Firmware is the most important piece of software on your SSD, handling its behavior and operations. You can call it the low-level operating system of your drive that tells how to communicate with the system, store the data, handle errors, etc.
The most important role of firmware in any SSD is to ensure proper wear leveling, garbage collection, error-handling, and TRIM. Firmware also maps out bad blocks and avoids using them. Also, it monitors the health of cells and detects any errors and corrects them if possible.
Power and performance management are two other very important tasks of the SSD firmware. But we are not going to go much deeper into it. In this article, we’ll show you how you can update your Samsung SSD’s firmware. Now, this is the first article in the series of articles where we will discuss the firmware update methods of all the SSDs in the market. So, let’s get started.
What is SSD Firmware?
Firmware is the specialized code flashed into the SSD’s controller, more specifically in a ROM. So, the software engineers write the firmware code in low-level languages (generally in assembly or C). This is an optimized code written to handle the specific tasks that we discussed above. Now, before releasing, this code is tested and validated properly. When you update the firmware using the software or manual methods, you are basically flashing the ROM on the SSD controller with this new code.
New firmware updates are released with new bug fixes, performance enhancements, security patches, and new features. Sometimes, you can get support for the latest NVMe versions or support for newer operating systems. Generally, an SSD’s error-handling capabilities improve. In the case of Samsung, it is pretty active in maintaining their SSD’s firmware and sends regular updates. But you have to do it yourself in order for it to be active on your SSD. So, let’s discuss how you do it.
Update Samsung SSD’s firmware using Samsung Magician
If you have a Samsung SSD, you get a bundled software called Samsung Magician, which you can download here. It supports all the latest and old Samsung SSDs, along with the portable SSDs and even the flash drives and SD cards. So, once you download and install Samsung Magician, open it.
Click the update button at the bottom left corner.
On the next page, click the Update button in front of your drive. Proceed for installation and then restart your computer when asked.
Once the system has restarted, you can confirm whether the latest version is installed from this page. Generally, you get the latest version updated using just these two steps. But, if you want to know another method, there is a manual way as well.
How to update Samsung SSD firmware without Samsung Magician?
For this method, you’ll need an empty flash drive with at least 4GB of space and the .iso file of the latest firmware for the drive. Below is the step-by-step process to follow. Because Samsung Magician is only available for Windows, macOS, and Android operating systems, these steps can be followed if you are on a Linux operating system.
- Download the .iso file for your drive from here.
- Prepare a flash drive and format it. Plug it into your computer.
- Download Rufus or balenaEtcher and install it on your computer. These programs will help you create a bootable drive with the downloaded .iso file. I am choosing balenaEtcher for this tutorial because it is available for all three popular OS, i.e., Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Just select the downloaded .iso file and then choose the USB flash drive.
5. Get inside the BIOS or UEFI Menu. In Windows, you can simply go to Settings>System>Recovery>Advanced Startup. Then, in the Windows recovery environment, choose Troubleshoot>Advanced Options>UEFI Firmware Settings.
Now, after this, you should enter the BIOS/UEFI menu, where you just change the boot order and select the bootable drive that you just created.
Another way to enter the BIOS/UEFI is to click the special key during the system boot. These keys can vary for different laptops and motherboards. Generally, they are esc, del, F11, F12, etc. You can check it in the user manual. Once you change the boot order and restart your computer, you should see the command line-based tool to upgrade the firmware.
- In the Samsung Firmware update utility, you will just enter “y” to process and “n” to cancel the update. On the first page, enter “y” and hit enter. Then, on the next page, just hit enter to continue. Then, on the last page, press “y” again and make sure the right device is selected. Then, on the next page, continue for the last time, and the firmware will be updated automatically.
Conclusion
Samsung Magician software is a well-maintained, powerful, and fast program to upgrade any Samsung drive’s firmware. However, in case if you face any issues with it or your system doesn’t support it like any Linux system, you can use the manual update method that we discussed above.
I hope this helps!