256GB Samsung SM961 M.2 2280 NVMe Solid State Drive Expired

Lot of speculation and misinformation here.

This seller has been selling unused HP OEM drives for a while from surplus stock via Newegg and Ebay. Typically listed at $49.99 but accepts offer for $39.99 on eBay. I bought one of these and so have a lot of people on SD (search for it) with no problems. There were no power cycles in the one I received indicating that it was never even installed. One of the people here has an informative blog reporting on his card.

https://www.reddit.com/user/NewMa...tion_post/

Note that the performance numbers you might find as screenshots depend a lot on the block size used for the test.
But the major discrepancy comes from looking at advertised rates for 1TB vs measured speeds on 256GB. The smaller drives are typically slower.

It is still available on eBay. You can try offering the same deal price as here for $35 and may very well be accepted. No tax.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-...1754750264

The warranty is provided by the seller.

Works very well and is equivalent to the 960 Pro. You need to use the latest Windows driver on Samsung site, common to all 9xx series to get good 4k read and write numbers. MLC endurance that is better than TLC.

My Yoga 910 came with this same model drive when I bought it in 2016. It was frequentily encountering random BSODs (>1 daily), and the BSODs appeared associated with waking from sleep/hibernate. I had no idea what was causing this issue and could never diagnose it. Several Windows 10 installs later, I just accepted that I'd never get any real work done with it and it'd just be a casual laptop to watch videos on.

I came across a decent WD Black 500GB deal so I bought that for my desktop. I then got the 970 Evo to replace it, and had the spare WD Black. I replaced the drive in my laptop and got the confirmation I didn't realize I needed. I never had a BSOD again.

It was the damned PM961. These drives come with terrible drivers, and load (such as waking from hibernate) causes critical errors. I threw the drive in a drawer and hoped I could either sell it as-is for single-digit dollars, warning buyers that it will BSOD frequently.

EDIT: oops, thought this was the PM961.
I eventually came across a post on reddit or SD about someone having trouble with their PM961. Someone recommended updating the firmware, and the OP said it worked. I thought to myself, "huh, nothing to lose, might as well try it."

That was nearly >6 months ago. I've been using half of it as a page file and the other half as fast temporary storage for applications. I haven't had a BSOD from it (as far as I can tell, the rare BSOD was caused by something else).

Updating firmware is a must on these. Do not buy it thinking it will work well out-of-the-box. Update the firmware. I don't know if it's because I have an older manufactured model (2016, after all). Maybe the newer models already have this critical fix in place. Either way, it