Samsung nvme driver windows server 2019

Samsung drives newer than the 970 (the last to use a Samsung nvme driver) are not reliable with Windows Server.

Over the past several months I’ve been debugging issues with both Intel and AMD servers that reset to the bios and the SSD is not detected until a power off/on cycle. I was really reluctant to suspect that the entire product line of SSDs was buggy since this is a very popular drive but I’m certain now and it isn’t specific to a particular firmware version.

On 4 different systems using Asus, AsRock Rack, or Supermicro motherboards a high load system would crash every couple weeks or so without ever writing a minidump. I suspected defective drives and swapped a 1TB drive for a 2TB one, or swapped the 980 pro for a 990 but the behavior persisted. Meanwhile several systems with 970 pros and the same workload run stable for months.

After I swapped my X13SAE-F motherboard for an Asus W680-ACE (thinking the X13SAE was at fault) I tried restoring a sql server database from backup and observed this was 100% effective at crashing the SSD controller, causing it to disappear until a power cycle. I checked every related bios setting and all the sql server fixes regarding drive sector size to no avail.

Some of the servers that crash are running MySQL instead of Sql Server and the only common denominator is high IO load, Windows Server 2016 or later, and Samsung 980 or later. With so many bug reports related to Samsung’s firmware issues it’s hard to find corroborating bug reports so I thought I’d share this here.

Even under Windows 7 the 980 Pro and 990 Pro seem to be very janky at times.

Oddly enough, when I tried the 980 Pro with Windows 7 the Samsung NVMe driver installed. The Samsung NVMe driver would not successfully install under Windows 8.1

so this issue is related to overheating; when its beyond thermal threshold it will shutdown sensor, and later after some time the controller (and disk will ‘die’ until reboot). This is common issue with nvme’s.

Put decent heatsink, or decent airflow over the nvme. They aren’t made for constant r/w but bursts.

my reply was meant for OP;

(most often fans are not running at 100%, or not going right way to cool certain components — would still recommend heatsink on them even when you are pushing a lot of air — what i did notice that some nvmes do try manage the temps, and slow down to keep under certain ‘C, while others just keep going until they crash.)

so this issue is related to overheating; when its beyond thermal threshold it will shutdown sensor, and later after some time the controller (and disk will ‘die’ until reboot). This is common issue with nvme’s.

Put decent heatsink, or decent airflow over the nvme. They aren’t made for constant r/w but bursts.

I believe that would explain many simlar SSD crashes but it’s not what I observed. Most of the time I had heat sinks, generous case airflow, and 64 degree ambient temps. There was that particular database restore operation that crashed the SSD 7-10 times while I watched the temperatures and fiddled with every setting I could find. That really speaks to this being a logic glitch somewhere between the OS and the drive. That workload crashed the drive after 5-10 minutes and yet it could pass a full drive scan and a 60 minute stress test.

It’s more than just brute load and temperature, there’s a bug as well.

hynix p41 (seems to thermally throttle at 65’C @gen4)

These stats are really useful! I’d much rather see a drive throttle early than risk failing and I’m glad my replacement drive appears to do so. My most problematic system has a nice m2 heatsink built into the Asus motherboard but I ordered a few copper heatsinks for the other servers I’ll migrate to p41s.

I double-checked the temps on my 990 that crashes so often and it really doesn’t get very hot under load. If HWiNFO can be trusted I’m seeing just 49 degrees which again points to the crashes being a bug instead of environmental.

it depends how often its polling the stats, and how quickly it overheats.

Some nvme controllers do not report temps in real time. (pm983a reports temp with 15sec delay)

Looks like there are firmware issues with both the 980 & 990 Pro. If running 980 Pro, need to update to 5B2QGXA7 ASAP:

Tom’s Hardware

NAS Compares

it depends how often its polling the stats, and how quickly it overheats.

Some nvme controllers do not report temps in real time. (pm983a reports temp with 15sec delay)

That’s good to know that the reporting period is 15 seconds so I stressed the drive today and 8 hours later I still get a peak temp of 49 in HWiNFO even when load was reporting 100% so I struggle to imagine a situation where the thermals could spike so quickly that this would be hardware instead of software failure.

thats why i recommended to run telegraf, and save stats like temps to another system.

15 sec delay on temp sensor polling is something ive noticed on pm983a, different models or disks themselves can have different polling times.

980 in specs supposed to have has controller that regulates temps ‘dynamic thermal guard’; i would recommend checking how soon the data is being polled (push some load for few secs and see how soon temp tick updates.) If you have thermal gun, you could manually check if each component temp too as there are 5 different modules on 980 that can heat up; also drop your smart log, there can be something there.

(within the spec it allows for ‘burst mode’, where it can hit up to 9W for short amount of time — if polling is also 10-15sec you may not see it.)