I have a Samsung 840 PRO Series SSD and want to update its firmware in order to find an alternative solution for this problem.I downloaded Samsung Magician Software for Enterprise SSD from this page because Samsung only offers magician for consumer SSDs for Windows. According to the top reply on this reddit post, it should work.However, upon trying to determine my SSD's ID, magician claims to have found no Samsung SSDs, even though the one and only storage medium currently attached to my laptop is the SSD mentioned in the first paragraph.# ./magician -L================================================================================================Samsung(R) SSD Magician DC Version 2.0Copyright (C) 2015 SAMSUNG Electronics Co. Ltd. All rights reserved.================================================================================================Magician is now configuring the environment for LSI MegaRAID SAS.Magician is now configuring the environment for LSI SAS IT/IR Controller.Magician is now configuring the environment for LSI SAS IT/IR2 Controller.Magician is now configuring the environment for LSI SAS IT/IR3 Controller.----------------------------------------------------------------------------| Disk   | Model   | Serial  | Firmware  | Capacity | Drive  | Total Bytes || Number |         | Number  |           |          | Health | Written     |----------------------------------------------------------------------------No Samsung SSD found!
Update Firmware of Samsung 840 Pro
ssd;firmware;samsung
Samsung is really, really weird and it took me many hours to find this out because it's absolutely counterintuitive.It turned out that I was right with my skepticism of an image provided by Samsung probably actually being suitable to boot from it. Putting the image they offer you on a thumb drive doesn't work. It's not that it's super fast and you don't notice the update happening like I first thought, it's just that that image isn't bootable which means that nothing happens.You have to mount that image, find a different image in it, and put that image onto your thumb drive. Because reasons, I guess.Step-by-Step GuideCheck which firmware your SSD currently has via # hdparm -I /dev/sda. In my case it was Firmware Revision: DXM05B0Q.Visit this site and under Firmware  Samsung SSD Firmware for Windows Users download 840 PRO Firmware which currently has the description ISO DXM06B0Q.Mount the ISO file you just downloaded.From the mountpoint, copy isolinux/btdsk.img to a different location. I'll assume /tmp/btdsk.img for it. This step is actually necessary because root can't read that file but your normal user account can.Run sudo dd if=/tmp/btdsk.img of=/dev/sdb where /dev/sdb is your thumb drive. Go check whether it's /dev/sdb and make sure it's not mounted before you run the command! You will obviously lose the data stored on your thumb drive with this.Shut your computer down.Boot from the thumb drive.It takes a few seconds, then you'll see the slightly confusing message Firmware is already updated onto this SSD!. The firmware version is printed above it.Press a key to continue.You're shown some kind of shell. I didn't figure out how to reboot the computer from there so I simply killed it via hard reset. So if you can't figure it out, either, just press the power button for 6 seconds. If you figured it out, leave a comment or edit this answer.Remove the thumb drive.Boot your OS.Run # hdparm -I /dev/sda, again, to verify the firmware has been updated. At the time of this writing, it says Firmware Revision:  DXM06B0Q.Burn your thumb drive to get rid of that software. Alternatively, delete its contents and reuse it.