RTL9210

Firmware and tools for RTL9210A and RTL9210B USB to NVMe/SATA bridge controller. They are provided by station-drivers.com, Realtek, etc.

Don't hesitate to support station-drivers.com, they are a great source for drivers and firmware.

All procedures described in this Git repository are at your own risk. In case of software issues, you can find some solutions in the Unbrick section.

Table of Contents

• Warning
• Firmware
• Chipset List
• Files and Folders
• Supported Devices
• How to Flash the Firmware
• Configuration
• Create your own configuration
• Unbrick
• Firmware changelog
• Contribute
• Sources

Warning

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that a device running firmware version v1.32.87 in conjunction with an RTL9210B could put your data at risk due to instabilities at the USB protocol level. An update to at least v1.33.44 is therefore considered absolutely necessary.

Firmware

The table below lists all known firmware versions available in this git repository's firmware folder.

Chipset List

Files and Folders

• configure: All configurations for each device.
• dump: All dumps for each device.
• firmware: All found firmware.

Supported Devices

There are dozens of devices with the RTL9210B, I have gathered in this git repository some firmware configs found on the www.station-drivers.com forums.

You can check in the configure folder or use values from the dump folder to create your own configuration.

How to Flash the Firmware

Warning: Flashing the firmware can brick or permanently damage your device. Do it at your own risk. The author of this Git repository is not responsible for any damage to your device. If you brick your device, you can try to unbrick it with the Unbrick section.

Info: The firmware update tool is only available for Windows and does not work well on Linux with Wine or in a virtual machine.

1. Download the correct and latest firmware and tools from the firmware folder.
2. Extract the archive.
3. Connect the device to the computer.
4. Launch the firmware update tool (such as UTHSB_MPtool) provided in the firmware archive.
5. Dump your device configuration with the firmware update tool and save it.
6. Disconnect the enclosure from the computer.
7. Remove the NVMe/SATA drive.
8. Reconnect the device to the computer.
9. Copy the configuration file (.cfg) of your device from the configure folder to the configure folder where the firmware update tool is located.
10. Change the SERIAL in the configuration file to match your dump file if it is defined. (Optional but recommended)
11. Comment out the DISK_IPS_THRES with a ; in the configuration file. (Optional but recommended)
12. Launch the firmware update tool (such as UTHSB_MPtool) provided in the firmware archive.
13. Select the configuration file (.cfg) of your device.
14. Click on the flash/update device button and wait until the process is finished.

Configuration

This section describes how to configure (in cfg files) the firmware for your device, all configurations are in the configure folder or use values from the dump folder to create your own configuration.

Each configuration are unique to the device, your enclosure may not work properly if you have not the right configuration.

Considerations for Low Power environments (Internal USB Ports on Servers & Rasberry Pie)

The device will check available power upon connection and power on and negotiate from USB 3.0 down to USB 2.0 if it deems not enough power to available. This leads to multiple drawbacks:

1. UASP support is lost;
2. As a consequence Trim and Discard is lost.

The implications are a much quicker wearout of the media if not rectified, apart from the obvious speed loss. If the device is used on an internal server port without external power U3_MAXPWR and U2_MAXPWR should be set to the port standard limits (see table above).

The following table indicates the max power and configuration of a standard USB-A port for USB 2.0 and 3.x. I personally would recommend testing the USB support on a server before putting the disk into operation. A good tool to use is shredOS combined with the linux arch commands to verify via lsusb -t USB protocol used and if UASP is supported.

MAXPWR hereby solely communicates to the parent controller (mainboard chipset) the expected consumption.

To effectively reduce consumption, further steps need to be taken: The .cfg setting LATE_INIT_DISK : 0x1 allows the controller to separate the initialization of ASIC (the RTL9210) and disk sequentially giving all components the time to:

1. fully initiliaze the controller;
2. fully initialize the disk;
3. Communicate the presence of both to the BIOS / UEFI.

The change seems also to trigger a more verbose communication avoiding a stuck system on boot phases during the control of available devices on USB-Bus. When receiving power the SSD boots its internal flash controller, loads its flash translation layer (FTL) into its internal cache, and responds to the motherboard's SATA handshake. Oscilloscope testing shows that booting a SATA SSD mimics an active read cycle, pulsing briefly between 2.0W and 3.5W before dropping down to an idle state of less than 0.5W once the operating system takes over. The non sequential, but parallel, default procedure of the controller can lead to excess requirements beyond the standard power of 4.5W available when controller and disk startup at the same time.

Trim Support on Proxmox (and possibly other Linux based systems)

Tested only with nvme drives. Linux has proven to be very hesitant in adopting Trim Support for RTL9210(x) enclosures, often the support needs to be manually enforced. In addition, for booting from USB you will want to increase the Grub timeout to boot to give the system the needed time to pull up all devices. 20 seconds should suffice.

Check first if support is given (irrelevant drives have been removed):

root@mypve:~# lsblk -D | grep sde
NAME               DISC-ALN DISC-GRAN DISC-MAX DISC-ZERO
sde                       0         0        0         0
├─sde1                    0         0        0         0
├─sde2                    0         0        0         0
└─sde3                    0         0        0         0
  ├─pve-swap              0         0        0         0
  ├─pve-root              0         0        0         0
  ├─pve-data_tmeta        0         0        0         0
  │ └─pve-data            0         0        0         0
  └─pve-data_tdata        0         0        0         0
    └─pve-data            0         0        0         0

The 0 indicates that neither the block device (the disk), nor the partitions currently support trim.

To change that we will enforce recognition on system level: First retrieve the device name (irrelevant information has been removed):

root@mypve:~# lsusb -v
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0bda:9210 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL9210 M.2 NVME Adapter
Negotiated speed: SuperSpeed (5Gbps)
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               3.20
  bDeviceClass            0 [unknown]
  bDeviceSubClass         0 [unknown]
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0         9
  idVendor           0x0bda Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
  idProduct          0x9210 RTL9210 M.2 NVME Adapter
  bcdDevice           22.ca
  iManufacturer           1 Realtek
  iProduct                2 RTL9210CN
  iSerial                 3 012345678922
  bNumConfigurations      1

Take note of the iProduct value RTL9210CN, we will need it to create following file for a custom dev rule:

root@mypve:~# nano /etc/udev/rules.d/10-usb-trim.rules
ACTION=="add|change", ATTRS{product}=="RTL9210CN", SUBSYSTEM=="scsi_disk", ATTR{provisioning_mode}="unmap"

Now we enforce the rule:

root@mypve:~# udevadm control --reload-rules
root@mypve:~# udevadm trigger

As a result the device should now successfully present itself with trim support, the partitions not yet.

root@mypve:~# lsblk -D | grep sde
sde                       0      512B       4G         0
├─sde1                    0      512B       4G         0
├─sde2                    0      512B       4G         0
└─sde3                    0      512B       4G         0
  ├─pve-swap              0        0B       0B         0
  ├─pve-root              0        0B       0B         0
  ├─pve-data_tmeta        0        0B       0B         0
  │ └─pve-data            0        0B       0B         0
  └─pve-data_tdata        0        0B       0B         0
    └─pve-data            0        0B       0B         0

Create your own configuration

To create your own configuration, you can use the dump folder to get the values of your device.

1. Find the dump file of your device in the dump folder or on the internet.
2. Create a new file in the configure folder with the name of your device and the extension .cfg.
3. Copy the content of the dump file into the new file.
4. Remove the first 3 lines of the dump file. These lines start with a line of *, contain the device name on the second line, and have another line of * on the third line.
5. Remove variables with a value of n/a. (Optional)
6. Replace : with = for variable definitions.
7. Comment DISK_IPS_THRES by changing it to ;DISK_IPS_THRES = 0x1 if you want. (Optional)
8. Launch the firmware update tool (such as UTHSB_MPtool), select the new configuration file, and flash it.

Unbrick

When you have bricked your device, you can try to unbrick it with the following steps:

1. Disconnect the device from the computer and remove the NVMe/SATA drive.
2. Disassemble the enclosure and locate the flash chip, which is usually an 8-pin 2x3 mm chip. The chip might be labeled P25Q40SH, FM25Q04A, PUYA P25D40H, or FM25Q04A.
3. Find the datasheet for the flash chip, and locate the CS# and VCC pin or CS# and Hardware Reset pin. Generally, VCC is pin 8 and CS# is pin 1.
4. Short the CS# and VCC pin, or better, use an SPI programmer like the CH341A. If using an SPI programmer, you can skip the next steps and directly flash the firmware.
5. Launch the Realtek firmware update tool (such as UTHSB_MPtool).
6. Connect the enclosure to the computer and keep the pins shorted. Keep the pins shorted for 10-15 seconds or until the device is recognized by the computer or the Realtek firmware update tool.
7. Launch the Realtek firmware update tool (such as UTHSB_MPtool).
8. Click on the flash/update device button and wait until the process is finished.

Firmware changelog

1.23.9.100520 05/10/2020

• Add customized command.
• Fix SATA USB powercut resume issue.
• Fix SATA reset issue if disk is lost.
• Update Kinsea KS10 LED behavior.
• Fix Fulllink macbook disk speed test issue.

1.23.5.09320 03/09/2020

• Support USB HID interface.
• Improve the compatibility for RTL9210B.
• Support RTL9210C_PD/RTL9210C_CG.
• Improve the compatibility for cdrom feature.
• Add Orico customized sleep RGB LED behavior.
• Support security api.
• Add Kinsea KS10 LED behavior.
• Add IOmaster M204 LED behavior.
• Add LED SSI_6431_fp LED behavior.
• Improve opal compatibility.

1.27.25.072921 29/07/2021

• This firmware update aims to improve stability with Samsung 980 Pro and Western Digital SN550 NVMe SSDs.
• The power LED behavior is also improved on Windows, and Intel based Mac systems: now when safely ejected the power LED should turn off ( it may blink slowly ) indicating the drive may be safely unplugged from the computer.This update is recommended for uses who have experienced connectivity problems with Samsung 980 Pro or Western Digital SN550 NVMe SSDs.

1.29.8.122921 ?

• Fix problem If your HDD/SSD could not be detected or kept disconnected from your Mac

1.29.12.011122 ?

• Fix Compatibility with Samsung M.2 SSDs und Samsung Data Migration Tool

1.30.17.070622 ?

• Fix slow speed issue.

1.30.21.070622 ?

• Has improved random 4K read performance.

1.31.17.102022 ?

1.32.16.010923 ?

1.32.45.041323 ?

1.32.49.140423 ?

1.32.68.062623 28/06/2023

1.32.87.082923 29/08/2023

• Addresses USB link instability seen in some SSD models when used in conjunction with Linux-based PCs, including the Solidigm P41 Plus. This update includes compatibility fixes in certain scenarios, including use with the Samsung 980 Pro

1.32.901.120722 ?

1.33.5.100623 ?

1.33.7.191023 19/10/2023

1.33.44.011824 18/01/2024

• Improved Compatibility

1.33.98.090324 03/09/2024

• Improved speed on some SSDs (more info www.station-drivers.com)

1.34.29.011325 04/01/2025

• Fixes an issue with random SSD disconnection

1.34.39.032625 13/01/2025

Contribute

Don't hesitate to contribute to this git repository by creating a pull request or by contacting me by email: bensuperpc [at] gmail.com (I didn't accept exec files for security reasons).

Sources

• www.station-drivers.com
• Configuration
• Sabrent EC-SNVE firmware
• Stable NVME Adapter Discussion on Anand Tech
• Example of Technical Specifications of a HPE Server