topic T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates) in Monitors and Memory

T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

scineman — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:55:16 GMT

Hi Samsung team,

I’m reporting a reproducible firmware-level issue affecting multiple T7 Shield 4TB/2TB drives (firmware FXI72P2Q) across both Windows 11 24H2/25H2 and macOS 15 (Tahoe) systems.

Summary

Write speeds drop from ~900 MB/s to 2 MB/s or freeze completely.
The issue reproduces on multiple systems and USB controllers (Z790 Aorus Elite AX, Intel Maple Ridge TB4 card, MacBook Pro M3).
The same ports, cables, and systems work normally with other drives (SanDisk Extreme, Crucial X10 Pro, Samsung T7 2TB).
Affected drives show constant blue LED blinking even when idle—unaffected units turn off the LED after I/O.
There are reports posted within the last 48 hours of people suddenly not being able to use the drive to record on their professional cameras where they had previously had been able to do so.

Testing & Comparison

Benchmarks (Samsung Magician / Blackmagic Disk Speed Test) confirm the regression.
Newer 2 TB T7 Shield (FXI72P2Q_3603_02000101) units sustain normal 941 MB/s read / 922 MB/s write.
Older 4 TB and 2 TB units collapse to 2 MB/s and cause system hangs during file copy.
Reformatting, switching ports, drivers, and OS builds does not resolve the issue.
Updating BIOS, chipset, and to Windows 11 25H2 made no difference.

Hypothesis

This appears to be a firmware-level issue in the ASMedia ASM2364 bridge controller used in the 4 TB T7 Shield.
When the host issues modern UASP 1.1 / USB4 power-management flush-and-suspend commands, the controller enters a non-idle state and throttles all subsequent writes.
This aligns with other reports on the Samsung Community (thread #3189332) and across Reddit and Blackmagic user forums.

Request

Please forward this to Samsung’s firmware or product-engineering team for verification.
I’m happy to provide full logs, benchmarks, and system details for reproduction.

Thanks for your time and attention to this — this issue affects not only file transfers but also real-time camera recording workflows that depend on the T7 Shield line.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

scineman — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 17:23:39 GMT

Both tested under identical conditions (same system, same cable, same port).

The good 2 TB benchmark (941/922 MB/s)

The bad 4 TB benchmark (~2 MB/s)

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Arbee — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:30:41 GMT

Facing a similar issue with my T7 Shield on FXI72P2Q

Versus my regular T7 on FXG42P2Q

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:36:28 GMT

Hello scineman ,

Have you contacted the Samsung warranty/technical support department for memory products?
Maybe they can have the your drive and firmware tested to find out what's going on?

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

scineman — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:45:00 GMT

I'm trying to reach the right person/dept. but Samsung seems to make it a maze to navigate through. I've spoken with tech support, but they were unable to help remotely or be able to point me in the right direction. Another contact could only RMA the drive, which is pointless as explained in another thread on this forum. It's affected four of my drives which hold about 10TB collectively, so sending in a drive for testing is really a last ditch resort. I have a number I need to try next, so hopefully I'll have some luck there.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

scineman — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:49:19 GMT

Yeah, I think it is like a perfect storm between the bridge controller T7 Shields use, that firmware, and possibly changes in windows and mac os on how they handle drives like this. All 4 of the t7 shields I have are acting exactly the same.

Re: Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross..

Arbee — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:54:10 GMT

Yeah, there has been noticeably different performance with this T7 Shield since I bought it probably 16mo ago. Just chocked it up to variance, but it's been worse in the past few months. I'll have to check another one that I've got later this evening and check fw/performance on it.

Re: Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross..

Arbee — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 23:56:23 GMT

Even weirder performance on my other T7 Shield. Same setup (40Gbps cable + TB4 port)

Re: Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross..

scineman — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 08:38:16 GMT

So I spoke to technical customer support, and other than suggesting I try reformatting and re-initializing the drive or sending in to rma, there wasn’t much else he could suggest. I explained there was another thread where they tried both and didn’t have results. I managed to get the email I could then request to forward to engineering dept, but I didn’t get to sending that. Will send soon and post any updates if any.

It’s a bit frustrating when trying to troubleshoot this and getting messages like:

”The Samsung T7 SSDs are consumer SSDs, due to this Samsung does not offer failure analysis, if this is what you are requesting.”

When they clearly don’t promote their T7 shield (or price them) as such. A lot of professionals I know have been trusting these, and now I have serious doubts.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

nirmalkurienmathews — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:10:50 GMT

I have this same issue with my T7 and T9. Samsung please fix it through firmware update.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:30:28 GMT

Hello nirmalkurienmathews ,

In order to help out, How do you know this is a firmware issue? Are you able to provide more details about your system and your current test results?

Unfortunately, many users are not aware that a performance issue with a portable SSD can be caused by many things such as incorrect settings or optimization that may need to be done on the SSD such as TRIM.

If you are having issues and you believe its the firmware, please provide all important information that led you there, otherwise no one will be able to assist or investigate further..

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

nirmalkurienmathews — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:58:52 GMT

Hi,

Let me explain my situation, I got 3 Samsung T9 (2TB & 4TB) and 4 Samsung T7 Shields. I get good speed at the beginning of each SSDs. Now I only get less than 2MB speed. I think this massive speed reduction is not due to low disk space because one T9 shield I'm using currently don't have any issues even though there is only few Megabytes of free space in it. I get good speed with it.

I experience this poor speed only after not using the drives a month or so. The one with good speed, I'm using it frequently for reading and writing.

I enabled TRIM, I do TRIM manually, updated to latest firmware and also enabled performance mode. I am sure this poor speed reduction is related to some firmware issue. This issue is being reported globally across reddit and other forums.

I can provide more details when requested. I just want a proper solution or a technical reason behind speed reduction.

Help me to revive my SSDs. I don't want to format or return them as I got Important files stored in them and I don't have other drives to do the backup.

Thank you

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 21:44:27 GMT

Hello nirmalkurienmathews

Thanks for the update, still not sure what computer you are using?
Have you received any error messages stating or showing that firmware is the cause of this?
Can you at least provide a picture of the slow speed so we can see how your testing it?

It seems a lot of users blame the firmware but have nothing to show that the firmware is the cause of the problem. Most users just say that its all over the internet, yet nothing shows issues with firmware specifically or they use AI for troubleshooting 😑

Also, how are you planning on troubleshooting if you can't at least format the drive?
Formatting is one of the most basic troubleshooting steps to diagnose any storage drive SSD or HDD.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

nirmalkurienmathews — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 21:56:25 GMT

I buy External SSDs for backing up important files. How will anyone know that external SSDs needs to format everytime when there is an issue?! Either it's Firmware or Samsung's problem. Because I don't have this issue with other companies External SSDs.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:07:35 GMT

Hello nirmalkurienmathews

Anyone that has at least a decent amount of experience dealing with storage devices, will let you know, that formatting, is one of the easiest ways to know if a performance issue is being caused by a "software" issue such as a bad volume or partition or incompatible format settings.

A lot of users think that formatting an SSD just means "erasing all the data on the product"
That is not the case. For example, if you are using a storage device on an Apple computer, Apple recommends using APFS format, this is because they know their OS is designed to organize data most efficiently if you are using their preferred format setting. That change alone can make a huge difference in speed specifically.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

nirmalkurienmathews — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:17:14 GMT

I understand all that. You think I post here asking for help or want to know the reason without trying to make sense of what's happening which is so obvious to anyone handling computers these days?

There is another thread posted here about this same issue. I don't have to post any screenshots about my problem because I am facing the same problems as mentioned by other users already.

If you ask me specifically about a screenshot or information which is not posted by others... I can provide them.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:24:40 GMT

Hello nirmalkurienmathews ,

No worries, If you do not want to post any information for your issue specifically as other users have already provided the details for their issues, that's completely understandable,

Hopefully, the information the other users have posted will help get to the source of the problem.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

scineman — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 23:37:46 GMT

So far it's still been silence from Samsung about this. I never added to my post, but I ended up speaking with a Microsoft tech, and he said he personally was experiencing the same problems, and they we're looking into it. Something around the time of the previous firmware and something with windows/Mac Os updates broke things with these Samsung drives. I ended up having to dump all the data on each drive to another working one, and not just reformat, but completely reinitialize the drive, after a reboot it started working correctly. We shouldn't have to do this with relatively new drives, especially when it's 10TB or so of data to have to move around. I did notice a recent firmware update specific to shield t7 drives (within the last week or two), but I have yet to test on one of my remaining drives with the issue. I'll check soon and report back. Unfortunately I could not find a change log or documentation on this last update, so no idea what it addresses. Either way, the issue seems systemic to these types of drives, since the write speed is identical on all, and other drives are working fine.

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Memory Product Expert -1 — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 18:45:27 GMT

Hello scineman

Just out of curiosity, do you know what format style the SSDs you have are currently using?
Would you be able to post pictures of your benchmark results too ?

Re: T7 Shield 4TB – Firmware FXI72P2Q Severe Write-Speed Regression (Cross-Platform, Post-OS Updates)

Moreny — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 12:33:06 GMT

After about a year and a half, my T7 Shield 2TB SSD started writing at ~2 MB/s.

I used it rarely (usually once every ~2 months), mostly to transfer files. I occasionally connected it to a PC (Windows 11 Pro, Z690 mb) and a MacBook Pro M3 Pro.

As i understand this is a global issue, as there are tons of people complaining about it another forums.

It's not a cable or port issue. Something's wrong with the drive itself or firmware. I tried different cables and different PCs. The speed was initially around ~2 MB/s, but if I waited 2-3 minutes, it started to increase sharply for 500+MB/s. This issue specifically with writing. Reading always is normal (fast, about 800+ MB/s). What could be the problem, and is there a solution?

I updated the latest firmware (FXI72P2Q) via Magician, but it didn't help. I tried leaving it connected to the PC for more than 2 hours (without writing or copying anything) – it didn't help. The speed always remains low at first, ~2 MB/s. There's no password (encryption) on the T7. It's never been set. I've tried various high-quality, certified Thunderbolt 4 cables (USB4, USB-C 20GB, etc.). The temperature is always normal. Is formatting the drive really the only option?

But that's a temporary solution, and I understand the problem might reoccur later? Is there any way to fix it without transferring data or erasing the drive? It's also worth noting that I've never filled the drive to even 80%. The maximum I've ever filled it to was ~35%. I think I've written no more than 1000 GB of data to it in total over the entire time I've been using it.

I tried connecting T7 Shield and to PC and a MacBook Pro - this issue is the same everywhere.

P.S. I also read forums where people noted: he's tryed returned their SSD's via RMA—they were given new ones, and after a while, the new ones SSD also started working with low write speed again (about ~1-3MB/s). So, most likely, the issue is with faulty firmware.

Will there be a fix?