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Hardware Compatibility
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Topic starter
Hello,
A bit of backstory to begin my post...
I have some issues with two Express 4M2 enclosures from OWC. One of the enclosures has 2x 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus m.2 NVME SSDs. I have yet been able to create a RAID with this enclosure since initializing one of the drives simply does not work. I have erased the drive with the "clean" command in Windows, plugged it back into the 4M2 enclosure and formated the drive again as MacOS Extended (Journaled) without any progress.
The other enclosure report the same issues. I have 4X 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus m.2 NVME SSDs mounted in the enclosure. I succeeded to create a RAID 5 with this enclosure the first time only to run into write issues the first minute of using it.
When I got the first enclosure with 4x 1TB drives and it started having issues I thought "well one of the drives has to be dead from factory" (even though I've had only a few amount of Samsung drives fail on arrival out of like 1000). But now that the other drive is showing similar issues I begin to this it might be a compatibility issue?
So the real question here is; is there any known compatibility issues with 970 EVO Plus drives and SoftRAID XT (or Lite)?
Tomorrow I will reformat all the drives with the "clean" command in Windows and start all over. We will see how that goes.
Thankful for any answers!
/Lidir
Posted : 08/04/2019 9:59 am
Use SoftRAID to "zero disk" if you want to clear a drive.
In your case, best is to "certify" the Samsungs.
I have seen multiple cases of these drives generating errors, but after a while, they settle down to work.
Do a 3 pass certify and try again. the Express is a very simple enclosure and I know of no compatibility issues with it, but some Samsungs have had issues. This generally applies to whatever the latest/fastest edition of the blades happens to be, then older models work reliably.
I put a set of 970 Pros in this enclosure and after a second certify,they seem to work. I did have one io error when creating a volume, but otherwise, it has been stable.
its also possible the IO Errors are something spurious and not critical. SoftRAID is designed to report all IO errors, regardless of cause. This subject is still unclear.
Posted : 08/04/2019 9:32 pm
Topic starter
Use SoftRAID to "zero disk" if you want to clear a drive.
In your case, best is to "certify" the Samsungs.
I have seen multiple cases of these drives generating errors, but after a while, they settle down to work.
Do a 3 pass certify and try again. the Express is a very simple enclosure and I know of no compatibility issues with it, but some Samsungs have had issues. This generally applies to whatever the latest/fastest edition of the blades happens to be, then older models work reliably.
I put a set of 970 Pros in this enclosure and after a second certify,they seem to work. I did have one io error when creating a volume, but otherwise, it has been stable.
its also possible the IO Errors are something spurious and not critical. SoftRAID is designed to report all IO errors, regardless of cause. This subject is still unclear.
Thank you for this. I ran the "certify" before raiding the drives and they both passed. I have now created the RAID and ran into 1 issue while doing so. I cleared the IO error counter and am now running the certification again. The drives seem to be working better now though. I'll update if I run into any other issues.
Posted : 10/04/2019 3:01 am
Thanks, this is about what I have seen. early "teething" problems, then they start behaving normally
We do not know what the actual cause of these issues are.
Posted : 10/04/2019 7:42 am
Hi, had the same issue. Contacted OWC support, they replied
"This device does not support Samsung 970 EVO Plus series SSDs."
See https://www.owcdigital.com/products/express-4m2#tech-specs #4...
Gotta return my 970 evo plus. Hope the seller will accept my request :-/
Posted : 23/05/2019 2:38 pm
After updating the firmware of the 970 Evo Plus to version 2 right in the Express 4M2 I gave it another try and...
...it seems to work :-)
At least my 8TB express 4M2 now runs with no errors, a test with BlackMagic results a little below expected speeds (1400 write/2200 read) and it seems to be quite stable (2 days running now).
Posted : 01/06/2019 4:58 am
Please post the link where you obtained the firmware and if it is Mac compatibel, or you need to run Windows to update the firmware!
thanks and glad it is working.
Posted : 01/06/2019 4:59 pm
Download ISO from Samsung, create bootable USB-Stick, start your mac from that stick and update the SSDs firmware right in the Express 4m2 housing.
use a magnifying glass on a Retina display to read the Text in the DOS-Box ;-)
Direct link to Firmware (official link, taken from Samsung site):
https://s3.ap-northeast-2.amazonaws.com/global.semi.static/SAMSUNG_SSD_970EVO_Plus_ISO_190513/7ES357322A6707A720E1A71EF11A3BE1EED819E011D317626415F0281A78151C/Samsung_SSD_970_EVO_Plus_2B2QEXM7.iso
Link to Samsung, there find the corresponding entry under "Samsung SSD Firmware":
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/
Posted : 12/06/2019 8:19 am
Still running stable:-)
Posted : 12/06/2019 10:48 am
Feedback is appreciated and I will pass the link along for others!
Posted : 12/06/2019 4:21 pm
This is indeed a link to the "Magician" software for all Samsung SSD's.
Posted : 14/06/2019 1:25 am
This is indeed a link to the "Magician" software for all Samsung SSD's.
Keep scrolling down ;-)
Posted : 15/06/2019 5:21 am
Great news!
Posted : 15/06/2019 7:01 pm
