Had the same issue with my Sabrent 1TB Rocket 4 Plus, within 6 months I`d lost 13% and its been on 16% for over a year with 9.5 tb written

With having three (3) of the Samsung (2TB) 990 Pro’s sitting on my EVGA KP Z690 motherboard since November 2022, my Samsung software maintains to show absolute no speed issues or what is called reports of lifespan and service life. Even if in fact I would experience a drop in performance in the first year of operation (5%-10%) it would not bother me as these drives are lightening fast in any event. How fast can you go? I originally was going to buy the instantly available 980 Pro series, but with extra money lying around I went for the latest Samsung tech. The difference in real world speeds between the 980 Pro versus the 990 Pro feels negligible and reminded me of the difference between the 13900K and a 13900KS. Besides the tech-media loves ‘rumors and clicks’ on their sites, and I am getting to a point in taking most now with a grain of salt. This said I better check my RTX 4090 cable connection before it melts in front of my eyes!

Same story was 100 years ago when 2.5 inch ssd's were introduced. Samsung took the spotlight.

Much depends on how the drive is used, of course. Using it as a boot drive & OS build upgrade drive will incur use much more rapidly than using it as a routine data drive. Sometimes how the drive is over provisioned will have an effect. I ordered my 250GB 960 EVO NVMe drive on April 5 2018, and immediately began using the drive as my boot drive for OS, my C:\ partition. I ordered my 980 Pro 500GB on Dec 5 2020, and it replaced the 960 EVO as my boot drive, and was moved to just another data/program drive. Today, the 980 Pro shows 23.6 TBs written, the 960 EVO shows 20.5 TBs written, despite being in use ~18+ months longer than the 980 Pro. Both drives I have OP'ed at 8%.

I have 980 Pro 2TB, 850 Pro 1TB, 870 QVO 8TB, 840 EVO 250GB. All bought at various points (oldest drive being 10 years old). All showing 100% health in Samsung Magician (never used any overprovisioning or took any special care of drives, just used them normally). Issue with 990 Pro sounds like firmware bug or bad reporting by SMART.

"known for their good quality and long service life" Good quality in 2023? AHHhhahahahahahahah XDDD This world is no longer about good quality... it's about how we scam the users with marketing and how to claim many money from nothing. The good quality ended in the 2000s... If i buy a printer and after the 1 year warranty is ended the printer (Canon) is dead and i replace only one cartridge not more. This is quality in 2022/23.

My Corsair MP400 4tb has lost just 1% in about 2 years now. It's my boot and OS drive which has only ever been to half capacity with basically 2tb of games.

Stratos2k22:

"known for their good quality and long service life" Good quality in 2023? AHHhhahahahahahahah XDDD This world is no longer about good quality... it's about how we scam the users with marketing and how to claim many money from nothing. The good quality ended in the 2000s... If i buy a printer and after the 1 year warranty is ended the printer (Canon) is dead and i replace only one cartridge not more. This is quality in 2022/23.

Well, there sure is a bit of that, too much greed all around. But early SSDs were absolutely awful, they were worse.

Nada at Techtesters has previously called out SSD manufacturers for changing out components to cheaper slower alternatives, including the Samsung 980 model. They sometimes change the components without any warning or indication, only measured by a speed test or reliability test. This could be the same or maybe there is an error in the programming of where 100% health is, so the drive will rapidly fall to a number that actually is 100% health hardware and the curve will then flatten out and look normal after that.

That's quite an odd situation here. What worries me at this point is that apparently the person in question even sent it to Samsung going through the RMA process and he got it back unchanged. So far I did not experience this issue with any of my own Samsung SSDs, and I got quite many (I only use Crucial and Samsung SSDs). My Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB runs as smooth as when I purchased it, and I got it since release day-one. I don't have a 990 Pro though. It could be that the person used his 990 Pro in an environment it was not meant to be used for. In earlier tests the Samsung Pro SSDs usually manage to allow read-writes on the storage cells up to 20 times the capacity Samsung guarantees, while other brands stop working after 1,5 to 3 times the capacity of writes they were guaranteed. Usually they all keep their promise, but Samsung manages to go far beyond that. They are unbeaten even today.

My concern with my 2 TB 990 Pro I got towards the end of November is the buggy firmware with regards to hardware encrypted BitLocker. Also the drive is at 95% health after 25 TB written, returning it by the end of the week.