Questions about Updating NVME Firmware Dual Boot Setup

[TECHSENSI]

Hello, I've recently been having very bad performance issues in Windows 11 with my Samsung 990 NVME. When I originally installed it in my Laptop about 9 months ago I had excellent performance and benchmarks in Windows 11 using CrystalMark and the Samsung Magician Software. Today I could barely edit a video and ran a benchmark and noticed my performance dropped significantly! Almost to the point where I couldn't even use the OS! I confirmed the issue is isolated to Windows 11 because when I booted into Linux I got the same/good benchmarks I had when I first installed the drive. I confirmed Trim is turned on in Windows 11 . The Windows 11 drive optimization is "not available" but I think that's because my Norton is supposed to optimize my Drive and turns this feature off in Windows 11. 

Here's my original Benchmark when I first installed this drive. Followed by the bad bench and lastly a new benchmark after I turned off Windows Bitlocker  which helped. 

1) First Installed/Good   2) Terrible Bench 3)Bitlocker Turned off (better but not as good as original)

So, I'd like to see if installing the New Firmware that Samsung Magician notified me is available will resolve this issue? However, I'm concerned this might affect my Dual-boot / GRUB setup? Does anyone know if I can safely update the Firmware through Windows with Magician or if I should use another method? I searched and only found a post that mentioned if you update the firmware it will update it on the actual NVME memory or something and this would also mean it will be updated in Linux as well. Appreciate any help!

Also, here's the benchmark in Linux which is still good as my original bench from back in October 2024.

[ddaniel51]

The  firmware is written to the SSD itself and is independant of the operating system.

[stoagy]

🙏

[ddaniel51 · Accepted solution]

What is the 990's capacity?

According to Diskmark your partition utilization is 89% leaving you only about 30GB of drive space for Recycle Bins,  temporary system files and caches especially when editing large videos.  As you fill the drive it is going to get worse.

The ideal solution is to increase the partition size either by  taking some from the linux partition or ideally migrating to a higher capacity drive.  Personally I give my boot partitions 2TB to insure I never have this issue.