The saga of my new SSD and the wiping of tears, LOL

[NeverSure]

I ordered and received a new Samsung 850 EVO 500GB solid state drive. This has been a huge challenge so I'll post about it. I rarely start threads so please forgive me.

Of course I installed it into my laptop as soon as I got it, intending to dump a fresh image of my hard disk onto it from my 3.5" USB external and be up and running in no time. That wasn't going to and didn't happen.

I'm away from my desktop right now and all I have is this laptop. I installed the new SSD into the laptop, booted to a rescue DVD and chose the image function. My intention was to use a fresh image I had made with the Windows 8.1 imaging utility but it wasn't to be.

On boot, stopping by Setup to check boot order and look for the SSD the bios saw it and I figured I was golden. But upon booting to the rescue disk, the imaging utility and the disk manager couldn't see it. I had no way to troubleshoot it without an external SATA enclosure so I ordered one overnighted to me. It arrived today (USA) and I finally got it working and here are the basic steps and findings.

This thing was new in sealed packaging but it wasn't initialized, partitioned or formatted. Basically that means it didn't have the required software on it. For some reason the disk management utility in Windows couldn't see it. I typed CMD at the start menu, brought up a command prompt (like DOS) and went into Diskpart. I then typed list disk and diskpart saw it. It was disk 2.

I then typed select disk 2, hit enter, got the confirmation and then typed clean and hit enter. I then rebooted, looked in disk management in Windows and it still couldn't see it.

I went back to diskpart and initialialized it, created a volume (partition) and formatted it. This is all from a command line, remembering DOS commands. Now Windows could see it but my troubles weren't over.

I shut down, installed it in the drive bay and rebooted to the rescue disk but no love. I got an error message saying there wasn't enough space. Back into the laptop went the old hard disk where I partitioned it to a partition small enough to fit this limited 500GB, and tried it again. Still no love because the imaging utility wasn't able to ignore the empty partition. There wasn't enough room on the SSD.

Now I thank Pib for the tip and I downloaded Macrium Reflect from his link and started over making an image with that. This utility has the ability to ignore any partition and use only chosen partitions in the image. This is the first time I can recall trying to image to a smaller drive than the source drive because it's always been upgrades in size.

I made a new image with macrium to my 3.5 external, and then cloned across to my new external with the SSD. I had to uncheck the empty partition on the old HDD before it would run, but run it did.

I just got it up and running and it is fast. In going to have to stick with an external for extra storage but that's OK.

Thanks for reading, and Cheers.

Edited May 20, 2015 by NeverSure

[apetley]

I was lost at 'intending to dump a fresh image.......'

[NeverSure]

Sorry, slang for intending to image it with an image I had made of the existing HDD. There are utilities that will make an image of the data on one hdd and then move that to another hdd so the new one will boot and run and look just like the original. It's the fastest and most complete way I know of to restore data as a backup or to swap to another hdd.

[elgordo38]

A friend had 2 SSD and they threw craps. He contacted the company and they gave him some weird idea to try to bring em back to life. It seemed to work. They can apparently heal themselves. They are to richly priced and unpredictable to suit me.

[NeverSure]

Dear Khun Neversure....if you had problems like this, just imagine what frustration and tearing out of hair us novices have with stuff like this. Your post has made me think thrice about attempting such tasks. The problem I have is that I have an inquisitive mind and if I get something in my head that I want to try, then I usually go right ahead and do it. That's where you, Pib and other expert BMs come in and to the rescue, and your help is always gratefully received. Glad you got it up and running OK.

Thanks and I agree there is a lot of help available on here.

The reason I made this post is that it occurred to me that many people moving to an SSD may be moving to a smaller drive in capacity and might encounter the same issue, which I had never encountered before.

The second reason was that although the drive was new in sealed packaging, not only wasn't it properly initialized and formatted at the factory but I'm now convinced that what software they put on it was corrupt. The reasons I think that is that continually disk management couldn't see it until I cleaned it with diskpart and started fresh. Normally disk manager would simply initialize it and go through the steps.

This is a case where a good SSD could get returned as defective which in a way it was when what it needed was "software adjustment" and then a shrinking of partition size in the source disk. I wanted to put this into the "TVF knowledge base" in case any or part of it happens again.

Cheers

[Pib]

Windows not being able to see a new drive sometimes, be it a hard disk drive or solid state drive, although your computer BIOS can see it is not an uncommon problem...and the problem can occur whether the drive is mounted internally or externally....heck, sometimes even a DVD drive or floppy disk drive can't be seen which is usually caused by a Windows settings issue.

I had that very issue just a few months ago with an external USB floppy disk drive that I've owned for a long time...it would no longer appear on my Win 7 computers or my Win 8.1 computer unless I had a disk in the drive....and I use to use that floppy drive on the very Win 7 computers I have now. For a short while I thought the floppy drive maybe had just died from old age. But the problem was a simple Windows view preference setting...in the Windows File Explorer Folder View Options there is a setting called "Hide empty drives"...that selection was checked...I unchecked it and the drive appears even with no disk inserted. I expect this setting could cause "any" drive not to appear in the Windows File Explorer if it's empty...and maybe for a hard drive if the the drive is not formatted it would appear as empty to Windows and not be shown in the Windows File Explorer...don't know if that setting might affect what would appear in the Windows Disk Management module.

Googling something along the lines of "can't see my hard drive" will bring up millions of links....of course you can bring up a gazillion google links on most any subject. I know over my computer life time I have experienced the problem several times on hard disk drives. The usual culprit is a volume creation/formatting issue and not a bad drive.

Computers can drive a person mad sometimes...even for those who know a good amount about computers...and as every day passes I feel like I know less.

@ NeverSure: so how does you computer feel now with the SSD compared the HDD? Faster, about the same, etc? I know it's still early as you've only had it for a few days now. All I know is my days of having a HDD as my primary computer drive are gone forever because after I saw the overall computer speed improvement when putting a Seagate 600 Series 480GB SSD in my pretty new primary Lenovo laptop I decided to replace it by buying a Samsung 840EVO 512GB for my primary laptop so I could move the Seagate 480GB SSD to my 8 year old Toshiba laptop Pentium CoreDuo laptop. Benchmark-wise the Seagate was a tad slower than the Samsung and the Samsung had a few more GBs of space so I wanted that in my primary laptop. But putting the SSD into the 8 year old latop was like replacing a 4 cyl engine in a car with a 6 cyl engine...big speed improvement. And then I bought a Kingston 250GB SSD and put it in my third laptop...another 8 year old Toshiba laptop running a Celeron CPU...once again, a big speed improvement. By the way, that Kingston SSD was not recognizable when inserting it in an "external" USB 3.0 enclosure, but the laptop has no problem seeing it as it's "internal" drive....I didn't play with that issue more than a few minutes because I bought it for an internal drive and that is how it's being used...been in use since Nov 14 with no problems. And the Samsung and Seagate SSD have been in use for around one year now....no problems. Yeap, my days of having an HDD as the primary drive in my computer--even a brand new computer--are gone....SSDs for me!...but for a secondary internal drive and for external drives I'll continue to use HDDs for various reasons....HDDs still have a long life time ahead of them. SSDs and HDDs used to compliment each other is a good way to go.

By the way, I used the Macrium Relfect Free sofware cloning function/rescue disk approach on all three drive swapouts versus the imaging method you used. I did try the Samsung Data Migration software and the Seagate Disc Wizard for the Samsung and Seagate drives, respectively, but had a few issues so I punted and used the Marcium software to clone them. For the Kingston SSD I used the Macrium software...didn't even try Kingston software.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Pib

[SoiBiker]

This thing was new in sealed packaging but it wasn't initialized, partitioned or formatted. Basically that means it didn't have the required software on it.

I guess that means it was a disk, not a drive, right?

Oh, wait...

[rakman]

Some of the replacement disks come as a kit with a USB to SATA converter. If the one you buy didn't come with one, you can also buy an inexpensive USB external enclosure to house the old disk.

Using the converter you can setup and test the new drive and even test it's bootability before doing the swap.

And while you're planning your next disk upgrade, plan and verify your backup strategy.

[manarak]

Well... I don't know about you, but my drives usually came unformatted, so the PC has to be booted from another device.

Usually I use either a bootable USB stick or an external DVD drive with a Windows install disk on it, both of which have the ability to format and partition the new disk.

[Pib]

Not uncommon for drives to come unformatted. For example, see this Seagate knowledge base article talking formatting with partial quote below: Link

Seagate external drives come preformatted, some for PCs, some for Macs, and some, like GoFlex drives, have special features to allow it to work between both. So if you buy the right drive for your computer, you do not have to do anything else. Just connect the drive to your computer and it will work.
Seagate internal drives must be formatted before use.

[NeverSure]

Thanks guys. @Pib, it is much faster for most things. It of course doesn't speed up internet except I notice when it pulls something from cache where I've been before it rips. It makes some web pages look like they are tumbling in an odd way for a second. It boots and shuts down and opens programs a lot faster. It saves big photoshop files faster.

This deal with Windows not seeing the SSD, I did check to make sure it wasn't hidden but of course it's supposed to be the %system% drive anyway but I really believe there was corrupt data on it. A failed attempt somewhere. The only thing that solved it was the clean command in diskpart. It was like it needed to be freed of something.

BTW I've used that Macrium to merge and resize some partitions and it will do it when Windows Disk Management balks. It's a really good program even in the free version. I used it to clone one external to another just as a test without first making an image file. Sweet.

Thanks for the suggestions. This is a good group.

[JetsetBkk]

Interesting topic

I did the same as NeverSure about a year ago on both my Desktop PC and Netbook PC - upgraded them from HDD to SSD - and posted about it in someone else's thread.

Rather than copy what I wrote before - quite a long post - here is the link:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/706166-need-advice-on-ssds-and-on-speeding-my-computer-up-in-general/#entry7475324

Here's an extract about partition sizes:

I didn't check the partition sizes until a few days later. What I discovered was that all 3 partitions were exactly half their original size because I had restored a 500 GB image to a 250 GB SSD. I had assumed that the empty last partition had been truncated, but I was wrong. I was lucky as all the partitions on the HD were less than 50% used.

I've heard of Macrium, but never used it. I've been using Acronis True Image for years. Currently I use Acronis True Image Premium 2014.

I use a "YUMI" bootable thumb drive to boot Acronis.

My YUMI drive can boot these programs:

GRUB Bootable ISOs and Windows XP/7/8/ ->

Boot Acronis True Image 2014 Premium

Boot Acronis True Image Home 11

Install Win7 Ultimte SP1 x86 Jan 2015

Boot BitDefender Rescue CD

Begin Install of Windows XP from Win XP Pro Jan 2014 (Stage 1)

Continue Windows XP Install from Win XP Pro Jan 2014 (Stage 2)

Boot Windows XP - If fails, reboot with USB removed (Stage 3)

System Tools

PartitionWizardFree9

Ultimate Boot CD (ubcd530)

Other OS and Tools

Hiren's Boot CD (Hiren's.BootCD.15.2)

[Pib]

Regarding software that migrates/clones your data from your old drive to your new drive like I mentioned in my post #7 above I had some issues using the Samsung Migration Software and the Seagate Disc Wizard, both of which basically clone your old drive to you new drive among other things. But to only address the issue with the Samsung Migration Software (not to be confused with thier Magician Software) the cloning from my HDD to my SSD using the Samsung Migration Software went without any apparent problems on my Win 8.1 system. OK, played around with the new SSD for a day or two and every thing seemed fine and I decided to do an image backup using Windows built-in imaging module. I have an external drive that is only used for backup of my computers. However, the imaging process would fail every time in the very early stage (first 10 seconds or so) and give me an error of along the lines not enough disk space...like I didn't have enough free space on my backup drive...but it had plenty of free space. So I start reseaching the problem on the web.

I find I'm not the only one who had experienced the problem...and it appears to be caused the the hidden Windows 7/8 "System Reserved" partition not being cloned & sized properly during the cloning process...350MB partitions were being truncated to 100MB. For Win 7 and Win 8/8.1 System Reserve partitions of 100MB and 350MB, respectively, are created. I look at my newly cloned SSD and see it only has a 100MB System Reserved partition...it supposed to be 350MB....I then look at my old HDD which I hadn't touched since the cloning just in case I needed to put it back in the computer and it has a 350MB System Reserved partition. Reading more on the backup error I'm experiencing it says that during the backup the Windows imaging module must write some info to the System Reserved partition before it starts imaging it....what was happening is there was not enough free space available on the System Reserve partition for my Win 8.1 system (would have been fine for a Win 7 system) and the error message really meant there was not enough free space on that reserve partition to kick-start the imaging process and it had nothing to do with available space on my external backup drive.

So rather than trying to increase the size of the Reserved Partiion I just recloned my HDD to the SSD again but this time using Macrium Reflect Free software. The cloning without with a hitch and the proper sized System Reserved partition of 350MB was created for my Win 8.1 system...and I could now successfully do an image backup.

Here's a link that talks the System Reserve partition on Win 7 and Win 8 and it's purpose in life: Link.

[NeverSure]

Regarding software that migrates/clones your data from your old drive to your new drive like I mentioned in my post #7 above I had some issues using the Samsung Migration Software and the Seagate Disc Wizard, both of which basically clone your old drive to you new drive among other things. But to only address the issue with the Samsung Migration Software (not to be confused with thier Magician Software) the cloning from my HDD to my SSD using the Samsung Migration Software went without any apparent problems on my Win 8.1 system. OK, played around with the new SSD for a day or two and every thing seemed fine and I decided to do an image backup using Windows built-in imaging module. I have an external drive that is only used for backup of my computers. However, the imaging process would fail every time in the very early stage (first 10 seconds or so) and give me an error of along the lines not enough disk space...like I didn't have enough free space on my backup drive...but it had plenty of free space. So I start reseaching the problem on the web.

I find I'm not the only one who had experienced the problem...and it appears to be caused the the hidden Windows 7/8 "System Reserved" partition not being cloned & sized properly during the cloning process...350MB partitions were being truncated to 100MB. For Win 7 and Win 8/8.1 System Reserve partitions of 100MB and 350MB, respectively, are created. I look at my newly cloned SSD and see it only has a 100MB System Reserved partition...it supposed to be 350MB....I then look at my old HDD which I hadn't touched since the cloning just in case I needed to put it back in the computer and it has a 350MB System Reserved partition. Reading more on the backup error I'm experiencing it says that during the backup the Windows imaging module must write some info to the System Reserved partition before it starts imaging it....what was happening is there was not enough free space available on the System Reserve partition for my Win 8.1 system (would have been fine for a Win 7 system) and the error message really meant there was not enough free space on that reserve partition to kick-start the imaging process and it had nothing to do with available space on my external backup drive.

So rather than trying to increase the size of the Reserved Partiion I just recloned my HDD to the SSD again but this time using Macrium Reflect Free software. The cloning without with a hitch and the proper sized System Reserved partition of 350MB was created for my Win 8.1 system...and I could now successfully do an image backup.

Here's a link that talks the System Reserve partition on Win 7 and Win 8 and it's purpose in life: Link.

I mentioned earlier that the Windows imaging utility (Win 8.1-64) wouldn't make an image but Macrium Reflect did and I thanked you for the tip. This what it was balking at. Before I cloned to the SSD Windows would do it and this was part of the fun I had with the SSD.

This is my laptop which doesn't have an install DVD so there's no chance to change anything. It has a bootable image which will duplicate factory. When I cloned the existing HDD to the smaller SSD something happened even though I had shrunk partitions on the factory HDD to get under the size of the SSD and then didn't select the unallocated space for the transfer.

Before I shrunk partitions I couldn't image with the Windows utility. I didn't try with Macrium because by the time you mentioned it I had already shrunk them. I shrunk them because Windows was telling me there wasn't enough space on the target.

Your link is really interesting and it shows how things change. Off topic a bit but it uses the cmd line diskpart which I mentioned in the OP and I can't tell you how many times that utility has saved me including this time.

Good stuff.