Samsung Pro SSD reliability questioned as longtime partner shifts to Sabrent

Samsung has earned a strong reputation among PC enthusiasts when it comes to solid-state storage. Its Pro series of SSDs are often among reviewers' top recommendations for users seeking high-speed storage for large work files, apps, and boot drives. Over the past year, though, reliability concerns around Samsung's 980 Pro and most recent 990 Pro have marred this reputation. It has 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 980 Pro that came out in September 2020. On January 31, Puget wrote a blog noting it "received a surprising number of reports of failing Samsung drives, specifically with the 2TB version of the 980 Pro.

"The most common failure mode that we have found is that the drives are suddenly locked into read-only mode, rendering the drive unusable. If the failed drive is the primary drive, then the system becomes unbootable until the drive is replaced and the OS is reinstalled," Chris Newhart, a Tier 2 repair technician at Puget, wrote.

Samsung recently released a firmware update to remedy the issues, and Puget noted that it worked with Samsung for months to help resolve the problems.

In August, Samsung released the 990 Pro, which was met with positive reviews from publications like PCMag and Tom's Hardware. But users started reporting reliability issues with this updated model, too.

In January, Neowin reported seeing one of their 990 Pro's health drop to 95 percent after about a week and before writing 2TB to the drive. This was a dramatically different experience from their other (unspecified) Samsung SSD that was 1.5 years old, had over 40TB written, and 99 percent health.

But the experience was, apparently, not an anomaly.

As detailed by Tom's Hardware, various users across the web, including on Reddit, Twitter, and the Overclock.net forums, reported rapid health decline. One user reported the 990 Pro showing 64 percent health with 2TB of data written.

Authorized returns of the devices reportedly 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 the meantime, the damage has been done, and trust, like the apparent life span of some users' 990 Pros, has eroded.

Puget, for instance, is "transitioning" away from Samsung when it comes to 1TB and 2TB NVMe drives in favor of Sabrent offerings "while this situation unfolds and we learn more," it announced in a blog post that was posted Thursday and spotted by Tom's Hardware today. William George, with product development at Puget, wrote that, "if the endurance (and thus lifespan) of the [Samsung] drives is indeed dropping at this rate, it is very concerning."

Puget is far from one of Samsung's biggest partners, but the move and publicity of the statement illustrate the hit that Samsung's SSD reputation has taken over the past year. Puget has been quite vocal in the past about Samsung SSDs and has gushed about their reliability. In 2016, it said Samsung's SATA SSDs were "by far the most reliable PC component we have ever sold." Such strong backing of Samsung SSDs was exactly why Puget felt it had to take a public stance on the current drives.

Puget's blog noted that "there is a chance that the 990 Pro 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.

It said it's helping customers who already have 980 Pro 2TB drives to install the latest firmware. The company will still use Samsung's 500GB 980 Pro.