TRIM firmware for the 128 GB Samsung SSD?? [ Edited ]

[Blue_Frog]

Here it is with all the values I can show.

-Blue Frog

Link to picture

Moderator note; picture(s) totalling >50K converted to link(s) Forum Rules

[TinyRK]

When I run maindiag.exe it doesn't see the drive, thus can't flash it. Is there a BIOS-setting for HotPlug?

Dammit!

[Blue_Frog]

Make sure you have your bios SATA setting to "Compatible" not AHCI

Second, boot from USB with hard drive in, run maindiag.exe, should populate with your model, firmware, etc.

If it does populate the make/model/firmware correctly, shutdown, reboot to USB with your hard drive out.

When it boots to c:\, insert your hard drive.  Run maindiag.exe again.

This time, the make, model, serial, etc. lines will appear, but will be blank.  It will not show your versions.  

(This is the hole in the flash routine, it is seeing your drive, but cannot tell the firmware/model, therefore it flashes it.  If you try to flash it while it can read your firmware, it will only flash the main firmware, not the initialize firmware because it will check the firmware version and refuse to flash it.)

Proceed with the 2,1,4 routine.  It will tell you success or fail after each one.

If you run maindiag.exe with no hard drive in at all, you will not see the make,model,firmware lines at all, it will just say no drive found and return you to the command prompt.

The SATA connector is hot-pluggable by default, that is part of the spec for SATA.  So there is no way to turn hot plug on or off in the bios, it is up to the OS to utilize the spec correctly, assign a drive letter, etc., and DOS does not do this which is why it cannot pull the firmware version after the hotplug, but the flash routine still finds the drive.

[towolf]

I must say I find this kind of input checking hair raising

if not is_lenovo()

    go_ahead.flash()

[icarni]

this utility doesnt work with all samsung ssd, only newer one's .... it doesnt work with my MMCRE28G5MXP-0VB Frmware VBM1801Q

[Hypnos]

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towolf wrote:

I must say I find this kind of input checking hair raising

if not is_lenovo()

    go_ahead.flash()

---

I think you can interpret it a few ways:

1. It's unsafe to flash Lenovo drives with Samsung, because there's something different in the hardware.
2. Lenovo has some Thinkpad-specific tweaks in their drive firmware, and don't want to support some other firmware.
3. Samsung is contractually forbidden to flash Lenovo drives with their own firmware.

I think #2 is quite likely, #1 is highly improbable, and #3 is a result of #2.

[towolf]

Yeah, but i was referring to the programming logic that went into this flasher.

I don't know what it is, it wasn’t enumerated by the BIOS properly, it could be an unknown harddisk, I'm gonna flash it anyway.

[Hypnos]

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towolf wrote:

I don't know what it is, it wasn’t enumerated by the BIOS properly, it could be an unknown harddisk, I'm gonna flash it anyway.

---

That's useful if the disk is in a bad state, e.g. from a failed firmware flashing.

Usually having to flash firmware is the last ditch option, so it has to work "no matter what."

[Blue_Frog]

The error checking routine checks for any OEM firmware.

Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc.

If it finds OEM firmware, it refuses to flash it.  Has nothing to do with Lenovo specifically.

Samsung is contractually not allowed to flash the OEM drives.

The firmware is all created by Samsung, then supplied to the OEM.  The OEM can then turn off or on features to sell the drives at different price points and lock them into the OEM's known config so you cannot flash from Samsung.  There is nothing fancy they are doing to make them more/less compatible, just crippling them or selling them with everything on.

That way you have to get your updates from the OEM.  If you bought the drive at Best Buy, after market, then you can use the flash provided from Samsung. 

Dell, HP, Corsair, etc. are all the same hardware, different OEM firmware.  Everyone except Lenovo has re-released the firmware from Samsung with TRIM enabled for their customers.  Lenovo may eventually release it also.

I believe that Lenovo has not released it because it will cause you to lose all of your data if you did not backup properly.  Having "Joe the Plumber" run this patch and lose everything then calling Lenovo is not something they want to deal with.

They would rather you continue running with a slower drive and have you call and complain and they can sell you a faster drive, rather than make it easy for an end user to apply this firmware and wipe everything and call them for support.

-Blue Frog

[Blue_Frog]

And you are correct Towolf, that is a strange routine....

software - "Hey computer, any idea what drive is installed?"

computer - "Not a clue, I cant even assign it a drive letter"

software - "I know there are a bunch of drives I am not allowed to flash but, if it this drive were one of them, it would tell me.  Let's give it a go anyway!"

computer - "Sure, be my guest, flash away!"

But hey, this is what allows us to do this and as stated above I think it is a failsafe for a bad drive so they can flash it anyway.

Also, the Dell folks were using the hotpug method for a quite a while with the Mushkin OEM update, again not specific to Lenovo.

Blue Frog