and keep coming back to this channel is that you explain things as dumb down as possible along with the explanation about technology behind it. So it is as simple as simply following if you are in hurry or waiting and understanding your explanation even good for not tech person. In short the grass root level approach like how a common man will address or handle a problem or situation is a unique USP . Keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing this one, and good luck with future ones.
Thank you so much Jay and who ever brought this to your attention, my PC has only these drives 1 for boot and 1 for games, and both had the affected firmware version, you have just saved me a lot of confusing trouble if my drives bricked!! much love keep up the good work!
Were you able to use the Samsung Wizard updater to update firmware on your boot drive? I presume you mean the drive you both boot from, and run Windows from. I'm curious whether having the bad firmware on your Windows disk, that you are currently running Windows from, makes it impossible to update the firmware. You make it sound like it was easy, good for you :)
Hi Jay - many thanks for this tip - I was one of the affected ones. Please note the update was not going through, while the fan control utility you posted on another video was running. As soon as I disabled it, it all went fine. BTW my drive was split in 2 partitions and the smaller one was running the OS - maybe this is why the conflict was there. It would be good if you could do an independent test.
Jay I cannot thank you enough. I built my latest gaming PC back in August 2021 and I’ve been dealing with critical Windows blue screen/crashing errors ever since and it just recently became a 100% failure. I’ve been reinstalling Windows over and over with no success and I was hesitant to start trying different hardware just due to time constraints. I have a Samsung NVME 1TB with these issues, not sure what firmware it’s on but I’m gonna try this tonight and hopefully it fixes my corrupted OS. Might be talking a little early but seriously man this video is probably exactly what I need. Trying not to get my hopes up but I could see this fixing my PC. UPDATE 3/15/2023: Took out my SSD entirely and I was able to install Windows just fine on another drive with no issues. I did not confirm if it was this exact issue with the drive but at the very least this video pointed me in the right direction and saved me more frustration and time. Thank you again!
I had the same similar issue as you, 2 times in a row, both ended up being the cpu after working for a few months then slowly over next few months of issue you explained above, it completely would be a goner. I replaced my drives, thought tht was the original issue, replaced ram, tested PSU, ended up being the cpu. a 12900K and a 13900K both same issue.
I just checked my 980 Evo because of this video. I would not have known about this problem without this video. Mine was manufactured in August 2022, so I already had the latest firmware version, but it could very easily have been one of the affected ones. I'm glad it's just a firmware issue that's easy to fix.
I strongly recommend backups before updating SSD FW update if you want to be sure. I recommend backups anyways. Jayz, how about a backup feature, "How to reliably backup Windows for bare metal restore and what are good choices for attaching your NAS to 10gbe these days now that backing up several TB over GBE will make you turn old and grey" ?
You can get sub $20 adapters that will plug into a regular pice slot and present an m.2 pcie connector to add a drive to. This is just converting the connectors from add in slot to m.2 so if you only have one nvme m.2 connector on your main board this should allow you to use a pcie slot for this.
I wish motherboards had more PCIe slots and less M.2 slots. With a PCIe slot I can add M.2 drives but I can also add lots of other things. With M.2 slots I can add M.2 drives but nothing else. More than one M.2 slot on a board that replaces a PCIe slot is just a waste.
@@mjc0961 Actually you can get SATA adapters that will fit in the M.2 slots. That's one example. I didn't know it was a thing until I saw a video about it.
I just installed one on 5/19 just a few days ago. I bought it last year around the first of December. Thanks to this video I was able to download and use the utility to check my drive, which turned out to be fine. Thank you.
I'm glad I found this video, not because I even own a Samsung NVMe, but updating firmware is just a good idea, and Kingston had an update ready. It's never fun to lose data.
Glad you made this video, I'd heard of the issue but I heard it was the 990 PRO drives that were affected. I do have a 2TB 980 PRO but my firmware version starts with a "5". So that bullet at least was dodged.
My drive died & wouldn't boot. I sent it back to Samsung for warranty repair & they told me nothing was wrong with it & they'll be sending it back to me shortly. No mention of anything that you spoke of. Not the issue of the problem, the fix or the software. Nothing and I bought 2 of these drives. I just canceled my 990 Pro 2TB order because I saw a video saying that customers are reporting that those drives are losing 10% of their life span in the 1st month of use. I love Samsung but my faith in them is starting to fall. Thanks for your help. It's always appreciated.
I've already had recent problems with my 3090 and my CPU cooler this week, and bought one of these drives in 1TB size at the same time when I built the PC, so I appreciate the heads up on this to avoid yet another part that might fail. I apparently bought mine right before this corrupted firmware started rolling out.
@@666Daheretic "According to Puget, the failures traced back to the 3B2QGXA7 firmware and primarily affect 2TB versions of the 980 Pro (although lower capacities are not entirely immune)."
Jay your a life saver , my firmware was the bad one , and I had the exact same drive and was unaware of this issue! my scan came up all blue so I guess I was lucky but I’m all up to date! Great video and thanks again!
samsung is frankly the worst electronics company in existence. every samsug device invariably breaks, burns, explodes, or just plain fails within the first year of use
I had this issue. My 980 Pro had the bad firmware. I started noticing some of my files were being corrupted. I rested it in samsung Magician and got lots of red sectors. The data was toast, which was a pain, but updating the firmware at least fixed the bad sectors it seems. Thanks Jay for putting this out. I thought the drive was broken until I saw your explanation.
I was missing details like this in the video. So the data gets corrupted, only the sectors are greenlit again. He said the data is not corrupted, the error is only in the firmware.
I just got a 2TB 980 Pro, and it came with the latest firmware version. I also had a much older 1TB 980 Pro that I updated to the latest version after watching GN's video. Thanks for putting this info out there Jay. I was aware of the 990 Pro issues but not the ones affecting the 980 Pro.
Thank you so much for this. I just bought a new 980 Pro which has the new firmware, but my other 2 older ones had the bad firmware. My old 2 are in a RAID1 configuration so I had to do some shuffling and RAID rebuilding so I could update the firmware on them, but it's all done now. You saved my data!
YT randomly suggested this to me, and I have that exact 980 NVME drive and the exact ver 3 firmware. I had no idea Samsung Magician was even a thing, now into my 3rd SSD. You are my hero.
As an IT professional, I have a bunch of PCs around my office/workshop. Every single Gen1 SSD I had abruptly failed 4 years ago and now the same thing is happening to the first NVMe drives I purchased. Shockingly, the most reliable SSDs I have are cheap Chinese Netac drives for the Chinese market I randomly picked up off the shelf in Asia.
I finally decided to upgrade my 970 evo from like 2018 and a whole other system ago. Just saw 980 pros for around $150 on sale on amazon. Immediately impulse bought. And then later found this video terrified that this was the main reason they were on sale. Glad to say my unit is manufactured in 2023 Vietnam, and I will be downloading magician anyway to update as needed. An incredibly informative no nonsense video.
@@kwondeville yes. I was expressing my relief at the fact that the 980 pro I bought was not affected. I had no way of knowing until it arrived and was concerned.
Legend! I made my second PC but total novice as the first one was 20 years ago. I got all top parts with Samsung 990 Pro 1TB. Fantastic! I loved making it! However, after my first day in operation every so often I'd get a grey screen. My Tech friend is in another country so I couldn't show my PC to him. He sent me this video, but it isn't a 980 but a 990. I decided to watch it and it seemed similar to the 980, as it wasn't happening all the time. So I did the tiny test, and it's worked! This was 3 to 4 months ago. I haven't had a grey screen ever since. THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for this video. This is really important info. As you said, nothing sucks more than losing your data. I have files on my SSDs and harddrive which date all the way back to year 2000. You couldn't get that data back from ANYWHERE any more. So it indeed would suck, a lot.
I'm so goddamn glad you put this video out. I only lament it wasn't towards the end of 2022 that this came out. I bought Samsung cause I trust their reliability even at the pinch of the wallet. What I went through to even try and recover my data was an absolute nightmare, some of it self inflicted due to bad practices and complacency but I never expected a Samsung drive to fail THAT fast. I'll check my newer replacement one with magician and the spare I'm ordering. I suppose the curious question is since this was an oopsie on their part, are they warranting the drives for replacement.
I contacted samsung memory and eventually got a refurb as replacement. I had to ship in my old one first but was able to pull most of the data off to another harddrive.
My Samsung 980 Pro 2TB failed without warning. Windows 11 popped up an "Oops!" message, rebooted, and I'm stuck in the ASUS infinite BIOS loop. I wish I had seen this video, but without having encountered this problem I'd never have looked for it. Samsung should have been sending out advisory notices to registered owners.
@@gaiustacitus4242 I have an ASUS as well with a 2TB, suddenly about a month ago windoze 11 BSOD on me and restart also went into boot loop. Ive been using my older main with linux since and this video seems to explain what happened to me. Ive only had the newer computer with the 2tb for like 6 months, and its been a headache every step of the way, between an overheat issue since day 1, windoze 11 being its typical post 7 shitpile, and now a drive failure. Gonna have to look into seeing if I can get a refurb like beep bleep did
I was worried at first because I have a 1TB 980 Pro that was made in Feb 2021, I had installed it in March of 2021. I'm glad you said it's only in the 2TB NVME SSDs. I've had Samsung Magician installed since I got it & it's been installing firmware updates over the past 2 years, I have the most recent firmware installed in it. It's still working great, no errors!
Thanks Jay for your video, I have two of these one for the OS and the other for backups, both had been the ones outlined! at almost 600 dollars each here in NZ I'm thankful to your video. Because of watching your video's I decided to build my own PC from scratch last year so it's just on 12 months old. Again thank you it is very much appreciated.
Encountered this in the previous generation, both of my 870 EVO failed within a year. Red blocks are fixable also by secure erase (though, the S.M.A.R.T. errors obviously persist). Those blocks appear on the data that was sitting on the drive untouched for a long time. I believe the NAND looses charge much quicker than expected and the new firmware just adds quirks to overcome NAND problems, probably just refreshing cells more often.
thanks my drives were on the bad version and ive had them for a year so i was probably on the verge of loosing them. you saved me hours of pain and hundreds of dollars. tysm
Jay, thank you so very much for taking your time and money to make this video. My storage drive with all my work, photos, videos and games were all stored on the exact Samsung drive. Nothing was corrupted or lost, but without your video I probably would never have known to update the firmware, and could have lost everything. A thousand thank you’s, Jay!!! 🤙🙏
well you should keep doing it now cause you found out that people found out the hard way that an old firmware can kill your drive before it's time if you do not update when the updates come out
I purchased my 980 Pro in September (2022) from Amazon for a PS5 install. The drive has the latest firmware from Samsung that you note in the video. Thank you for your video.
Jayz, there is a situation that could be even worse. If the drive is locked in time, that's annoying but at least you can accesss the data presumably, but if the drive uses whole drive encryption such as bitlocker, it needs write access to even READ from it.
@@Martial-Mat that would make no sense as you'd want to maintain versioning which would require significantly more space. Also these drives don't just go pop. They just wear faster than usual. There a reason it's only been an issue now for launch drives.
@@profosist I don't understand your comment about versioning - I wasn't suggesting you store your back up on the SAME drive - simply another of the same type. From a user point of view, unless you are aware of this issue, these drives DO just go pop AIUI. One minute they're working, then the next they are not. The amount of time it takes to REACH that premature transition is only half of the issue.
There is an OEM version of Samsung 980pro that is called PM9A1, it has the same problems with firmware. If you have one - there is a firmware update for it called GXB7801Q, you should definitely update it.I bought a 2TB PM9A1 for 60% of the cost of 980pro, it's exactly the same drive used by manufacturers like Dell or Lenovo. The only problem - it can't be updated via Samsung Magician, you have to update it manually through CMD.
I had no idea of this firmware issue with these SSD cards and by luck came across this video. I had no "red dots" on my diagnostic scan despite having old firmware on my Samsung Pro NVMe SSDs (2 TB, 500 GB drives). I updated firmware regardless and appreciated your video bringing this to my attention and helping anyone else out there too!
Thank you for this video, Jay! I didn't know of this issue and built new my work PC last year. I have 3 of these drives and you just saved me a lot of headache in the future!
Thanks for this video Jay! I have two Samsung 970 Evos, so obviously this doesn't apply to my machine, but I help a lot of people with their machines and I enjoy learning all that I can at every opportunity. I used Samsung magician to clone my 512GB 970 to my new 1TB 970 months ago so I wouldn't have to reinstall Windows when I upgraded my C:, but that's all I've used it for. Your video reminded me of what all Magician can do and I'm going to spend more time in it on my machine, becoming more familiar with what it can do.
While I think this problem sucks, I'm glad it only affects the 2TB. A few days ago I ordered two 1TB 980s, one for each kid to upgrade their OS drive from a 1TB HDD, and I almost regretted my decision. Before I copy the OS HDD over to the new NVMe I'm going to check the firmware version and update it just to be on the safe side. Thank you, Jay, for putting this info out. Other than the build videos, videos like this and product reviews are why I enjoy your channel so much. Keep up the excellent work.
*@ChemMustang* I definitely would update them as you said if they're not already current. I believe I've heard some say that the problem _mainly_ affects the 2TB, but iirc it may affect the 1TB as well, albeit less often. Either way, you should be fine with current firmware.
It just is MORE likely to affect the 2tb, I would still upate it, there is another guy who said he has a build with a 1TB from 2021 that had bluescreens.
Thanks for this. I've been getting occasional blue screen crashes on my gaming computer, and I'm pretty sure my NVME was this model and purchased around this time (2TB as well). But since the codes were very non-specific, I had no idea what was causing it. I already swapped out the RAM to see if that was the issue. Will definitely be checking this out sometime this week.
Thank you for this video! I was concerned about my 980 Pro, but thankfully its firmware starts with a "5". I did not know about the various versions, but you made everything very clear and simple to understand! EDIT I do run the Magician software because I have 3 Samsung drives in my system (870 EVO 2TB, 960 EVO 500 GB, and most recently the 980 PRO 2TB. I wonder if it updated for me?
Unfortunately, for the 990 PRO, they also have issue where the health drop down quickly (92% with 1.1 TB total read and 2 TB total write), vs my old 970 EVO at 100% with 3.2 TB read and 4.6 TB write. They released a firmware update for it which should prevent the quick degrade of the health, but it does not revert what is already done to the drive.
LUL watched this video... then bought the 980 pro 2tb right after! My drive was already on latest firmware, manufacture date 5/9/2023 from Vietnam. Great Video J!
This is great information to know regardless of the bad batch. I got a 970 back in 2019 and been thinking it may be starting to act up. I’ll be running this test now and updating my firmware as a lot has probably changed in the last few years for performance.
@@raven4k998 yup, but apparently nothing has changed in 4 years, ran it last night. Firmware is the latest and the program can’t do diagnostics on model I have lol.
@@HITMAN934 well you fixed it before it was killed that's all that matters now you can enjoy the full use out of the drive like you should and not have it die prematurely on you
Thanks for the heads-up. I just bought one of these for my new build. It was manufactured in Korea, in 2023, so highly unlikely to be affected, but it won't hurt to check.
@@Jizzler1 Why would a general consumer still actively buy something that wasn't designed to fail, yet did, very recently, firmware update or not? Ah, because then people couldn't make contrarian comments. You are so based, ya rascal.
Jay thanks a lot of the video and bringing more attention to this issue! I want to mention something that happened to me in case someone is in the situation where they have a Samsung SSD of 2TB that was manufactured in 2021 and runs on the affected firmware version fine. Last week I started seeing posts about this issue and I was like "Ok, better update the firmware just to be safe", even though I was running the affected version fine for about ~1 year and I had no bad blocks in the SSD (tested with the magician tool). After I completed the update, I checked again for bad blocks with the magician (just to be sure), restarted my PC and everything was fine for about 6 hours and then my PC randomly shut down and wouldn't POST. Apparently my SSD entered "read only mode" and as it was my boot drive I had to go through a whole process of buying a new drive to be able to backup all my data and be able to RMA the broken SSD. So my point is: If you're running fine and you're on the affected version, please make sure that before you update, you make a backup of your data, just to be safe.
I’m glad TH-cam recommended this video because I had no idea this was a problem. Thankfully, mine was already updated from the factory but this is good to have for future reference.
Great to have this kind of heads up. I'm using pretty new Kingston N2 drives, so I'm fine, but always good to know about what's going on with this kind of thing. And honestly, depending on what you're using it for, absolutely no shame in having an old hard disk drive in a built. Cheap mass storage for data archiving is something HDDs sorted out a long time ago now, and they've gotten extremely refined for that specific niche by now - honestly don't see SSDs coming out as the cheaper solution until HDDs drop off the face of mainstream production entirely and start being the province of legacy manufacturers like those guys who only stopped making VHS and VCRs a few years back. I've got one in my new computer to work as a local archive of games (I'd rather transfer the files from elsewhere my computer running on local hydro power than from a US data centre that's probably coal or gas powered), and another couple as general data backups. If you don't need the speed of an SSD (M2 or SATA), the HDD is the better option unless you have money you just don't care about keeping. (Which, uh...would be nice.)
I disagree, HDDs aren’t worth the time if you have the money for flash storage. I recently had to replace a dying drive in my central media and backups server. 24 hours to replace, rebalance, and scrub the 4 disk 16TB array. It would have taken longer if the system was throughout limited by larger drives.
Also worth checking 970 evo 1tb's health and backing up. Had mine fail and lock read only and while researching the issue I come across a lot of others with issues. Had no issues with RMA but failure was a pain and time consuming as it happened during upgrade to Win11 🤦♂️ so looked a bit like memory also.
could be a wangblows 11 issue i refuse to update until they literally force me many of my friends\coworkers pc have issues when updating to 11 corrupting simple files for printers\spoolers they had running for YEARS without issue very annoying
I just bought one of these a few days ago! I saw the headline and thought, "oh no!". But after watching and checking, I'm running the good firmware, but thanks for explaining it so well so that I knew how to check (and what to do if it had been bad).
There is still some speculation that some of this issue is being caused by the Microsoft NVMe driver being so old and not having been updated. I've found some topics discussing forcing the Micron(I think it was Micron) NVMe driver to be used vs the MS one and that fixed the issue. Also apparently there are more Samsung drives that are having issue including the 970 Evo Plus. Samsung has an updated NVMe driver available but only for older NVMe drives and not the newer 980/990 models.
Samsung has also not updated their NVMe driver for windows 11. Realistically that driver was made to add compatibility to older systems. On newer systems its seen as not needed and most manufacturers don't and never have had one. I have upgraded systems to NVMe that without that driver and Samsung's better backwards compatibility wouldn't have been able to have NVMe (talking Gen2 stuff) .
I am so glad I ran across your video. It turns out I had the exact problem plagued firmware on my 980 Pro, but it's a 1tb drive! It was manufactured 7-15-21 in Korea
My 2TB 980 Pro was manufactured 10/25/22. Made in Taiwan and it will not allow the bios to post if it is physically in the system. It worked fine, no errors, latest firmware thru Magician. I also have a slightly older 970 Pro 1TB that did the same thing. So either there is something else going on with them, or your theory of manufacture date and place is not the issue. Either way I won't be buying Samsung again anytime soon.
Bought a 980 Pro 2TB while well aware of this issue and its solution thanks to having watched this video over a year ago, thank you. One I bought as of April 2024 came with the most recent firmware, but for anyone buying one as well, I'd double check the firmware just to be safe.
I missed this video when it was released and for some reason TH-cam just recommended it. I've been running one of these drives as my OS drive for the last couple of years, and I just picked up 2 more of them as game/storage drives because they were on super discount sale in my region, the price worked out just under $100! My OS drive is showing at 10% corruption/90% health on HW info, and sure enough my firmware begins with a 3. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I wish I saw this sooner. My 980 gave out two days ago. So pissed. Made in Korea and purchased the same time, 2021. Everything was in there 😂 now I gotta reinstall all my stuff
Just saw this. And my drive ticked all the boxes. 😮 I've had the drive and used it extensively as my OS drive for over a year so I was quite anxious. No red blocks though. And now it's updated. Thanks for this!
Thanks for the video. I had two of these 980's in my computer and one of them failed roughly 3 months ago causing a huge headache. I saw this video and checked the other one. It showed no corruption but it was on the bad version. What you described fit exactly what happened to my one that failed.
I just purchased one of these and really appreciate the video! Also props to TH-cam algorithm here as I wouldn't have looked for this myself - I'm guessing it was suggested because I was searching for drive performance comparisons between a couple of models prior to purchasing one. This is one really beneficial way sharing data across sites can help someone out rather than just being used for targeted ads.
Man you just saved me a ton of work. I have a client I built almost 40 computers for all using those drives. Most of them were the 5 firmware but 2 of them in the order were somehow older and had the 3 firmware. Same systems that had the ASUS X670e boards in them causing havoc. Cant trust our favorite brands anymore and it sucks.
Glad you posted this. I just built a system with this exact drive. My last system was an evo and it worked flawlessly so I decided on the pro this round
Thanks for the video, I stumbled upon this issue on reddit. I have a 2 year old 980 Pro myself and I actually had the affected firmware version. I did the short scan and luckily no part was affected yet.
I'm a PhD student and my entire thesis backup for all my work in the last 4 years of my life was on a 980 pro 2TB with firmware starting with 3. Thank you so much for this video, I've updated the firmware now, you may have potentially saved me an incredible amount of work.
I had red blocks showing up too!
For everything with importance have two backups!
If you haven't made an offsite backup yet DO SO NOW, THIS INSTANT.
@@mariooss You like giving other people your important work? Good luck with that.
@@marioosscloud backup lol OK feds
I have a 980 PRO 2TB that failed due to this, replaced it with a new 980 PRO thinking I just had a bad drive. Decided to double check the firmware thanks to this video and the one had bought had the bad firmware. So I'm super glad for this Video Jay!
It can be updated
Request a refund. It's a manufacturing issue and customer rights in your country should allow you to change it even after the warranty has expired.
@@VladK-1i had to call Samsung back. Lady told me I cant it's two years old. Got it October 2021 so it's not done. I call back after a long hold n bs with the supervisor. Guy a guy. Told me 5 years!! So I was more than granted to get it looked at or replaced
@@mosely25I'm not surprised Samsung customer service played you like that. I wasted about 5hrs of my life trying to get some service from them. Nothing but constant transfers, repeating my details, "that dept isn't open now", & 1 guy even hung up on me. I never did ask for a manager though. Guess I should've.
I'm never buying Samsung again. Hope they're happy with the $ they saved on a service call they never gave me.
It is now January 2024, my drive failed, and I was using it as my boot drive with everything on it that I could not afford to lose. You are right, I'm sitting here watching your video on my phone wondering WTF just happened to my 2t 980pro... made in 5/2021 ... and now it is bricked. Wish I had known about this 10 months ago. I wouldn't have lost thousands of hours of work :(
Experiencing the same 6 months later. SSD totally toasted 2 TB… I wish I seen this video sooner.
Happened to me today 😕
Ibeesoft
recovery can save some of it. My old spinning drives ran great with no fails, but were unforgiving if bumped too hard.
I’m here because my ssds seem to struggle with large NEF files
same here, happened when playing, totally blocked pc, rebooted, and ... can't boot. Same SSD, will check the number but i've bought it in 2022 so .... if i new that could happen :(
Wow, I had the exact same ssd with the exact same firmware version. I ran the test and all blocks were blue and I updated to the newest version. Man, what a video, thanks Jay and thanks to your team.
Lol same but I updated my firmware a few months ago when I randomly found and downloaded Samsung magician and it prompted me 😂
Hello
I also have a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro drive with the firmware "3B2QGXA7"! I also did the short Sacan and everything was fine. Is it bad if I do not update the BIOS first? Or can I easily update the drive to the latest version without updating the BIOS first?
@@ismailselimi I updated the firmware on ssd only and everything is good to go.
@@MrJinjol 🤝🏻
@@ismailselimi update your BIOS no matter what, it will also update your ME (Intel) which is very important, then update all of the other drivers and firmware including things like CPU Coolers, external devices, VR Headsets, peripherals, even keyboards, also update all drives (spindle & SSD), then update your video card firmware at the end, then you can do the SAMSUNG drive(s)
I installed that exact drive as a secondary data drive 2 weeks ago. The samsung magician reported I have a version 5. Thank you for the tip off. I have been using computers since 1972 with an IBM pc, 32 k, and two floppy drives. At age 74 I decided to create a dream machine. Basically I have no idea of what I am doing and your videos, though not always understood, have been a godsend.
I literally purchased this yesterday. It hasn't even arrived yet and this video was recommended in my feed. The one time I'm grateful my phone is intrusive AF. Thanks for the video
I have 2 of these drives in my system. I updated the firmware 2 months ago.... FANTASTIC coverage of this issue!
you saved your drives
Ironically I bought this exact drive because "Samsung SSDs are the reliable long-lived ones right?"
.. all the affected people that I've heard about were crypto miners. Are you doing crypto mining and rewriting your 980 Pro M.2 SSD daily??
I have two of the 980 Pro 2TB and both were absolutely fine. Hopefully I didn't make them. "unfine" by updating my firmware.
@DJaquithFL I have bad sectors on one of mine which has my os and starcitizen on it the other with my steam library on it is fine. No mining here of anytype.
Well, buy a western digital next time i guess
I choose Samsung over Western digital... and we know how that all turned out. Thinking that resources went over experience. 🤔
@@2DaveMoon So far the only drives I've ever had fail were all western digital lmao
I'm just seeing this video 10+ months after it was created. Thank you so much for making it! Turns out all of my Samsung drives needed firmware updates. Fortunately I got to them before they were locked.
Mine failed about a month ago. Hopefully you can save someone else from the headache I went through with this video. Samsung sent me a new drive under their warranty program but they were a pain to deal with (took about a month) and I was afraid to install it so I brought a different brand. I feel better about the new drive now. Thanks, Jay!
you poor thing
Same shit here. SSD failed after just over one month of use, so outside the return policy by literally FOUR DAYS. That was five months ago and I'm still awaiting my replacement from Samsung
@@erikhendrickson59 you poor thing you should have had Samsung magician installed and kept your firmware up to date well now you know to do it so this never happens again
Mine failed a month ago also, I woke up to my computer hung up at the bios, read state locked in, had to power cycle the device to read data off of it, thankfully I back up daily, but still, reinstalling and getting everything back how I need. It to be was a major PITA
Wow, I've been living under a rock. Just ordered a new 980 Pro 2tb online to use as a game drive without knowing about this issue. This will definitely be the first thing I do when I get it!
Its super unlikely that yours will be one of the drives from 2021 unless basically no hardware gets sold at the place you buy it
Me too I just order this exact drive and now I’m scared 😭 cs wtf
Edit: nvm just checked and I have 970 not 980 so I should be good lmao
This video saved me. I was one of those people with a 2TB SSD from 2021 where the firmware did start with a “3.” I had been getting some CRC errors copying data out of my Samsung 980 Pro drive and I thought that was strange. I came across this video and followed the instructions….and thank goodness because according to the SMART diagnostics I had over 207,000+ CRC errors on my drive! 😱. Thank you for this video! ❤❤❤
Thanks for this video, Jay. My 980 Pro was being used as an external NVMe drive for all my backups, and as you mentioned in the video, was one of the affected ones and I was probably about to lose all my data. Everything was as simple as you outlined, and I’m happy to report that everything seems to be fine since updating the firmware. Looking forward to more amazing content ahead!
You don't lose your data from the SSD going into "end-of-life" read-only mode, you just can't write to it anymore.
@@teardowndan5364 ...actually (with whiney nasal voice), Diskpart 'cle' still erases file system info from it. It doesn't delete partitions, and you can't delete files from it while file system is still intact, cant update firmware. So your files are safe, unless you go poking around. I had this happen last summer (2022, time is relevant). I found no info it on internet, besides single reddit post with same lockdown happening. I was able to return the SSD for full purchase price, and since the price had gone down quite a lot, made a profit on it.
Bought almost same model again, one with heatsink already attached. Updated the firmware because that's what I do with new drives, and got the same version update Samsung is offering as fix now. So they had the fix already last summer, I've triple checked the versions, and no new firmware is being offered to my 2 TB 980Pro since
Should already be upgrading and seeking updates anyways
@@teardowndan5364 Not all drives fail the same way. Some go into read only mode, others stop working, and even worse, some were known to say they were working, but they were simply overwriting data until all the flash finally failed (making data recovery impossible).
nand flash(SSDs) are no place to keep backups. because the technology depends on the ability of electrons to hold a charged state. so long before any significant wear from writing can normally take place you will be losing data from "bitrot". HDDs are naturally more resistant with data being etched in metal. even better if the drive has Shingled Magnetic Recording(SMR). where the layers flip to reduce the chance of damage to the surface of the discs.
Mad props to you guys for helping people with this issue
Had a friend snap me about his drive dying today. Turns out I have 2 computers with the same drive and firmware myself, and one of them had 52094 Media Errors and 96 Available Spare. I read that these drives usually die at around 32000 Media Errors, am I just lucky or what?
I appreciate you Jay. I have a 980 pro 2 tb NVME. Just built my pc in January. My firmware did start with a 5. Good looking out for us keep up the hard work.
Thankfully I installed Samsung Magician while I set up my PC originally so it was updating the firmware as soon as updates became available. I highly recommend to everyone that already has or is installing a new Samsung drive to install Samsung Magician as soon as possible just so that you can periodically run diagnostic scans and updates at least once a month.
Thank you for this video, Jay and JayzTwoCents team!
HOLY CRAP. I have the 2TB version and my FW was EXACTLY what you showed. I did the scan and luckily I had no red blocks. I did the FW update immediately after.
THANK YOU JAY. BEST CHANNEL ON YT.
@@readyplayerdrone6857 Yep! Totally fine.
Even before watching the entire video I want to a) thank you for actually making a video about this since most IT content creators and websites seem to ignore it (just like Samsung does!) and b) that there is an issue not only with the 980 Pro but all 870 EVO and 970 EVO drives as well, commonly kown as the "5E Media Error".
This is when the drive suddenly rapidly loses percentage on the "Available Spare" but has a quickly increasing amount of "Media Errors". This issue first made its rounds in 2022 (there are reddit topics and a ycombinator news + comments about it), but Samsung has been ignoring it.
Thinking about buying a Samsung Ssd cause my one sucks. Can you recommend which 2tb Samsung SSD would be the most reliable now?
My XPG gaming X S 70 blade 2 Tb died after 3 months
It won't boot and when i check it in the nvme configuration it shows as MN-5236 and disk size shoes 2.1 GB and sometimes when i remove the drive and install it again it shows S 70 Blade 2TB and when i run a device self test ( controllor only ) my bios freezes
Also my nvme idles around a 50 C and the max reeding i have seen on hw monitor is 62 C
@@dragoonxgamer I haven't heard of any more issues with the 990 PRO since Samsung released new firmwares for it. A friend of mine had a 970 EVO Plus that died recently, I have two of those myself (500GB and 2TB) and I check SMART values (available spare and media errors) regularly to ensure that everything is fine.
If you need a Samsung then the 990 PRO is probably the way to go, but there are other manufacturers that have great SSDs too (like the WD SN850X, for example).
Thank you for this video! Have been using mine 980 Pro 2tb as my primary game drive for about a year now, and my firmware started with 3! Scanned and thankfully there was no bad zone. And once again thank you for notifying, so that I could update mine and avoid a future disaster!
I literally just ordered this for same day delivery and now I am sitting on the toilet watching this. How does the algorithm know?! Thank you
Simple... Google owns gmail and TH-cam
I wished I had known about this video 3 months ago, or at least 2 weeks ago. I have two of these drives, and the one with my OS took a dump a week ago. Now I'm hoping that Samsung honors their 5 years parts replacement warranty and I can get a replacement. Thank you for making this video Jay!
Hey did you have any luck with Samsung? A friend of mine just had one these fail over the weekend and he said Samsung won't RMA it because he bought it through Amazon, and Amazon won't do it because 12 months have passed since purchase.
Same thing happened to me.. I'm hoping to get a replacement too but I'v been reading samsung customer support is really bad.
they will honor it
I have a 2 TB 980 Pro and I had heard about the problems that were being found with them but I couldn't find anything on what to do about it. Thanks for making this video, mine was fine and already had the latest firmware, but now I have the peace of mind and actually know that instead of wondering and waiting to see if it died.
@Arkos Yeah, I think it was just because of faulty firmware. Mine is great, love it!
@@readyplayerdrone6857 Oh yeah! It's still great. I also got it when it was on sale. Really happy with it.
My drive was the exact problem child, firmware and all. Thank you Jay for creating this video! Another reason why I keep coming back and watching your vids. Awesome work!
As you mentioned in a previously published work; Defragmenting a SSD is risky and best avoided. Discovering the weak points then having the knowledge to begin to approach a problem like this is worthy of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Good pointer! Thanks. 🐾
Thanks for the heads up on the drives. I had 2 of them all fixed now. Its awesome that guys like you help us to save us from a huge issue down the track. You count on your fingers like i do.
I have 970 evo for 4 years. I will never buy another Samsung, sketchy company. There are so many better ssd out there, SKhynix also South Korea, Kingston fury 2tb with 2pbw, high speed high endurance. WD is my personal favorite have 3.63 TB wd red plus, 1tb wd blue sn570.
@@fynkozari9271 "Sketchy company"?
@@fynkozari9271 never had a problem with my drives, both Samsung. Remember it is a firmware issue that goes on the drive !
@@Adowrath Paid shill probably
@@fynkozari9271 Funny. I've never not had a WD drive fail on me immediately after warranty expired.
What great timing for this video! I’m expecting a new NVME in the mail today. I got a western digital black so the main point of the video is not pertinent to me. I didn’t, however, know how to set up a new drive and your little tutorial has saved me the time of having to search it up on Google. Thanks for the video Jay!
the wd blacks are decent install the tool and it checks firmware levels for you.
@@markmanderson thanks for the tip. Walking to the mailbox right now to grab it!
I would still install the WD tool to check for firmware updates. I had to update my SN850Black to correct a slow write performance issue.
@@hardlyworgen71 installed and checked. Everything is up to date and I’m already installing Ghost Recon Wildlands for tonight!
EXCITING!
I had this failure happen to a 970 Pro I had that I was using as my main OS drive and was less than a year old. To say that I was beyond frustrated to unexpectedly lose everything would be an understatement, so thank you for showing everyone this quick and easy fix! I would've absolutely hated to have had this happen to my 980 Pro too.
hey @surelynoah I saw your post and my son is in a similar state. He's using a 980 PRO 1TB NVME system as his main OS disk with Windows 11. Did the Samsung tool help you upgrade your firmware and you were up and running? Did you lose any data? or did you have to re-install the O.S. from scratch?
Are you saying that you had this happen to a 970 Pro and then went out and bought a 980 Pro?? That's some brand loyality!
@@DinoRiveraSamsung Magician updates the Firmware for all Samsung drives. It won't remove any Data, you just have to reboot after updating. It's a nice peace of software with lots of handy features, it will take you easily through the process.
And even if your drive is "toast" it will still be in a readable state, so you can buy a new drive and clone the data from the old drive to the new one. @surelynoah so your failure was probably a different one since you appear to have lost your data
@@DerRusher I guess my drive is "toast" just now... It suddenly ran into blue screen and can't reboot anymore. Will Samsung warranty covers it (bought 2ys ago, just 13TBW so technically should be covered) ? Or should I just go ahead buy a new ssd?
@DerRusher how exactly would you clone it if you can't boot into windows?
A moment to appreciate your efforts.
The value that I see and keep coming back to this channel is that you explain things as dumb down as possible along with the explanation about technology behind it. So it is as simple as simply following if you are in hurry or waiting and understanding your explanation even good for not tech person.
In short the grass root level approach like how a common man will address or handle a problem or situation is a unique USP . Keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing this one, and good luck with future ones.
@Maestro Try replying to main thread instead of replying to my comment, so that your question gets more engagement for someone to respond. Good Luck.
Thank you so much Jay and who ever brought this to your attention, my PC has only these drives 1 for boot and 1 for games, and both had the affected firmware version, you have just saved me a lot of confusing trouble if my drives bricked!!
much love keep up the good work!
Were you able to use the Samsung Wizard updater to update firmware on your boot drive? I presume you mean the drive you both boot from, and run Windows from. I'm curious whether having the bad firmware on your Windows disk, that you are currently running Windows from, makes it impossible to update the firmware. You make it sound like it was easy, good for you :)
Yes!
No problem what so ever quick and painless just a reboot, you ever used the performance mode on these drives?
I'm rocking 2 980s, 1TB C: 2TB D:
I am the one who have that drive and didn’t know about that error . A big thank you, jay!
Hi Jay - many thanks for this tip - I was one of the affected ones. Please note the update was not going through, while the fan control utility you posted on another video was running. As soon as I disabled it, it all went fine. BTW my drive was split in 2 partitions and the smaller one was running the OS - maybe this is why the conflict was there. It would be good if you could do an independent test.
Jay I cannot thank you enough. I built my latest gaming PC back in August 2021 and I’ve been dealing with critical Windows blue screen/crashing errors ever since and it just recently became a 100% failure. I’ve been reinstalling Windows over and over with no success and I was hesitant to start trying different hardware just due to time constraints. I have a Samsung NVME 1TB with these issues, not sure what firmware it’s on but I’m gonna try this tonight and hopefully it fixes my corrupted OS.
Might be talking a little early but seriously man this video is probably exactly what I need. Trying not to get my hopes up but I could see this fixing my PC.
UPDATE 3/15/2023: Took out my SSD entirely and I was able to install Windows just fine on another drive with no issues. I did not confirm if it was this exact issue with the drive but at the very least this video pointed me in the right direction and saved me more frustration and time. Thank you again!
Try turning off fast startup in the windows power options fixed my blue screen on startup problem
I had the same similar issue as you, 2 times in a row, both ended up being the cpu after working for a few months then slowly over next few months of issue you explained above, it completely would be a goner. I replaced my drives, thought tht was the original issue, replaced ram, tested PSU, ended up being the cpu. a 12900K and a 13900K both same issue.
GIve an update tho if this fixes your issues. Will be happy to hear if you solve it with a simple fix such as this.
I don’t think it’ll end up being my CPU (Ryzen 9 5950x) but I’ll definitely update this thread
@@GiantDad998 How did it go?
I just checked my 980 Evo because of this video. I would not have known about this problem without this video. Mine was manufactured in August 2022, so I already had the latest firmware version, but it could very easily have been one of the affected ones. I'm glad it's just a firmware issue that's easy to fix.
I strongly recommend backups before updating SSD FW update if you want to be sure. I recommend backups anyways. Jayz, how about a backup feature, "How to reliably backup Windows for bare metal restore and what are good choices for attaching your NAS to 10gbe these days now that backing up several TB over GBE will make you turn old and grey" ?
You can get sub $20 adapters that will plug into a regular pice slot and present an m.2 pcie connector to add a drive to. This is just converting the connectors from add in slot to m.2 so if you only have one nvme m.2 connector on your main board this should allow you to use a pcie slot for this.
I wish motherboards had more PCIe slots and less M.2 slots. With a PCIe slot I can add M.2 drives but I can also add lots of other things. With M.2 slots I can add M.2 drives but nothing else. More than one M.2 slot on a board that replaces a PCIe slot is just a waste.
@@mjc0961 Actually you can get SATA adapters that will fit in the M.2 slots. That's one example. I didn't know it was a thing until I saw a video about it.
I just installed one on 5/19 just a few days ago. I bought it last year around the first of December. Thanks to this video I was able to download and use the utility to check my drive, which turned out to be fine. Thank you.
I'm glad I found this video, not because I even own a Samsung NVMe, but updating firmware is just a good idea, and Kingston had an update ready. It's never fun to lose data.
Glad you made this video, I'd heard of the issue but I heard it was the 990 PRO drives that were affected. I do have a 2TB 980 PRO but my firmware version starts with a "5". So that bullet at least was dodged.
My drive died & wouldn't boot. I sent it back to Samsung for warranty repair & they told me nothing was wrong with it & they'll be sending it back to me shortly. No mention of anything that you spoke of. Not the issue of the problem, the fix or the software. Nothing and I bought 2 of these drives. I just canceled my 990 Pro 2TB order because I saw a video saying that customers are reporting that those drives are losing 10% of their life span in the 1st month of use. I love Samsung but my faith in them is starting to fall. Thanks for your help. It's always appreciated.
I've already had recent problems with my 3090 and my CPU cooler this week, and bought one of these drives in 1TB size at the same time when I built the PC, so I appreciate the heads up on this to avoid yet another part that might fail. I apparently bought mine right before this corrupted firmware started rolling out.
You bought a 1TB so you weren't at risk. This only affects the 980 pro 2TB drives.
@@666Daheretic "According to Puget, the failures traced back to the 3B2QGXA7 firmware and primarily affect 2TB versions of the 980 Pro (although lower capacities are not entirely immune)."
@@666Daheretic Thanks, I had the same question
Jay your a life saver , my firmware was the bad one , and I had the exact same drive and was unaware of this issue! my scan came up all blue so I guess I was lucky but I’m all up to date! Great video and thanks again!
yeah you have to update the firmware to save your drive
samsung is frankly the worst electronics company in existence. every samsug device invariably breaks, burns, explodes, or just plain fails within the first year of use
@@cagneybillingsley2165 You have zero ideal about your knowledgeability regarding Samsung. Please sit back & enjoy the show
@@Xyz_Litty literal AI-generated sentence
@@cagneybillingsley2165 no
I heard about issues with this SSD after I bought one. Thanks for explaining the issue and how to fix it. Good job 👍
I had this issue. My 980 Pro had the bad firmware. I started noticing some of my files were being corrupted. I rested it in samsung Magician and got lots of red sectors. The data was toast, which was a pain, but updating the firmware at least fixed the bad sectors it seems.
Thanks Jay for putting this out. I thought the drive was broken until I saw your explanation.
I was missing details like this in the video. So the data gets corrupted, only the sectors are greenlit again. He said the data is not corrupted, the error is only in the firmware.
Absolute PROPS Jay!
You're out here saving lives - I appreciate you, and your channel so much thanks for this video!
He saved my 980 PRO with Heat sink 1TB it had the affected firmware
Thank you!! I was literally the person you said at the end, with the exception of any red blocks. Really appreciate the how to videos.
I just got a 2TB 980 Pro, and it came with the latest firmware version.
I also had a much older 1TB 980 Pro that I updated to the latest version after watching GN's video.
Thanks for putting this info out there Jay. I was aware of the 990 Pro issues but not the ones affecting the 980 Pro.
Same here. I didn’t know about the 980 Pro as well. Need to check my drive ASAP
I had the one 1tb for games only and it died and bricked my system. Had to get a new 2tb, bout to update
@@bowlagrits I have had the 1TB 980Pro as my OS drive and bought that one around June/July 2021. I just checked and I’m on the latest firmware.
It's good you updated it, but from what I've read, only the 2TB 980 Pro had the issues.
@@icy1007 its just more likely to be the 2TB
Thank you so much for this. I just bought a new 980 Pro which has the new firmware, but my other 2 older ones had the bad firmware. My old 2 are in a RAID1 configuration so I had to do some shuffling and RAID rebuilding so I could update the firmware on them, but it's all done now. You saved my data!
YT randomly suggested this to me, and I have that exact 980 NVME drive and the exact ver 3 firmware. I had no idea Samsung Magician was even a thing, now into my 3rd SSD. You are my hero.
As an IT professional, I have a bunch of PCs around my office/workshop. Every single Gen1 SSD I had abruptly failed 4 years ago and now the same thing is happening to the first NVMe drives I purchased. Shockingly, the most reliable SSDs I have are cheap Chinese Netac drives for the Chinese market I randomly picked up off the shelf in Asia.
What country, exactly, is Asia?
@@landychapman3 My guess would be mAleSIA.
I finally decided to upgrade my 970 evo from like 2018 and a whole other system ago.
Just saw 980 pros for around $150 on sale on amazon. Immediately impulse bought. And then later found this video terrified that this was the main reason they were on sale. Glad to say my unit is manufactured in 2023 Vietnam, and I will be downloading magician anyway to update as needed.
An incredibly informative no nonsense video.
This issue isn't found with Vietnam made Samsung 980 Pros?
@@kwondeville yes.
I was expressing my relief at the fact that the 980 pro I bought was not affected. I had no way of knowing until it arrived and was concerned.
Legend!
I made my second PC but total novice as the first one was 20 years ago. I got all top parts with Samsung 990 Pro 1TB. Fantastic! I loved making it! However, after my first day in operation every so often I'd get a grey screen. My Tech friend is in another country so I couldn't show my PC to him. He sent me this video, but it isn't a 980 but a 990. I decided to watch it and it seemed similar to the 980, as it wasn't happening all the time. So I did the tiny test, and it's worked! This was 3 to 4 months ago. I haven't had a grey screen ever since.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for this video. This is really important info. As you said, nothing sucks more than losing your data. I have files on my SSDs and harddrive which date all the way back to year 2000. You couldn't get that data back from ANYWHERE any more. So it indeed would suck, a lot.
Do note that if you put the drive in another computer as secondary drive, you can still *read* it.
I'm so goddamn glad you put this video out. I only lament it wasn't towards the end of 2022 that this came out. I bought Samsung cause I trust their reliability even at the pinch of the wallet. What I went through to even try and recover my data was an absolute nightmare, some of it self inflicted due to bad practices and complacency but I never expected a Samsung drive to fail THAT fast. I'll check my newer replacement one with magician and the spare I'm ordering. I suppose the curious question is since this was an oopsie on their part, are they warranting the drives for replacement.
I contacted samsung memory and eventually got a refurb as replacement. I had to ship in my old one first but was able to pull most of the data off to another harddrive.
My Samsung 980 Pro 2TB failed without warning. Windows 11 popped up an "Oops!" message, rebooted, and I'm stuck in the ASUS infinite BIOS loop. I wish I had seen this video, but without having encountered this problem I'd never have looked for it. Samsung should have been sending out advisory notices to registered owners.
@@gaiustacitus4242 I have an ASUS as well with a 2TB, suddenly about a month ago windoze 11 BSOD on me and restart also went into boot loop. Ive been using my older main with linux since and this video seems to explain what happened to me. Ive only had the newer computer with the 2tb for like 6 months, and its been a headache every step of the way, between an overheat issue since day 1, windoze 11 being its typical post 7 shitpile, and now a drive failure. Gonna have to look into seeing if I can get a refurb like beep bleep did
I was worried at first because I have a 1TB 980 Pro that was made in Feb 2021, I had installed it in March of 2021. I'm glad you said it's only in the 2TB NVME SSDs. I've had Samsung Magician installed since I got it & it's been installing firmware updates over the past 2 years, I have the most recent firmware installed in it. It's still working great, no errors!
Thanks Jay for your video, I have two of these one for the OS and the other for backups, both had been the ones outlined! at almost 600 dollars each here in NZ I'm thankful to your video. Because of watching your video's I decided to build my own PC from scratch last year so it's just on 12 months old. Again thank you it is very much appreciated.
Encountered this in the previous generation, both of my 870 EVO failed within a year. Red blocks are fixable also by secure erase (though, the S.M.A.R.T. errors obviously persist). Those blocks appear on the data that was sitting on the drive untouched for a long time. I believe the NAND looses charge much quicker than expected and the new firmware just adds quirks to overcome NAND problems, probably just refreshing cells more often.
thanks my drives were on the bad version and ive had them for a year so i was probably on the verge of loosing them. you saved me hours of pain and hundreds of dollars. tysm
Thanks for making this video, Jay. I have two impacted drives and I only knew about this issue and was able to fix it because of you.
No problem
Jay, thank you so very much for taking your time and money to make this video. My storage drive with all my work, photos, videos and games were all stored on the exact Samsung drive. Nothing was corrupted or lost, but without your video I probably would never have known to update the firmware, and could have lost everything. A thousand thank you’s, Jay!!! 🤙🙏
well you should keep doing it now cause you found out that people found out the hard way that an old firmware can kill your drive before it's time if you do not update when the updates come out
I purchased my 980 Pro in September (2022) from Amazon for a PS5 install. The drive has the latest firmware from Samsung that you note in the video. Thank you for your video.
Jayz, there is a situation that could be even worse. If the drive is locked in time, that's annoying but at least you can accesss the data presumably, but if the drive uses whole drive encryption such as bitlocker, it needs write access to even READ from it.
Which is why you should keep backups that are also encrypted ;)
@@profosist Just hope you don't keep THEM on one of these drives too...
@@Martial-Mat that would make no sense as you'd want to maintain versioning which would require significantly more space. Also these drives don't just go pop. They just wear faster than usual. There a reason it's only been an issue now for launch drives.
@@profosist I don't understand your comment about versioning - I wasn't suggesting you store your back up on the SAME drive - simply another of the same type. From a user point of view, unless you are aware of this issue, these drives DO just go pop AIUI. One minute they're working, then the next they are not. The amount of time it takes to REACH that premature transition is only half of the issue.
There is an OEM version of Samsung 980pro that is called PM9A1, it has the same problems with firmware. If you have one - there is a firmware update for it called GXB7801Q, you should definitely update it.I bought a 2TB PM9A1 for 60% of the cost of 980pro, it's exactly the same drive used by manufacturers like Dell or Lenovo. The only problem - it can't be updated via Samsung Magician, you have to update it manually through CMD.
I had no idea of this firmware issue with these SSD cards and by luck came across this video. I had no "red dots" on my diagnostic scan despite having old firmware on my Samsung Pro NVMe SSDs (2 TB, 500 GB drives).
I updated firmware regardless and appreciated your video bringing this to my attention and helping anyone else out there too!
Thank you for this video, Jay! I didn't know of this issue and built new my work PC last year. I have 3 of these drives and you just saved me a lot of headache in the future!
good idea to update you firmware and problem is solved
@@raven4k998 Done and Done. :)
Thanks for this video Jay! I have two Samsung 970 Evos, so obviously this doesn't apply to my machine, but I help a lot of people with their machines and I enjoy learning all that I can at every opportunity.
I used Samsung magician to clone my 512GB 970 to my new 1TB 970 months ago so I wouldn't have to reinstall Windows when I upgraded my C:, but that's all I've used it for. Your video reminded me of what all Magician can do and I'm going to spend more time in it on my machine, becoming more familiar with what it can do.
I just bought this drive an hour ago. Will check this asap. Thank you so much!
While I think this problem sucks, I'm glad it only affects the 2TB. A few days ago I ordered two 1TB 980s, one for each kid to upgrade their OS drive from a 1TB HDD, and I almost regretted my decision. Before I copy the OS HDD over to the new NVMe I'm going to check the firmware version and update it just to be on the safe side. Thank you, Jay, for putting this info out. Other than the build videos, videos like this and product reviews are why I enjoy your channel so much. Keep up the excellent work.
Nope, My 980 Pro 1Tb has gone down to 99% in a single month
*@ChemMustang* I definitely would update them as you said if they're not already current. I believe I've heard some say that the problem _mainly_ affects the 2TB, but iirc it may affect the 1TB as well, albeit less often. Either way, you should be fine with current firmware.
still update them. other models are effected but its less common
It just is MORE likely to affect the 2tb, I would still upate it, there is another guy who said he has a build with a 1TB from 2021 that had bluescreens.
Thanks for this. I've been getting occasional blue screen crashes on my gaming computer, and I'm pretty sure my NVME was this model and purchased around this time (2TB as well). But since the codes were very non-specific, I had no idea what was causing it. I already swapped out the RAM to see if that was the issue. Will definitely be checking this out sometime this week.
Nevermind ... it's an XPG brand NVME.
Sometimes its good, if google stalks you. Just bought the exact same model - it arrived and on the same day this video was recomended to me
Thank you for this video! I was concerned about my 980 Pro, but thankfully its firmware starts with a "5". I did not know about the various versions, but you made everything very clear and simple to understand!
EDIT
I do run the Magician software because I have 3 Samsung drives in my system (870 EVO 2TB, 960 EVO 500 GB, and most recently the 980 PRO 2TB. I wonder if it updated for me?
Unfortunately, for the 990 PRO, they also have issue where the health drop down quickly (92% with 1.1 TB total read and 2 TB total write), vs my old 970 EVO at 100% with 3.2 TB read and 4.6 TB write. They released a firmware update for it which should prevent the quick degrade of the health, but it does not revert what is already done to the drive.
I own 990 pro 1,4TB written before firmware update and health is Still 100%.
LUL watched this video... then bought the 980 pro 2tb right after! My drive was already on latest firmware, manufacture date 5/9/2023 from Vietnam. Great Video J!
Really awesome of you to put this out there, thank you so much!
This is great information to know regardless of the bad batch. I got a 970 back in 2019 and been thinking it may be starting to act up. I’ll be running this test now and updating my firmware as a lot has probably changed in the last few years for performance.
goes to show why updating your firmware blindly may save you from things like this from biting you in the butt later on down the road
@@raven4k998 yup, but apparently nothing has changed in 4 years, ran it last night. Firmware is the latest and the program can’t do diagnostics on model I have lol.
@@HITMAN934 well you fixed it before it was killed that's all that matters now you can enjoy the full use out of the drive like you should and not have it die prematurely on you
950's user here. Still feels as new, no issues at all, with over 70 TB written since 2016.
Thanks HITMAN, I have the 970 EVO as well.
Thanks for the heads-up. I just bought one of these for my new build. It was manufactured in Korea, in 2023, so highly unlikely to be affected, but it won't hurt to check.
Just saved me while I’m adding 980 pro 2tb in the my Amazon cart lol. Thanks Jay! That notification bell saved the day 😂
you haven't watched the video, it is fixed with an easy firmware update in Samsung Magician.
@@ehdbomon god people gotta watch vid full before they comment 😪😑
@@Jizzler1 Why would a general consumer still actively buy something that wasn't designed to fail, yet did, very recently, firmware update or not? Ah, because then people couldn't make contrarian comments. You are so based, ya rascal.
@@ehdbom how? Installing for ps5
@@Jizzler1 well, in this case that isn't even necessary. All you need is to not be a semi literate. The title itself already says it's fixed lol
I'm surprised you didn't mention the 990 pro issues as well. Seems to be same or similar problem they just released a firmware for it 2 weeks ago.
i am also surprised
Thanks, this is good to know since I just bought one. SSDs are dirt cheap now but the data on it.... priceless.
The Samsung 990 Pro's also had wear issues requiring a firmware fix but no restoration of wear level after.
which was 2 weeks ago
Jay thanks a lot of the video and bringing more attention to this issue! I want to mention something that happened to me in case someone is in the situation where they have a Samsung SSD of 2TB that was manufactured in 2021 and runs on the affected firmware version fine. Last week I started seeing posts about this issue and I was like "Ok, better update the firmware just to be safe", even though I was running the affected version fine for about ~1 year and I had no bad blocks in the SSD (tested with the magician tool). After I completed the update, I checked again for bad blocks with the magician (just to be sure), restarted my PC and everything was fine for about 6 hours and then my PC randomly shut down and wouldn't POST. Apparently my SSD entered "read only mode" and as it was my boot drive I had to go through a whole process of buying a new drive to be able to backup all my data and be able to RMA the broken SSD.
So my point is: If you're running fine and you're on the affected version, please make sure that before you update, you make a backup of your data, just to be safe.
I’m glad TH-cam recommended this video because I had no idea this was a problem. Thankfully, mine was already updated from the factory but this is good to have for future reference.
Great to have this kind of heads up. I'm using pretty new Kingston N2 drives, so I'm fine, but always good to know about what's going on with this kind of thing.
And honestly, depending on what you're using it for, absolutely no shame in having an old hard disk drive in a built. Cheap mass storage for data archiving is something HDDs sorted out a long time ago now, and they've gotten extremely refined for that specific niche by now - honestly don't see SSDs coming out as the cheaper solution until HDDs drop off the face of mainstream production entirely and start being the province of legacy manufacturers like those guys who only stopped making VHS and VCRs a few years back. I've got one in my new computer to work as a local archive of games (I'd rather transfer the files from elsewhere my computer running on local hydro power than from a US data centre that's probably coal or gas powered), and another couple as general data backups. If you don't need the speed of an SSD (M2 or SATA), the HDD is the better option unless you have money you just don't care about keeping. (Which, uh...would be nice.)
I disagree, HDDs aren’t worth the time if you have the money for flash storage. I recently had to replace a dying drive in my central media and backups server. 24 hours to replace, rebalance, and scrub the 4 disk 16TB array. It would have taken longer if the system was throughout limited by larger drives.
Weren't the new Kingston N2's literally just secretly changed to use lower quality components?
@@dazeen9591 more like Scrubston
Also worth checking 970 evo 1tb's health and backing up. Had mine fail and lock read only and while researching the issue I come across a lot of others with issues. Had no issues with RMA but failure was a pain and time consuming as it happened during upgrade to Win11 🤦♂️ so looked a bit like memory also.
could be a wangblows 11 issue
i refuse to update until they literally force me
many of my friends\coworkers pc have issues when updating to 11
corrupting simple files for printers\spoolers they had running for YEARS without issue
very annoying
I just bought one of these a few days ago! I saw the headline and thought, "oh no!". But after watching and checking, I'm running the good firmware, but thanks for explaining it so well so that I knew how to check (and what to do if it had been bad).
There is still some speculation that some of this issue is being caused by the Microsoft NVMe driver being so old and not having been updated. I've found some topics discussing forcing the Micron(I think it was Micron) NVMe driver to be used vs the MS one and that fixed the issue. Also apparently there are more Samsung drives that are having issue including the 970 Evo Plus. Samsung has an updated NVMe driver available but only for older NVMe drives and not the newer 980/990 models.
Samsung has also not updated their NVMe driver for windows 11. Realistically that driver was made to add compatibility to older systems. On newer systems its seen as not needed and most manufacturers don't and never have had one.
I have upgraded systems to NVMe that without that driver and Samsung's better backwards compatibility wouldn't have been able to have NVMe (talking Gen2 stuff) .
Found this video 2 days after my drive went read only.
Me too
Can you update the firmware even after it is read only?
@@TheyStoleMyHandleAgain No, unfortunately not.
I am so glad I ran across your video. It turns out I had the exact problem plagued firmware on my 980 Pro, but it's a 1tb drive! It was manufactured 7-15-21 in Korea
Lookin good Jay
Samsung Manager: Well time to fire that minimum wage technician
My 2TB 980 Pro was manufactured 10/25/22. Made in Taiwan and it will not allow the bios to post if it is physically in the system. It worked fine, no errors, latest firmware thru Magician. I also have a slightly older 970 Pro 1TB that did the same thing. So either there is something else going on with them, or your theory of manufacture date and place is not the issue.
Either way I won't be buying Samsung again anytime soon.
Does it only effect the 2tb 980 pro or all 980 pros?
Dosnt hurt to check
Bought a 980 Pro 2TB while well aware of this issue and its solution thanks to having watched this video over a year ago, thank you. One I bought as of April 2024 came with the most recent firmware, but for anyone buying one as well, I'd double check the firmware just to be safe.
I missed this video when it was released and for some reason TH-cam just recommended it. I've been running one of these drives as my OS drive for the last couple of years, and I just picked up 2 more of them as game/storage drives because they were on super discount sale in my region, the price worked out just under $100!
My OS drive is showing at 10% corruption/90% health on HW info, and sure enough my firmware begins with a 3.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I wish I saw this sooner. My 980 gave out two days ago. So pissed. Made in Korea and purchased the same time, 2021.
Everything was in there 😂 now I gotta reinstall all my stuff
Just saw this. And my drive ticked all the boxes. 😮
I've had the drive and used it extensively as my OS drive for over a year so I was quite anxious. No red blocks though. And now it's updated. Thanks for this!
Thanks for the video. I had two of these 980's in my computer and one of them failed roughly 3 months ago causing a huge headache. I saw this video and checked the other one. It showed no corruption but it was on the bad version. What you described fit exactly what happened to my one that failed.
I just purchased one of these and really appreciate the video! Also props to TH-cam algorithm here as I wouldn't have looked for this myself - I'm guessing it was suggested because I was searching for drive performance comparisons between a couple of models prior to purchasing one. This is one really beneficial way sharing data across sites can help someone out rather than just being used for targeted ads.
Man you just saved me a ton of work. I have a client I built almost 40 computers for all using those drives. Most of them were the 5 firmware but 2 of them in the order were somehow older and had the 3 firmware. Same systems that had the ASUS X670e boards in them causing havoc. Cant trust our favorite brands anymore and it sucks.
Glad you posted this. I just built a system with this exact drive. My last system was an evo and it worked flawlessly so I decided on the pro this round
Thanks for the video, I stumbled upon this issue on reddit. I have a 2 year old 980 Pro myself and I actually had the affected firmware version. I did the short scan and luckily no part was affected yet.