If you are lucky and have an (external) CD drive you can burn one of the ISO images provided on the Samsung SSD page. However as I bought the SSD (a 840 non-pro) for my netbook and had already installed the SSD and didn't want to remove it again I didn't have this option.
After some trial and error I succeeded by extracting a part of the ISO image and putting it on the FreeDOS stick that I created using UNetbootin. Neither using the executable for Windows on FreeDOS nor creating a USB Stick using UNetbootin and the ISO image worked for me.
I read that under Windows you can create a bootable USB stick using Magican (can be found on the same download page). I didn't know this before and haven't tried it but if you have a Windows somewhere this might be a safer option than what I suggest here.
For those of you who don't want to repeat the trial and error, here is what worked for me. Updating the firmware is a dangerous procedure, your SSD could be damaged irreparably if the update fails. If you follow these instructions you do that at your own risk.
I have a Samsung 840 (non-pro) SSD but I could imagine that this could work for other Samsung SSDs, too.
You need the samsung
directory from the isolinux/btdsk.img
image inside the ISO, copy it on the USB stick. Once you have booted the stick, change the directory to C:\samsung\DSRD\
directory and execute DSRDGUIO.exe
.
/tmp/Samsung_SSD_840_DXT07B0Q.iso
/mnt/test
for this purpose: mount -o loop /tmp/Samsung_SSD_840_DXT07B0Q.iso /mnt/test
/mnt/test/isolinux/btdsk.img
to /tmp
.umount /mnt/test
btdsk.img
: mount -o loop /tmp/btdsk.img /mnt/test
/mnt/test/samsung
on the USB stickbtdsk.img
: umount /mnt/test
C:\ cd samsung\dsrd\ DSRDGUIO.exe
Feel free to comment if it worked for you or if it didn't so other people can learn from your experiences.