<< Solved >> Do the Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives work ? New Firmware Available 2B2QEXM7

[Bigboy008]

So ultimately got the 970 Evo Plus running on my MacBook Pro 15 mid 2015. However the results I'm getting from Blackmagic are a bit of a let down. It's only 2500 Write and 2160 in Read speed. So really a tiny bit more than evo 970. That was really not worth the stress. Looks like the MB pro is the bottle neck here.

 

[star-affinity]

So ultimately got the 970 Evo Plus running on my MacBook Pro 15 mid 2015. However the results I'm getting from Blackmagic are a bit of a let down. It's only 2500 Write and 2160 in Read speed. So really a tiny bit more than evo 970. That was really not worth the stress. Looks like the MB pro is the bottle neck here.

There are other benefits than pure data transfer speed, such as power consumption:

The 970 EVO Plus brings modest improvements to both active idle and deep idle power consumption

Another is idle wakeup time:

The idle wake-up latency of the 970 EVO Plus is about half that of the original 970 EVO.

The Samsung 970 EVO Plus (250GB, 1TB) NVMe SSD Review: 92-Layer 3D NAND

www.anandtech.com

Not sure how much difference these things mean in practice, though.

 

[Joutoro]

Hi

I just update the firmware of 970 evo plus. The update was ok. Then continue to install macOS high sierra with bootable usb. The process was running smoothly until copying file finished and mac restart, but loop again in to install process

After i repeat and check in to start up disk (after finish copying) i couldn’t find my evo plus show up.

I try to using recovery mode , the problem still the same, the hardware detected on disk utility, can copying file smoothly (booth HS and mojave) but after that can’t boot on start up disk
Is there any idea about this, ???
It is make me very frustated

 

[Bigboy008]

Installation went ok. But now I'm only getting x2 Lanes on the PCI bus working. Any idea how to force the x4 Lanes?

 

[prachanadee]

The firmware must be updated, or the performance will be unstable. In the firmware utility, it keeps asking “Y“ or “N”, just key in Y and return, all the way.

If I use Samsung Evo Plus 500GB in MacBook Pro 13" early 2015 with adapter and use firmware Bootable USB to upgrade firmware. Could I use this method?

 

[Cryptographer]

If I use Samsung Evo Plus 500GB in MacBook Pro 13" early 2015 with adapter and use firmware Bootable USB to upgrade firmware. Could I use this method?

Before you replace original ssd, you must already installed macOS High Sierra(10.13) or above, to upgrade BootRom. Because High Sierra begin support nvme.

Suggest install Mojave, it have lastest BootRom. After that, replace original ssd
to 970 Evo Plus. Then you can use firmware Bootable USB to upgrade firmware.

 

[dalis]

Just having nothing but problems. Maybe some can help. Have a SATA HD in a mac mini with Mojave. Bought a Samsung EVO 970 plus 500gb and PCIe card to install the nvme. Wanna have this as the main drive for MAC OS. Question to get this firmware flash I need to format a usb on a windows computer (What format do we format the usb exfat?) and install the firmware files. Then booting the usb with option key press, I can pick usb (windows labeled). But won't boot the files. Is it my pcie card? What format does the Samsung drive needs to be formatted in? What am I doing wrong??

 

[Cryptographer]

Just having nothing but problems. Maybe some can help. Have a SATA HD in a mac mini with Mojave. Bought a Samsung EVO 970 plus 500gb and PCIe card to install the nvme. Wanna have this as the main drive for MAC OS. Question to get this firmware flash I need to format a usb on a windows computer (What format do we format the usb exfat?) and install the firmware files. Then booting the usb with option key press, I can pick usb (windows labeled). But won't boot the files. Is it my pcie card? What format does the Samsung drive needs to be formatted in? What am I doing wrong??

My English is poor, I hope you can understand it.

What's your Mac mini model?
If you can see 970evo plus in recovery mode(disk utility - view - show all device )，pice card is fine.

By the way, the firmware update system is unrelated whatever you installed HD/SSD or Not.

You can use unetbootin(macOS) or Rufus(Windows) to burn firmware(format the usb FAT32). Actually, you need not to format usb stick, when you drag firmware iso to Rufus, it auto select FAT32, just attention select the right usb stick.

 

[dalis]

My English is poor, I hope you can understand it.

What's your Mac mini model?
If you can see 970evo plus in recovery mode(disk utility - view - show all device )，pice card is fine.

By the way, the firmware update system is unrelated whatever you installed HD/SSD or Not.

You can use unetbootin(macOS) or Rufus(Windows) to burn firmware(format the usb FAT32). Actually, you need not to format usb stick, when you drag firmware iso to Rufus, it auto select FAT32, just attention select the right usb stick.

Thank you for the response but eventually I had figured it out. My mistake was using windows 10 to format exfat and dropping the files in there. I ended up using Rufus to format to FAT32 and loading the files. Boot with option key and windows usb had the Samsung program running. Went from firmware 1B2QEXM7 to 2B2QEXM7.

 

[marcvaz]

For anyone facing issues with the keyboard input not working in the firmware updater, it is a driver issue in syslinux (the mini-OS that the firmware updater uses). It fails to initialise the USB ports - there may be a fix for that, but the easier workaround for me was to use a USB to PS2 converter with my keyboard. Using the converter, I was able to go through the update process without any issues with both of my EVO Plus NVMe drives installed in the M.2 sockets. If you have multiple NVMe drives connected, the updater goes through them successively, asking the Y/N questions about each of them separately and identifying them by their serial numbers, so you don't need to worry about unplugging one to update the other. Also, updating the firmware did not break the Windows installation I already had on one of my drives, even though the updater warned me of the possibility.

EDIT: Just to note that updating the firmware fixed the kernel panics during installation on my build, and I can highly recommend the EVO Plus NVMe drives now that there is an easy fix available. I now have a working Hackintosh build thanks to the firmware update.

Thanks for mentioning this. Unfortunately I have Aorus Z390 Pro Wifi which doesn't have a PS2 port. Is there a way to have USB Keyboard support? Struggling from 2 days on this thing. To install OSX on my new shiny wasted 970 EVO Plus, I need to update the firmware. Firmware doesn't install because of USB keyboard. Can't connect PS2 keyboard because the motherboard doesn't have a PS2 port. Searched a lot to tweak syslinux, but not able to find a solution yet. If you know, please help.