Dying HPE SSDs Are a Great Reminder to Update Your
In 40,000 hours, your HPE SSD is dead. This is not a Mission Impossible D-List fiction plot; this is reality. Fortunately, you probably weren’t hurt as SSDs with self-destruction are all HPE enterprise-grade drives – 800GB or 1.6TB drives are on company servers or various Hewlett Packard Enterprise storage products, not yours. desktop PC. or laptop.
As noted by HPE , this is an unusual issue requiring “immediate application of this critical fix.” It’s also a helpful reminder that yes, your system’s SSD has firmware and you need to update it as well.
Unlike dumber mechanical drives, which I can’t remember ever needed to be “upgraded” in all my time using computers, SSDs have a lot to worry about. They must provide data across the entire disk for maximum efficiency and longevity. Consequently, SSD manufacturers usually release firmware updates for SSDs that fix bugs, solve security issues, and possibly even improve the performance of your drive (s).
In fact, your SSD manufacturer probably provides a simple utility that you can use to check your drive’s firmware and / or update it with just a few clicks. I usually use Samsung drives on my system, and this is what its utility is like – the dumbly named “Samsung Magician”. It’s not scary at all.
Checking the firmware is as simple as clicking on Disk Information and seeing if there is anything new I need to install:
That’s all. Two seconds. Your setup might be different from mine, and whatever utility your SSD manufacturer uses might be a little more complex (or simpler; who knows!). It is worth looking into, though. If you’ve purchased and installed your SSDs yourself, you should know exactly who makes them, which should make it easier to find the appropriate utility they’ve created to help you manage your drives. If not, or you’ve forgotten, just open the Windows Device Manager and look under the Disk Drives section.
If you have a laptop, I recommend visiting the manufacturer’s website first to see if there are any firmware (or utilities to update it) you can download. If nothing new or you want to be doubly sure, I would hunt down your SSD manufacturer and perform the same check.
If you’re not sure what you’re installing – for example, if you need to download the firmware yourself and flash it with a raw utility – either don’t do it, or triple check that you are installing the absolutely correct firmware for your SSD. … This is not the process you want to screw up (assuming the utility even lets you do it). Ideally, whichever utility you use will download the correct firmware for you and update it as needed.