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

[karnob]

I have the same problem for my 2nd 970 EVO plus (the first one, who runs macOS, was already with the good firmware), I never achieve to boot on the usb flash drive to do the update process, like if the usb is not bootable by the bios :/

hello dear
the same now happening with me for a new external 500 GB 970 plus i got. were u able to solve the issue?

 

[AnneOminous]

If it’s a standard SSD it will be fine. The Z97 boards have a m.2 slot that only supports up to 10mb/sec so you won’t really be fit from a MVME drive that much. Z170 and up support 32 mb/sec so they see a much better improvement using NVME drives.

The Z97 boards only support gen 3 x 2 lane PCIE for the M.2 socket. BUT...

You can buy an M.2 PCIE card and get the full benefit of a drive's 3 x 4 PCIE. The boards are inexpensive (mine cost about $15 online) because they don't have any electronics. It's just an M.2 socket and PCIE slot contacts. If you don't have a 4-lane slot available the board works with a 16-lane slot, and probably 8-lane too.

I did that and I am getting full performance from a Hewlett Packard 1TB M.2 NVME. I get about 3 x the real world sequential write performance I got from my previous SATA III. The read performance is similarly fast.

And it boots just fine via Clover, even though my BIOS does not list it as a bootable drive. I simply formatted the drive using Disk Utility, then cloned my boot drive to the M.2 using a commonly available cloning utility.

The HP is *almost* as fast as the 970 Plus, and has a similar MTBF. But it cost half as much.

Side note: my motherboard (see sidebar) shares the PCIE for the built-in M.2 slot with 2 "SATA Express" sockets, which also support standard SATA III. If you use the built-in M.2 socket, you not only won't get full performance from your M.2, but you also lose full use of those two SATA sockets.

If you put your M.2 on a PCIE card instead, you get the full M.2 performance and you also free up those two SATA sockets. That leaves you with a total of 6 native chipset SATA sockets, and 2 additional SATA sockets on the board's added chipset. MacOS sees anything on those last 2 as "external" drives, but you can still boot from them if you want. Just be sure not to "eject" your boot drive!

 

[papaformigas]

I have bought recently a SSD Evo Plus from eBay.

In Windows I opened Samsung Magicians to check the firmware, plugged the SSD inside an enclosure with USB 3.0 and got the following results:

Drive: Samsung SSD 970
Serial Numbner: 00000000000000000
Firmware: EXM7
Status: N/A
Temperature: N/A

Theres no option to upgrade the Firmware...

And theres no place where it says "EVO Plus" apart from the SSD sticker... this make me think that perhaps I have been mislead by an eBay seller advert that was selling EVO Plus and the SSD is another model with a EVO Plus sticker...

Does this firmware and results relates my SSD to an Evo Plus SSD?

Is there a way to check this SSD ID?

 

[trs96]

I opened Samsung Magicians to check the firmware, plugged the SSD inside an enclosure with USB 3.0 and got the following results

Try connecting it internally instead of through a USB port. It may not be reporting all the info when seen as an external drive.

 

[papaformigas]

The problem is that I do not have how to connect it internally... the notebook is for M.2. B+M and not M... Perhaps if I install Windows on the drive and make it bootable through USB?

Any ideas how i can do this externally?

 

[theruck]

if it is external then it is an USB storage not a nvme storage. complete different thing. you could have bought any cheap SSD if you intend to use it over USB only

 

[jonathan1234]

I’m using a 500GB Evo 970 Plus for my Macintosh HD and it works fine, also no problem booting with Unibeast and Clover. I read other people’s posts and worried that I’d bought the wrong drive, but it works for me.

 

[curry36]

How about the Samsung 970 PRO? Any experiences? Want to use that one as my OS Drive.

 

[JBX]

Just installed my 2nd NVMe Samsung 970 EVO+ 500GB... No problems with firmware. $99USD at MicroCenter.

 

[shcollege]

Hi all,

Some weeks ago Samsung introduced some new M2 NVM SSDs. I wanted to purchase the older 970 Evo model to create a dual boot system for my Intel Skull Canyon . The new drive is only slightly more expensive and I don't mind the additional 1000 MB/s write speeds. Are there any users that have been using this drive in their builds?

Actually yes, yesterday i bought Samsung 970 evo plus 250gb nvme.
Installed in Catalina no problem but i am not getting the speed that nvme has to give the speed is similar to ssd Samsung.
But no other problems