Samsung PM1735 - No drivers, no firmware found anywhere?

[Waterkippie]

So i got one of the new Samsung PM1735 PCI-E 4.0 NVME drives, 3.2TB
MZPLJ3T2HBJR-00007 | Samsung Enterprise SSD | Samsung Semiconductor

Type: MZPLJ3T2HBJR-00007

Installed it in my workstation and it works but i'm trying to find drivers or firmware for maximum performance or to be able to activate hardware AES encryption, but they are nowhere to be found.

There seems to be no support for these drives (PM1733 and my PM1735) whatsoever. I contacted Samsung support but no reply yet.

Samsung magician for Enterprise or Consumer do not recognize the drive.

Anyone an idea where to find these?

 

[RTM]

Yea... that is pretty much business as usual for the Samsung enterprise disks, they are not sold directly (officially anyway) to endusers, and Samsung do not provide drivers or firmware to them.

Assuming the drives you got are actually from a vendor like HPE, Dell, EMC etc. you may be able to get firmware from them, but don't hold your breath. As for a Windows driver, I believe I read somewhere that no such thing exists for the enterprise drives.

 

[Waterkippie]

Well thats odd, i just purchased this from a regular hardware store. It's also widely available here in multiple shops.

Should i return it? It cost over 1200 USD..

Looking into modded drivers for NVME drives:
Recommended AHCI/RAID and NVMe Drivers

 

[Waterkippie]

The modded drivers seem to install but don't make any speed difference, getting max 1500 MB/s in benchmarks and file copy.

 

[alex_stief]

That's kinda weird. I have two of these in the 1.6TB flavor, and had no issue whatsoever getting sequential throughput at spec sheet performance levels. I only tried Linux though, not Windows.

 

[Waterkippie]

So the strange thing is, it differs alot.

AIDA64 benchmark:

In here the Samsung seems limited to around 1530 MB/s, and the Intel P3700 1.6TB HHHL which should be slower, gets the speed it should.

Windows file copy from SSD to SSD is also limited to around 1500 MB/s. (Sequential big file copy)

However, AS-SSD for Samsung:


And Intel:




And crystaldiskmark does come pretty close to spec for the PM1735:



And Intel P3700:





BTW the Samsung is connected to a PCI-E 3.0 x8 slot, not PCI-E 4.0, but a x8 slot limit should be around 8GB/s, same as the limit of the card.

 

[alex_stief]

I am not exactly the worlds leading expert for SSD benchmarks on Windows, but I think some variance between different benchmark is to be expected. At least CDM shows some big numbers, so I would conclude that the SSD works fine, given the right workload.

 

[111alan]

Samsung don't provide firmware update for reference or E/S sample version of enterprise SSDs. They usually work with specific oem vendors like HP dell or oracle to build dedicated firmware.

You can try the samsung driver version 2.0.8.1161 modded by Fernando and me together, which can be found here:
Recommended AHCI/RAID and NVMe Drivers

 

[lunadesign]

This thread was an eye-opener as I was looking at some of the Samsung enterprise SSDs. I assumed their firmware and driver support would be similar to Intel's but obviously that was a bad assumption.

Does anyone have a helpful list of which enterprise SSD manufacturers sell to / support end users?

 

[KC@Gadgetblues]

Does anyone have a helpful list of which enterprise SSD manufacturers sell to / support end users?

Intel.

List of enterprise SSD manufacturers that do NOT support end users:

Samsung
KIOXIA/ODZ/Toshiba
WD/HGST/SanDisk

 

[lunadesign]

Intel.

List of enterprise SSD manufacturers that do NOT support end users:

Samsung
KIOXIA/ODZ/Toshiba
WD/HGST/SanDisk

What about Micron? (Not sure if they are any good, though)

 

[RTM]

What about Micron? (Not sure if they are any good, though)

Micron makes firmware updates available (at least for the non-branded versions, branded being dell, HPE, etc) through their storage executive software, but I wouldn't expect full support as you would expect from a typical company selling to retail.

In fact, here is a thread where a user is having issues getting support from Micron (he has more posts about the issues):

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/micron-support-for-ssds.28442/

Of course with regards to Intel (and all the others), if you purchase a disk that is branded (again think Dell, HPE, EMC, Netapp and others), support and firmwares are going to be from that vendor (at least in almost all cases, there may be exceptions, but they are rare).

 

[lunadesign]

Micron makes firmware updates available (at least for the non-branded versions, branded being dell, HPE, etc) through their storage executive software, but I wouldn't expect full support as you would expect from a typical company selling to retail.

In fact, here is a thread where a user is having issues getting support from Micron (he has more posts about the issues):

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/micron-support-for-ssds.28442/

Of course with regards to Intel (and all the others), if you purchase a disk that is branded (again think Dell, HPE, EMC, Netapp and others), support and firmwares are going to be from that vendor (at least in almost all cases, there may be exceptions, but they are rare).

OK. That's really good to know. Looks like my choices are limited to one: Intel-branded Intel SSDs. Really hoping the new SSDs they are supposedly announcing next month are good ones.

Thanks!

 

[Krusher]

Hello; I just joined and found this posting. Has anyone found a good phone # for Samsung tech support on the PM1735? After 6 different phone numbers I am waiting on a callback as my PC (PCIE 3.0x8) goes into a continuous boot loop with BIOS error code 51 with the same card as the OP above. I am trying to figure out whether I should be able to boot into BIOS with a gen 3 interface or not (seems like yes per above). The middle red LED goes on in back of the card followed by two green LEDs on the sides but the PC just won't stay on. (I tried three different BIOSs including the original and the very latest with recent CPU microcode.) I'll keep trying Samsung but it's been really tough finding the right department.

Thanks!

 

[Krusher]

So I finally did get someone. The PM1735 is supposed to be bootable in a PCIe 3.0 interface. We talked a bit and I'm going to try the SSD in my Supermicro server and see whether it works. Yes, my motherboard needs to be upgraded. No, the drive needs to be RMA'd. To be continued...

 

[Krusher]

The good news is that my old low power dual-core, 4-thread Supermicro MIni-ITX w/ 16GB of ECC RAM actually did reboot a few times then came up with the PM1735 working. My old quad-core, 8-thread Gigabyte motherboard w/ 32GB of standard RAM didn't. I verified in two places (Samsung Magician and HWINFO64) that it was running PCIe 3.0 x8. Then checked SMART values; all looked good for a new SSD.

I did a few quick tests and Samsung Magician gave me 3719/3027 sequential R/W and 11669/8911 IOPS R/W. Below is what I had in AS SSD. Keeping in mind again this motherboard is slow; you will get better results with a modern processor and PCIe 4.0. I used the default Microsoft drivers for Windows 2004, and my 2-week old SSD is still Rev 0 firmware. But if someone does find newer I will try that (in a future build).

P.S. The guy I spoke with at Samsung asked "how did you get this phone number" so I shouldn't post it online. They normally don't provide tech support to end users but he did verify the PM1735 does work on a Gen 3.0 interface. HTH.

 

[Krusher]

@Dreece, I received your email 9 minutes after my prior posting but I don't see it in the forum here ~2hr later. Thanks for the info re Samsung Enterprise. I think this means I should stick with server motherboard brands (i.e. Dell, Supermicro) vs. consumer motherboards (Asus, Gigabyte, Biostar, etc.) for my best chance at getting the PM1735 to work in the future. Without requiring firmware or driver updates as the OP asks, crossing fingers.

Originally, I planned to put the PM1735 in my workstation here and then to copy the C: and D: HDDs to partitions on the PM1735 using Macrium Reflect. Then, I would have made the SSD the boot drive and removed the HDDs. If my motherboard would have worked. In the future, I was going to get a Zen3 EPYC setup to also ensure PCIe 4.0 compatabilty (with ECC RAM) so I'll just have to be more careful now on the future system.

 

[Dreece]

I removed the reply because I posted just as you had replied regarding the update on your chat with the Samsung gent.

Yes with Samsung in particular one really does have to be careful with their enterprise drives, they just don't have a consumer outlet for their enterprise division, unlike Intel for example. I would definitely advise going with Supermicro over the vendor-lock-crazy OEMs (which one day I hope a huge anti-trust case hits them hard and strong, a whole different discussion).

Supermicro play a fair game and have great support even if you just grabbed something off ebay, as long as it's Supermicro there's tonnes of support and a great wealth of info here on this forum especially.

Still in awe over that drive you have there, that is something I will definitely have to get me hands on soon too.

 

[Krusher]

Ok thanks I'm not imagining things then . And good to hear about Supermicro; I've built other systems with them in the past. Another story, but I had one of their servers give me grief at first working really well in the end.

I also thought about it a bit, and to anyone looking at my 4K numbers and thinking they are low I'd ignore those results. The system is an Ivy Bridge running the Meltdown and Spectre patches that are known to affect SSD results. I'm still surprised the sequential reads and writes were that good.

I'll keep watching this post as well in case someone else finds updates to the firmware or drivers per the OP; will be good to know.

 

[Waterkippie]

I have a ASUS X299 PRO/SE motherboard, PCI-E 3.0 only and it did work for me there. Did not test booting from it.

I returned the PM1735 in the end, without proper driver support it's not worth the money. Sticking with the Intel P3700 for now and waiting for Samsung to release it's 980 Pro in the future when i make the switch to PCI-E 4.0.