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.

1. Use UNetbootin to install FreeDOS on the USB stick
2. Download the ISO image. I assume it is in /tmp/Samsung_SSD_840_DXT07B0Q.iso
3. Mount the ISO image. I've create a directory /mnt/test for this purpose:

   mount -o loop /tmp/Samsung_SSD_840_DXT07B0Q.iso /mnt/test

4. Copy /mnt/test/isolinux/btdsk.img to /tmp.
5. Unmount the ISO image: umount /mnt/test
6. Mount btdsk.img: mount -o loop /tmp/btdsk.img /mnt/test
7. Copy /mnt/test/samsung on the USB stick
8. Unmount btdsk.img: umount /mnt/test
9. Reboot from the USB stick
10. Select one of the live versions of FreeDOS
11. In FreeDOS execute:

    C:\
    cd samsung\dsrd\
    DSRDGUIO.exe

12. Follow the instructions that appear