Samsung PM851 SSD Drive

Question

I just received a Dell XPS 8700 with a Samsung PM851 256GB SSD drive... when I was looking through the various support.dell.com files sure enough there is a SSD Firmware update but it is dated June of last year. I confirmed that the currently installed Firmware is indeed the prior version so my Dell SSD is already out of date. Great.

Upon doing futher research I also found that the Samsung Magician software does not fully recognize the drive... all it can do is benchmark the SSD which is pretty lame seeing as how this is a Samsung drive. Ugh.

After reading even MORE I found that there is a Samsung Restoration program that alleviates the slowness in the PM851 and increases performance quite a bit. Like... A LOT. I read somewhere that the PM851 is actually based off of the 840 EVO, not sure if that is correct or not?

Even if I update my Firmware to the latest version I don't think I can run the performance restoration software. When I installed the restoration app it says the drive is not supported even though it was written for the PM851 specifically.

What gives Dell???

JBSlaughter · Answer

Just successfully flashed the newest EXT49D0Q firmware to the hard drive... I used Rufus2.0 to make a bootable USB drive and then put all of the firmware files on the root. Flashed no problem and didn't back up any of my files. I was prepared for it to wipe my drive but it did not. Came back up with everything as it was before I flashed it but now it is showing as having the new firmware.

Still can't use the Performance Restoration tool I see out there... does Dell plan to update the drive firmware so we can get this fix?

Seems like I see the topic most associated with the Surface Pro 3, i'm assuming because it's the same SSD drive that it's also going to be affecting my 8700 the same way until it's fixed?

In the current Samsung Magician benchmark tool I am seeing 544/267 for speeds... I feel like I should be getting better than that?

JBSlaughter · Answer

Hmm when I check out the support.dell.com website I see a new firmware update for the Samsung PM851 SSD drive as of April 21st...

Yet the firmware revision number appears to be the same as the previous one I mentioned above?

So is this a new firmware version or not? And if so, does anyone know what it does?

It would be nice if we could use the Samsung Magician software etc with our drives...

osprey4 · Answer

Hi JBSlaughter, What you have is an OEM version of the Samsung SSD. So retail utilities will not work.

JBSlaughter · Answer

But Samsung makes the drives.. you'd think the utility would still work?? Also does anyone know if the newest update on the support site is actually any different than the previous version or not?

gggeek · Answer

Downloaded the firmware today. The files inside looked exactly like the ones in the zip I had downloaded one month ago.

Installed it without problems - for me too the data was not wiped, even though I took the precaution of cloning the whole disk before, just in case.

How I flashed the disk fw (help for noobs):

- installed Clonezilla to an usb stick using unetbootin (clonezilla comes with freedos onboard)

- copied the fw update files on the usb stick

- rebooted, f12 to get to the boot menu, choose the usb stick in bios compatibility mode (otherwise clonezilla bootloader does not allow booting to freedos), choose "freedos - no drivers" as os (it seems that freedos with himem86 and all drivers is not compatible with the fw update tool)

- go to drive c:, run the fw update executable, reboot

ayddeesh · Answer

I made a bootable USB using Rufus. Then I extracted the files from the EXT49D0Q.zip folder to the bootable USB. But when I boot from the USB and enter 'cd DSRD', I get an error saying CHDIR failed for 'DSRD'. What am I doing wrong?

Sandmetal · Answer

create a folder and name it DSRD copy paste FW+dsrd+dsrd262 inside. hope that fix your proplem cheers

Chestervn · Answer

Hi, im running windows 10 on a Z97 mobo. Just installed a pm851 as a working drive, but the windows driver was like 2006. So trying to update the firmware as guided here.

My problem is when i input my cmd prompt such as C:\>, always get a *invalid command* message.

What is wrong here?

Updated: i removed all my other disks. I can access the update exe file, but the utility said that no supported ssd found.

My bios still show that pm851 is there.

Pls help.

nawaab · Answer

Were you able to get past this error? I'm trying to run the update on a E7440 laptop off of freedos, and when I run the tool, I get the same message: 'no supported ssd found'.

Storage, Drives & Media

Samsung PM851 SSD Drive

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