Help needed for Samsung 840 SSD 120GB

[jlkf3]

Hi All,

I've been having some serious issues installing the Samsung SSD 840 Series 120GB (840 SATA 6GBS 2.5 - Man PT# MZ-7TD120BW) SSD drive into my set-up (found in signature).

SSD F/W Version: DXT07B0Q

The problems i have:

* Unable install Windows 7 x64 on drive (Fails on "expanding windows files 1%")
* Unable to update F/W - I've tried using Samsung Magician 3.2, 4.0 and 4.1 and also created both boot to USB and boot to CD method using version 3.2.
* I've successfully cloned an image to SSD and the OS booted correctly , but its very very slow and i was unable to do anything.
* Enabled TRIM etc... which then eventually stopped me from being able to boot
* I've attempted to run Samsung Performance Benchmark but the disk R/W is so slow I've never let it complete.
* Chipset drivers are up-to-date
* BIOS has been flashed to the most recent image
* Sata is set AHCI

As you can tell I've spent numerous hours attempting to find solutions but sadly got not where. The only thing i can think off is that this drive is either faulty or not compatible with with my set-up.

Anyways...

If you have any ideas then please let me know.

Thank you in advance for your responses.

P.S.

First post

 

[airdeano]

welcome to the OC3D forums,
sorry to hear of your troubles, but a couple of items come to mind.
your latest BIOS should be M5A97 BIOS 1605 (31-10-12) to improve system stability.
ive seen some SSD firmware issues like this on the 830/840 sku.
verify your FW to the latest FW and retest.

and obvious items like correct SATAII cables, SATA power plug install, and from
what i have read seems to be OS error. another internet member has same issue
and used Ubuntu (temp install) and the drive tests 500/500, but on W7/8 its pooh.

only other thing i've seen for the AMD platform is to update to windows SR1
should include hotfix 2645594 and hotfix 2646060.

i had similar issues installing XP on SSD without using SR3 load disc.

 

[FTLN]

I have exactly the same ssd..

Recently I had reinstalled Windows and had to dissconect all other hard drives to get past the failed at 1% issue...

 

[jlkf3]

Hi both,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I can confirm that the latest BIOS is installed on board and the correct sata cables are installed as well. I've even added SSD to its own spur from my modular PSU to still find its doing exactly the same :-(

I haven't attempted to install a flavour of Linux onto the drive because I'm only going to be using this machine for the odd hour of gaming and sadly Steam on Linux is...well... With that in mind, I think it would be even more frustrating to find out if it does work flawlessly on Linux

I think I'm going to send this tripe back and try again before it consumes any more of my time.

Thank you so much.

J

 

[SPS]

Like FTLN mentioned, you did have the HDD unplugged during Windows installation?

 

[iBeInspire]

I bought the same drive about 2 weeks ago, and I had no problems whatsoever installing windows, updating firmware and everything else... Faulty drive, maybe..?

 

[jlkf3]

Hi Sps,

Yep. SSD was the only drive plugged in during installation. I also tried about 6 times.

I noticed this in the 3.2 guide for Samsung Magician:

Q2. Why don’tPCs with AMD chipsets & AMD drivers support Magician?

A2.This is a limitation of the AMD driver. You can resolve this issue by installing the Microsoft driver.

Strange.

 

[SPS]

I recently installed the 840 into my AMD machine and I had high DPC latency issues caused by SATA drivers..

 

[jlkf3]

Sorry about the late update.

I gave the drive to my friend who has a complete Intel set-up in hopes that he's able to update the Firm but sadly he had exactly the same issue.

Sending drive back to Novatech on Saturday.

Thanks for all your help guys.