On 2/5/2025 at 8:36 PM, Ootspunter said:

It seems like everyone has had success with this method. I'm trying to update a 980.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot find or download nerdtools and there's no way to get 7z. It looks like it's been taken off of unraid. Any advice about how to extract the iso? I'm not aware of any other tools. I've tried mounting the iso with unassigned drives, but the fumagician tool is hidden within another file (initrd or something like that) that also needs to be extracted.

 

Any advice?

 

If faxxe71s advice is not something you'd like to follow you can always spin up a krusader docker and use the terminal built into it to as it has 7z included. Just have to setup the appropriate shares for the docker to have access to the ISO. 

Edited March 7, 20251 yr by iLLNESS

On 3/10/2024 at 4:45 AM, Tolete said:

the firmware file you downloaded/extracted, does not have a 'root' directory in them.
-what drive are you trying to upgrade?
 

I'm having the same problem as him with the Samsung 990 Pro and I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've downloaded & extracted multiple times on Unraid and Windows and I do not see a root folder:

 

The left was unzipped using the exact commands in the guide, and the right was a separate download extracted to a share via 7zip on Windows. I don't see a root folder or anything named fumagician in any of these folders.

Edited April 12, 20251 yr by Gazeley

On 4/12/2025 at 3:45 PM, Gazeley said:

I'm having the same problem as him with the Samsung 990 Pro and I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've downloaded & extracted multiple times on Unraid and Windows and I do not see a root folder:

 

The left was unzipped using the exact commands in the guide, and the right was a separate download extracted to a share via 7zip on Windows. I don't see a root folder or anything named fumagician in any of these folders.

did you use 7z to properly extract the files per the guide?
i just did same version for you to test no issues.
follow the guide to the the T should work.

On 4/13/2025 at 5:45 AM, Gazeley said:

I'm having the same problem as him with the Samsung 990 Pro and I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've downloaded & extracted multiple times on Unraid and Windows and I do not see a root folder:

 

The left was unzipped using the exact commands in the guide, and the right was a separate download extracted to a share via 7zip on Windows. I don't see a root folder or anything named fumagician in any of these folders.

In the OP's 7z command, they have actually concatenated 3 steps into one. So if you did not copy their command exactly, and tried unzipping seperately or using different tools, you would need to do the 3 steps:

1. Unzip the .ISO (and you will get the files you show in your screenshot)

2. Unzip the initrd file (and you will get another file initrd~)

3. Unzip the initrd~ file (and you will get the whole bunch of new folders and files that includes the root directory with the fumagician tool/script):

Has anyone tried the new 6B2QJXD7 firmware to see if it gets rid of the disk drops?

4 hours ago, marrysmith said:

Thanks for the guide! Super helpful. Did you notice any performance boosts or issues after updating? Also, any backup tips before starting?

No problem. No boost in performance or issues noted after update, drive were just happy :)
Upgrade can be done on the fly, i did not move my date out of the drives. You could move all data out of drives if you wanted to be extra cautious, once the update is complete you can move the data back. I didn't have any issues and ran everything in place.

Edited July 30, 2025Jul 30 by Tolete

On 7/24/2025 at 8:13 AM, warpspeed said:

Has anyone tried the new 6B2QJXD7 firmware to see if it gets rid of the disk drops?

Just installed it - raidz1 on a Terramaster f4-ssd. Hoping this firmware fixes my windows desktop as well.

On 8/5/2025 at 4:16 AM, letocetum said:

Just installed it - raidz1 on a Terramaster f4-ssd. Hoping this firmware fixes my windows desktop as well.

Yeah, I put it on my problematic 2TB 990 Pro. One of two in a ZFS mirror kept dropping offline. So far so good.

I'll do the other drive in time, but I'm in no rush because that one hasn't given me any problems so far.

to anyone else that comes along and gets no successful prompt on update, i too had this. after reboot it did infact update in the identify tab.

no one seems to have stated that it updated in this case when it happens to them so figured i would confirm

I also just updated mid run of all my stuff docker ect. no issues

Thanks for the post @Tolete

heres hoping it fixes my zfs drive is gone issues

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by phyzical

5 hours ago, phyzical said:

to anyone else that comes along and gets no successful prompt on update, i too had this. after reboot it did infact update in the identify tab.

no one seems to have stated that it updated in this case when it happens to them so figured i would confirm

I also just updated mid run of all my stuff docker ect. no issues

Thanks for the post @Tolete

heres hoping it fixes my zfs drive is gone issues

So when I pressed "y" at the end, the program just exit, leaving the cmd again.

The same happened to you? how long did you wait to reboot?

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by L0rdRaiden

18 hours ago, L0rdRaiden said:

So when I pressed "y" at the end, the program just exit, leaving the cmd again.

The same happened to you? how long did you wait to reboot?

Yah as a few others have mentioned it just exits. i was suspicious as it was so quick, but seemed to work

probably like 2 mins?

just reboot and double check the firmware version it should now match whatever you installed

Edited August 9, 2025Aug 9 by phyzical

Looking at https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/ for the 990 Pro, firmware 6B2QJXD7, released June 2025 "To address the intermittent non-recognition and blue screen issue" seems to have been removed.

Does anyone know why?

Looking at https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/ for the 990 Pro, firmware 6B2QJXD7, released June 2025 "To address the intermittent non-recognition and blue screen issue" seems to have been removed.

Does anyone know why?

@letocetum It looks like it might have been removed to make way for the new update they just released this month (Sept)

*(7B2QJXD7) To address the intermittent non-recognition and blue screen issue. (Release: September 2025)

Thanks for the guide @Tolete !

For anyone else, on the 990_Pro firmware, the above version's fumagician.sh file doesn't appear to actually contain much of anything:

#!/bin/sh
#This script will be called via /etc/init.d/rcS
/root/fumagician/fumagician 2> /root/fumagician/log

read -n 1 -rs -t 10 -p "Press any key to restart the system ....." input
case $input in
        D)
                echo -e "\n[DebugMode] Enter root as login \n"
                ;;
        *)
                /sbin/reboot -f
                ;;
esac

However, I was able to make the packaged binary (fumagician) executable (+x), and executing it (./fumagician) launched the update utility just fine.

I struggled with this same issue for a half day yesterday and finally got it.. Hopefully this helps someone!

I have a pair of Samsung 990 Pro 2TBs w/ heatsink on an Asrock Rack W880D4U.

Couldn't get my system to boot off the bootable USB based on Samsung's ISO. Kept getting this message "redfish: pushing firmware layout to odata server". Tried creating the USB stick with the tool in Samsung's instructions (unetbootin), tried it with Rufus, and tried it with balena etcher. I tried selecting MBR, tried UEFI, tried ISO writing the USB stick, tried dd writing, tried disabling secure boot, couldn't find any options for legacy boot, tried changing my primary GPU to CPU. Nothing worked!!! Was going to settle for pulling the NVMes and moving them to a Windows PC and updating with Magician, but when testing Magician on my own PC that has a 980 NVMe, it didn't even detect it :(

Then I found this thread here.... Tried what OP suggested, but the utility gave me the "no supported ssds" message. Ugh.

Came across another blog post searching for "samsung firmware usb wont boot" -- https://blog.quindorian.org/2021/05/firmware-update-samsung-ssd-in-linux.html/

Grabbed a docker container called "Ubuntu-Playground" from CA, launched the console, and ran the following commands:

wget https://path.to.samsung.iso

apt-get -y install gzip unzip wget cpio

mkdir /mnt/iso

sudo mount -o loop ./Samsung.iso /mnt/iso/

mkdir /tmp/fwupdate

cd /tmp/fwupdate

gzip -dc /mnt/iso/initrd | cpio -idv --no-absolute-filenames

cd root/fumagician/

sudo ./fumagician

And it actually worked... Saw both drives, updated them super quickly. Firmware didn't show up in unRAID until after rebooting, but it looks like I'm at the latest version now. 7B2QJXD7

Edited October 23, 2025Oct 23 by Joebar
updated

On 10/24/2025 at 3:24 AM, Joebar said:

I struggled with this same issue for a half day yesterday and finally got it.. Hopefully this helps someone!

I have a pair of Samsung 990 Pro 2TBs w/ heatsink on an Asrock Rack W880D4U.

Couldn't get my system to boot off the bootable USB based on Samsung's ISO. Kept getting this message "redfish: pushing firmware layout to odata server". Tried creating the USB stick with the tool in Samsung's instructions (unetbootin), tried it with Rufus, and tried it with balena etcher. I tried selecting MBR, tried UEFI, tried ISO writing the USB stick, tried dd writing, tried disabling secure boot, couldn't find any options for legacy boot, tried changing my primary GPU to CPU. Nothing worked!!! Was going to settle for pulling the NVMes and moving them to a Windows PC and updating with Magician, but when testing Magician on my own PC that has a 980 NVMe, it didn't even detect it :(

Then I found this thread here.... Tried what OP suggested, but the utility gave me the "no supported ssds" message. Ugh.

Came across another blog post searching for "samsung firmware usb wont boot" -- https://blog.quindorian.org/2021/05/firmware-update-samsung-ssd-in-linux.html/

Grabbed a docker container called "Ubuntu-Playground" from CA, launched the console, and ran the following commands:

wget https://path.to.samsung.iso

apt-get -y install gzip unzip wget cpio

mkdir /mnt/iso

sudo mount -o loop ./Samsung.iso /mnt/iso/

mkdir /tmp/fwupdate

cd /tmp/fwupdate

gzip -dc /mnt/iso/initrd | cpio -idv --no-absolute-filenames

cd root/fumagician/

sudo ./fumagician

And it actually worked... Saw both drives, updated them super quickly. Firmware didn't show up in unRAID until after rebooting, but it looks like I'm at the latest version now. 7B2QJXD7

Thank you, sorted me out!

On 2/26/2023 at 7:19 PM, Salzgablah said:

I was able to follow all the steps but the firmware updater does not detect all of my Samsung SSD's.

 

 

 

I have two 970 EVO Plus drives in a cache pool together for mirroring. The drive named "Cache" has an older firmware starting with '2B' and Cache 2 already has the updated firmware starting '4B'. I'm looking to update the "Cache" NVME.

 

When running the updater, it only detects "Cache 2" and says that the firmware is already up to date (which is true), but it does not list out the first drive "Cache". Any ideas?

Did you find a solution? I have the exact same SSDs in the exact same configuration and exact same firmware issues with the exact same firmware version for drive 1 and 2

2 hours ago, HardwareHarry said:

Did you find a solution? I have the exact same SSDs in the exact same configuration and exact same firmware issues with the exact same firmware version for drive 1 and 2

I dug into this specific problem yesterday and installed the SSD individually in a spare PC, actually burned a CD as it is hard to get the specific Evo Plus firmware ISO working from a USB stick. (works with ventoy starting the iso in memdisk mode if someone wants to experiment with that)

It still did not update one of my 970 Evo Plus.

Then I found out that

1. There are 2 revisions of the 970 Evo Plus with two different controllers on it. The Firmware update site or the product site does not consider that. (2020 chip shortage issue

2. For me that means my 2nd Evo Plus is a different one with a differernt controller and no firmwareupdate above "2B.." (same version as the EVO (not Plus) on the Samsung website)

3. My other Evo Plus has a different controller and a newer Firmware starting with "4B..."

For the one with "2B.." this is not even revognized as compatible drive by the firmware update tool, no matter what you do.

Trust this might help others

On 1/29/2023 at 8:17 PM, nowhere99 said:

This doesn't work for the 870 EVO. The fumagician script just complains about the required files not being located in the correct path.

 

  ERROR (7)

  Firmware Files Required For the Firmware Update Process
  are Not Located in the Correct Path!!!

 

Move the fumagician directory to /root and flash the drive from there.

On 12/18/2025 at 5:20 AM, HardwareHarry said:

I dug into this specific problem yesterday and installed the SSD individually in a spare PC, actually burned a CD as it is hard to get the specific Evo Plus firmware ISO working from a USB stick. (works with ventoy starting the iso in memdisk mode if someone wants to experiment with that)

It still did not update one of my 970 Evo Plus.

Then I found out that

1. There are 2 revisions of the 970 Evo Plus with two different controllers on it. The Firmware update site or the product site does not consider that. (2020 chip shortage issue

2. For me that means my 2nd Evo Plus is a different one with a differernt controller and no firmwareupdate above "2B.." (same version as the EVO (not Plus) on the Samsung website)

3. My other Evo Plus has a different controller and a newer Firmware starting with "4B..."

For the one with "2B.." this is not even revognized as compatible drive by the firmware update tool, no matter what you do.

Trust this might help others

This is helpful. I have a 970 Evo Plus with firmware "2B2QEXM7" as evidenced here:


vs the latest firmware on samsung site as "4B2QEXM7" (difference is 2b vs 4b only it seems) as evidenced here:
\

I downloaded that 4B2QEXM7 firmware. When I follow OP steps, I get this:

Your post explains it. It's also explained in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/ut6asc/samsung_ssd_firmware_how_to_update/

Unfortunately for me, the reason I went hunting for this is because my samsung 970 EVO plus seems to randomly shut off in my array. I have to hard shut down and cold boot to get it back (even reboot doesnt get it back). I was hoping firmware update would resolve this. Now I have no clue.

Edited January 20Jan 20 by ratmanjones

On 12/18/2025 at 3:20 PM, HardwareHarry said:

My other Evo Plus has a different controller and a newer Firmware starting with "4B

Have same for my two 970 evo plus 1TB in windows pc, they both have different firmware 2Bxxx and 4Bxxxx. The second it's just was a new model with lower temperature back then.

Edited January 20Jan 20 by Masterwishx

On 10/23/2025 at 6:24 PM, Joebar said:

I struggled with this same issue for a half day yesterday and finally got it.. Hopefully this helps someone!

I have a pair of Samsung 990 Pro 2TBs w/ heatsink on an Asrock Rack W880D4U.

Couldn't get my system to boot off the bootable USB based on Samsung's ISO. Kept getting this message "redfish: pushing firmware layout to odata server". Tried creating the USB stick with the tool in Samsung's instructions (unetbootin), tried it with Rufus, and tried it with balena etcher. I tried selecting MBR, tried UEFI, tried ISO writing the USB stick, tried dd writing, tried disabling secure boot, couldn't find any options for legacy boot, tried changing my primary GPU to CPU. Nothing worked!!! Was going to settle for pulling the NVMes and moving them to a Windows PC and updating with Magician, but when testing Magician on my own PC that has a 980 NVMe, it didn't even detect it :(

Then I found this thread here.... Tried what OP suggested, but the utility gave me the "no supported ssds" message. Ugh.

Came across another blog post searching for "samsung firmware usb wont boot" -- https://blog.quindorian.org/2021/05/firmware-update-samsung-ssd-in-linux.html/

Grabbed a docker container called "Ubuntu-Playground" from CA, launched the console, and ran the following commands:

wget https://path.to.samsung.iso

apt-get -y install gzip unzip wget cpio

mkdir /mnt/iso

sudo mount -o loop ./Samsung.iso /mnt/iso/

mkdir /tmp/fwupdate

cd /tmp/fwupdate

gzip -dc /mnt/iso/initrd | cpio -idv --no-absolute-filenames

cd root/fumagician/

sudo ./fumagician

And it actually worked... Saw both drives, updated them super quickly. Firmware didn't show up in unRAID until after rebooting, but it looks like I'm at the latest version now. 7B2QJXD7

Were you able to do this while they are ‘in use’ as cache?

I did while all four were in a zfs raid pool.

I think the drives have an a/b firmware slot organisation. It updates the unused firmware slot and on reboot marks the updated slot as active.