My main operating system SSD crashed today, a Samsung drive.

There is a serious bug in Samsung SSD BIOS. If you do not update your Samsung SSD firmware, what happened to me may likely happen to you, depending on your model.

You need to do this immediately.

Do not wait.

What happens is your machine will lock up, and on reboot, the Samsung SSD is write protected. You can no longer write data to them. Also, if you are very unlucky, most or all of the data will be lost.

I was fortunate. I had a few files here or there missing, but the main bits were intact. I also have offsite cloud backup. In addition, I have a second bootable OS drive on my machine, always, in case something happens, so I can failover within minutes.

Regardless, I spent the last eight hours installing a new SSD, cloning the OS off the platter to the SSD, and then all the user bits, etc.

-I could not clone the Samsung SSD. The clone would not even begin. It errored out.-

If you do not want this nightmare to happen to you, download Samsung Magician if you have a Samsung SSD, and check your drive under Drive Details, find out your BIOS version, and check online. The tool will likely also tell you if there is an update available.

I am very tired.

I need sleep.

And morning comes early.


Take care, everyone. I hope this warning finds help for someone.

I have a Samsung SSD as my windows drive so appreciate the heads up.

Is your Samsung drive very old or does it not matter about age?

I would check, no matter the age. My SSD that died was only a year old, a 980 EVO Pro.

Thanks for the heads-up. All my drives are Samsung, and although I already have and have used Samsung Magician I will go through it again & update all relevant drives (which is nearly all of them).

Was it an out-of-the-blue failure or the result of something?

Thanks Blastman, just checked mine. There are no updates available in the Magician software.. Also checked the HP site for driver/firmware updates, again no firmware update needed.

IIRC it was a problem with the 980s in particular.

Interesting, I have 2 x 850 and an 860.

When I looked it up it's a lot more than just 980s, it was a problem with these as well:

870 EVO: S5Y2NJ0N / S5Y2NJ0R / S5Y3NF0R / S5Y3NG0R / S621NG0R / S625NJ0R / S626NF0R / S626NJ0R / S626NX0R / S62BNJ0R / S62CNF0R / S62CNJ0R / S6BANJ0R / S6BBNG0R / S6BCNG0R / S6BCNJ0R / S6PNNJ0R / S6PTNJ0R / S6PTNZ0R / S6PUNF0R / S6PXNJ0R

970 EVO: S464NB0K / S465NF0K / S466NF0K / S466NX0K / S466NX0M / S5H7NS0N / S5H9NS0N

970 EVO PLUS: S6P7NG0R / S6P7NF0T / S6P1NS0W

980: S649NF0R / S649NF1R / S649NG0R / S649NJ0R / S649NX0R / S64ANG0R / S64DNF0R

980 PRO: S5GXNF0R / S5GXNF0T / S5GXNG0N / S5GYNX0R / S69ENF0R / S69ENG0R / S6B0NC0R / S6B0NG0R

990 PRO: S6Z1NJ0T


So if you have aN 870, 970, 980 OR 990 you might want to check for updates. Most of the problems are from ones built before ~November 2022.

Thanks for the heads-up. Checking now.

Yep, this info came out many months ago. Tom's Hardware even did a big piece on it, luckily my Win10 desktop PC build was relatively new and so I had the latest firmware on all my Samsung drives.

I've also been bitten by SSD firmware issues on the Enterprise side of IT as well. What a PITA...

The drive failed when I was doing a copy/paste to another drive.

Everything in the folder I was copy/pasting from was lost.

Various large scattered files were lost as well(most were +12 - 14 gb in size).

Not heard this before and I've 3 Samsung SSDs. All updated now thanks!

When checked, mine apparently were "up to date".

But, "heads up" posts are welcome,

Downloading Samsung Magician and checking some drives, thanks Blastman