Samsung 870 EVO safe nowadays? (Those made after nov 2022)

[Mumintroll]

I've been reading alot of horror stories about this model.

But I've also been reading that it seems those manufactured after november 2022 are safe.

Looking at Samsung's site for firmwares there is a note saying *The 870 EVO model will be manufactured with a revised V6 process starting November 2022.

 

Does anyone have an 870 EVO made after that date and still working fine?

[Hinjima]

6 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

I've been reading alot of horror stories about this model.

But I've also been reading that it seems those manufactured after november 2022 are safe.

Looking at Samsung's site for firmwares there is a note saying *The 870 EVO model will be manufactured with a revised V6 process starting November 2022.

 

Does anyone have an 870 EVO made after that date and still working fine?

They are safe.  There should be a firmware update for the SSD's made before November 2022 that fixes the issues as well.

[Tetras]

I don't recall seeing any drives with the new model's firmware (SVT03) that have the problem with ecc errors/bad blocks, but because the problems take awhile to appear and they're silent for many users until the read/copy errors start showing up, it is hard to say 100% that they're all safe.

[Alex Atkin UK]

This one completely slipped me by, fortunately I opted for cheaper models at that point.

 

Its sad to see Samsung have so many issues in recent years after being so reliable prior to that.  Particularly as the problems they had were cumulative, newer firmware did not negate the damage already done.

[kokosnh]

2 hours ago, Mumintroll said:

Does anyone have an 870 EVO made after that date and still working fine?

We usually see 870 evo  2TB and 4TB from the older ones, with failed NAND, every month or so ( it’s less now days ). 
And yes, they just die, no firmware update can fix that. 

 

[Mumintroll]

2 hours ago, kokosnh said:

We usually see 870 evo  2TB and 4TB from the older ones, with failed NAND, every month or so ( it’s less now days ). 
And yes, they just die, no firmware update can fix that. 

 

 

4 hours ago, Hinjima said:

They are safe.  There should be a firmware update for the SSD's made before November 2022 that fixes the issues as well.

 

Here are 2 conflicting statements.

One saying a firmware update for the pre Nov 2022 (done directly after installing it I presume) will avoid the issues.

The other saying a firmware update wouldn't help, perhaps it's more of a hardware defect during manufacturing?

 

The small note from Samsung *The 870 EVO model will be manufactured with a revised V6 process starting November 2022 that they wrote seem to be a change in how they actually are manufactured, and the problem with the earlier 870s was more of a hardware defect. But I don't know, their note is abit cryptic...

 

[Tetras]

29 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

Here are 2 conflicting statements.

One saying a firmware update for the pre Nov 2022 (done directly after installing it I presume) will avoid the issues.

The other saying a firmware update wouldn't help, perhaps it's more of a hardware defect during manufacturing?

From what I'm aware of: Samsung drives that are NOT the 870 Evo, e.g. 970 Evo Plus (the updated 2nd revision, not the original), 980 Pro and 990 have all had issues with degradation that can be resolved with a firmware update.

 

The 870 Evo, it is not clear, but we can say:

1. The firmware update (from 01, to 02) does not fix any existing damage to the drive.
2. There are drives that have died, even though the firmware was updated to 02, though we don't know why (e.g. were the issues just too severe prior to the firmware update?).
3. There are drives that were updated to the 02 firmware that have survived and appear to have produced no more ECC errors or bad blocks.
4. Newly manufactured drives use an updated firmware version: 03, which can't be applied to the older drives.

37 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

The small note from Samsung *The 870 EVO model will be manufactured with a revised V6 process starting November 2022 that they wrote seem to be a change in how they actually are manufactured, and the problem with the earlier 870s was more of a hardware defect. But I don't know, their note is abit cryptic...

So far as I know, Samsung have never made any official statement or comment on the issues with the 870 Evo, only the firmware problems that applied to almost all their drives.

 

This statement about the manufacturing process, I believe is primarily relevant to the new revision and the new firmware and not an indirect statement by Samsung about any issues with the drive. This is similar to other products, where a major change in an existing line is mentioned, but it is not a: "hey, if you were worried they're all broken, they're not now!".

 

It is possible there were actually 2 issues with the 870 Evo and one was a bad firmware and one was a bad NAND.

 

It is maybe worth noting though, that Magician never indicated that the firmware update was critical, it just informed you an update was available, the same way it does for any other drive.

 

I've seen Samsung acknowledge with RMAs that they are aware of issues with the 870 Evo and there was one comment from CS that bad firmware was responsible, but I don't consider informal responses to customers as an official recognition and I'd be surprised if CS were meaningfully informed of any manufacturing issues.

 

[Mumintroll]

29 minutes ago, Tetras said:

From what I'm aware of: Samsung drives that are NOT the 870 Evo, e.g. 970 Evo Plus (the updated 2nd revision, not the original), 980 Pro and 990 have all had issues with degradation that can be resolved with a firmware update.

 

The 870 Evo, it is not clear, but we can say:

1. The firmware update (from 01, to 02) does not fix any existing damage to the drive.
2. There are drives that have died, even though the firmware was updated to 02, though we don't know why (e.g. were the issues just too severe prior to the firmware update?).
3. There are drives that were updated to the 02 firmware that have survived and appear to have produced no more ECC errors or bad blocks.
4. Newly manufactured drives use an updated firmware version: 03, which can't be applied to the older drives.

So far as I know, Samsung have never made any official statement or comment on the issues with the 870 Evo, only the firmware problems that applied to almost all their drives.

 

This statement about the manufacturing process, I believe is primarily relevant to the new revision and the new firmware and not an indirect statement by Samsung about any issues with the drive. This is similar to other products, where a major change in an existing line is mentioned, but it is not a: "hey, if you were worried they're all broken, they're not now!".

 

It is possible there were actually 2 issues with the 870 Evo and one was a bad firmware and one was a bad NAND.

 

It is maybe worth noting though, that Magician never indicated that the firmware update was critical, it just informed you an update was available, the same way it does for any other drive.

 

I've seen Samsung acknowledge with RMAs that they are aware of issues with the 870 Evo and there was one comment from CS that bad firmware was responsible, but I don't consider informal responses to customers as an official recognition and I'd be surprised if CS were meaningfully informed of any manufacturing issues.

 

 

This post is very informative, thank you!

 

I've also read some obscure lines from other forum threads (don't remember from where) that some are manufactured from South Korea and some from China. Which country did the old 870s and which one did the new ones I don't know.

 

I'm currently looking to get a 870 4tb. But just to be safe I've contacted the support from the store I want to buy from asking them if they know the manufacturing date of those they have in stock. Who knows how long it could have been laying on a shelf?

[Mumintroll]

.... should have expected Samsung to just deny everything when asked.

[Palorim12]

21 hours ago, Mumintroll said:

.... should have expected Samsung to just deny everything when asked.

 

 

@Tetras mentioned that Samsung has never made any official statement. You really expect them to tell you, a regular joe shmoe, anything?