Last week we mentioned that Samsung had rolled out a firmware update for the 980 Pro SSD (opens in new tab). In that article, we also mentioned that it wouldn't be long before Samsung would be patching the 990 Pro SSD (opens in new tab) as well.

Surprisingly, Samsung informed us that the patch for the 990 Pro is expected to arrive this month and should put an end to this problem.

In response to a customer support inquiry, a company representative confirmed that Samsung is aware of the issue.

"Samsung is currently reviewing customer inquiries regarding anomalies related to SMART Percentage Used (Samsung Magician) and/or Health Status (Crystal Disk Info) on the Samsung SSD 990 PRO." (via Computer Base (opens in new tab)). We have been able to reproduce the error under certain usage conditions."

"To fix the problem, Samsung plans to release a firmware update in February."

That's a pretty sketchy time to expect a patch, and hopefully your SSD's health won't collapse in the meantime. But at least Samsung is confident that this is a firmware issue and not an inherent hardware problem. As we reported last week, initial reports suggested that Samsung was not properly addressing customer complaints of rapidly declining SSD health as indicated by the Samsung Magician application and was even refusing to return these SSDs. With added pressure from the press, it appears that the return of these drives has been accepted and is being handled properly.

While NAND chips are expected to last longer, Samsung's chips are expected to last even longer because Samsung is at the forefront of SSD technology and manufacturing. However, Samsung's leadership in SSDs appears to have been lost recently. Where once Samsung would have taken the #1 best SSD for gaming (open in new tab), these days it is much tougher to recommend against solid competition. a series of problems with the 980 Pro (open in new tab) and 990 Pro SSD have done little to help the Korean tech giant. It does little to help the Korean tech giant.

In fact, just last week, system builder and tester Puget Systems indicated that it plans to move away from Samsung SSDs and use Sabrent drives instead, given the problems with both the 980 Pro and 990 Pro (opens in new tab). This is one blow to Samsung's business, but it is certainly a bigger blow to customer confidence in the company's products. We hope this is the last word on Samsung's reliability problems and that the company can instead return to the Samsung we know and love: reliable, high-performance solid state drives.