VALID firmware update not found for Samsung 981a installed in EliteDesk 800 G6

[dvdsmith]

First off, yes I know this is out of warranty as of July. There is no urgency, I am merely trying to make use of some hardware. I am asking if there is a back channel firmware available for the 981a NVMe in these PCs as what is on the website for download doesn't recognize them.

Background, this is one of 10 identical workstations that are in use at my business. Our problems began when a proprietary data intensive program we use started experiencing anomalous issues and crashes. After extensive testing, the problem was narrowed down to the installed Samsung 981a NVMe SSDs. Running various tests on the SSDs didn't present any obvious smoking gun, and on average were around 30 TBW, so nowhere near their rated limit. Clean OS and software installs did not resolve the issue. The issue was progressively worse for those with more usage. What DID solve it was replacing them with new NVMe drives, in this case Sabrent model SB-Rocket-NVMe4-1TB. Months later they are operating without issue. For production reasons we opted for this rather than jump through hoops for RMAs, especially since we couldn't show any obvious message saying "bad ssd". 

Meanwhile I have a stack of ten 1TB NVMe that I'm not sure I can use or not. They could be physically bad, or maybe a firmware update is all they need. From what I can tell these are basically OEM versions of consumer SSDs for which there WAS a firmware update to resolve similar issues. The hp website showed two Samsung SSD firmware updates for my HP EliteDesk 800 G6 SFF, neither of which recognized the 981a as valid. Is there possibly a back channel firmware available for these? Otherwise they are just ewaste at this point.

Thank you for your time

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

there are several versions of the Samsung 981a so specifying which one you have is important

you should have a number like this: MZVLB1T0HBLR-00000 and some other numbers that will id the OEM seller

and what do you want this user forum to do? you decided to not use the warranty option when it was available which was/is your decision as the owner you could have opened a warranty case but chose another way that you decided was a better choice for you at that time

second as you note your SSD's appear to use OEM firmware, as such retail or other oem  firmware being different will not install

 what do you want this user forum or HP to do? if i read your post correctly you only had time to do minimal testing of the ssd's and the issue may be your exact hardware/software configuration meaning they may work fine in other software configurations

i see no other reports of many users experiencing issues with this ssd and hp posts no firmware updates for this  ssd that i can see so i doubt that there is any available which is normal for OEM ssd's

[dvdsmith]

Part # in question, MZVLB1T0HBLR-000H1

I did extensive searching along these lines but never found any SP files from HP or anyone else that would touch them.

I wouldn't say there was "minimal testing". My post was verbose enough, so I didn't want to get into all the things we tried over a number a weeks, from different system firmware updates and UEFI settings, clean installs, and eventually different model NVMe SSDs. The issue wasn't something that was easily repeatable, and was only evident over time through a lot of trial an error. It first started on a couple workstations and as time went on all were affected. As you say it could have been a unique combination of hardware and software. I'll say it was evident to me, but was vague enough that in past experience support channels would usually say "not our software, not our problem". So in the interest of just getting it done, we swapped them out and moved on. 

All that said, I thought I'd check if this was known to those who use these specific systems, and possible a firmware update to address the issue. That does not appear to be case here, so I'll consider the question answered. Thanks for the response.

EDIT: One thing to note. I guess OEM was the wrong term to use. I am aware that the 981a in question here is supported by HP for the purpose of firmware updates, not Samsung.