EVO 960 1TB Installation on Alienware 15 R3

[cowmoohard]

Spec: laptop came as 1TB HDD installed only

For some reason I can't seem to install Evo 960 1TB correctly on alienware 15 r3 1.0.8 bios

I tried installing samsung NVMe driver 2.0 but it just doesn't allow me to install it. "Samsung NVM Express Device is not connected. Connect the Device and try again". The bio and disk manager/ device manager reads it fine.

It looks like the only way to make the SSD work is to clone the SSD, then erase HDD. BUT I still can't use the samsung magician.

I formatted the SSD to GPT -> put the samsung evo 960 "PURE"/exe on boot drive USB. Driver doesn't install and the SSD is no where found when installing windows 10.

When I switched to legacy, I can see the SSD showing up, but I can't install it because it is a GPT format.

What should I do? I am just kind of stuck.
Read [MB/s] Write [MB/s]
Seq Q32T1: 2753, 1759
4K Q32T1: 500.4, 274.4
Seq: 1787, 770.8
4K:41.10, 140.9

It doesn't seem like the advertised speed either.

 

[jossrik]

I just got my Samsung 960 EVO 500Gb last week and had similar problems installing it, although with me it was on my desktop. Got it physically installed, then couldn't install the NVMe driver, then downloaded 2.0, had problems with Magician. With the Magician, uninstall it, then make sure you have the 5.0 version. I had an old one cause I have a 1Tb 850 EVO in my machine, and through that it would only let me update itself to 4.9.7 or something similar, had to remove it, then install magician fresh. Also, formatted the 960 before it would let me install stuff, then got wise and got Acronis True Image for the clone disk utility, tried the Samsung Migration utility, and while that *appeared* to work, it actually didn't work. Have tried several cloning utilities and the only one I seem to consistently get good results with is Acronis. Make sure in the bios you have RAID off and AHCI on. Update all your "useless" drivers, for me I installed IRST drivers along with several other motherboard drivers, not sure what actually helped or not.