Samsung Pro SSD reliability questioned as longtime partner shifts to Sabrent

Samsung Pro SSD reliability questioned as longtime partner shifts to Sabrent

Samsung's Pro series of SSDs are often among reviewers’ top recommendations for users seeking high-speed storage for large work files, apps, and boot drives. But over the past year, reliability concerns around Samsung’s 980 Pro and most recent 990 Pro SSDs have marred the company’s strong reputation among PC enthusiasts. The problems have become so notable that custom PC-maker Puget Systems, a top proponent of Samsung SSDs since the SATA days, has pulled 1TB and 2TB Samsung drives from its lineup.

For Puget, problems with Samsung SSDs, which the 22-year-old boutique PC shop sells in its custom-built systems, started with the Samsung 980 Pro SSDs. On January 31, 2023 Puget wrote a blog noting it received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung SSD drives, specifically with the 2TB version of the 980 Pro.

The most common failure mode that Puget has found is that the SSD drives are suddenly locked into read-only mode, rendering the drive unusable. If the failed SSD drive is the primary drive, then the system becomes unbootable until the drive is replaced and the OS is reinstalled. To remedy the issue, Samsung recently released a firmware update, and Puget noted that it worked with Samsung for months to help resolve the problems.

But users also started reporting reliability issues with the updated model, the 990 Pro SSD. Various users across the web, including on Reddit, Twitter, and the Overclock.net forums, reported rapid health decline of the 990 SSDs. One user even reported the 990 Pro SSD showing 64 percent health with 2TB of data written. Authorized returns of the devices resulted in Samsung factory-resetting the SSDs and saying they weren’t defective.

Samsung is reportedly working on the issue with Puget but hasn’t made any public statements. In its blog post posted on February 2, 2023, Puget announced that the company is transitioning its 1 and 2TB NVMe SSD drives over to Sabrent while this situation unfolds and they learn more. The company will still use Samsung’s 500GB 980 Pro. Puget’s blog noted that there is a chance that the 990 Pro SSD issue is just improper reporting of endurance loss. The company will work with Samsung to help arrive at a solution for Puget customers and the general public. The company will still use Samsung’s 500GB 980 Pro.

However, all SSDs have a limited number of write cycles, so the ability to write on them will eventually wear out and may lead to data loss. If that happens, the Samsung 980 SSD owners as well as the 990 Pro SSD owners will need to contact a professional data recovery services provider like ACE Data Recovery. Although every SSD recovery situation is unique, ACEs can also develop custom solutions for retrieving data from failed external hard drives. ACE Data Recovery team is ready to help the owners of the Samsung 980 Pro and the 990 Pro SSDs with their data recovery needs.