Fresh install Win 10 cannot find Samsung 850 EVO driver

[WHL Dad]

Good morning. Discouraging start to a Saturday here...

The Windows 10 Media Creation Tool install routine on my USB thumb drive (in a USB 2.0 slot) cannot find any drives on my PC. The sad story is below:

My 2-yr-old 840 EVO died. It was my OS drive. I had successfully upgraded my OS to Win 10 several months ago.

I bought an 850 EVO on Amazon to replace it. It came with the SSD and a CD. There were no other components, like a USB adapter or cable.

Using my wife's surface pro 3, I downloaded the Windows Media Creation tool and installed it on a USB drive.

Back to my PC, I uninstalled my 2TB data drive and installed the 850 EVO. Turned on the PC and waited until the UEFI screen, then inserted the USB and shutdown the PC. I restarted the PC and the Windows 10 install routine came up.

Moving through the screens, when it came time to pick the install location, it could not find any drives and told me to load drivers. There were no drivers on the USB, but I had the Samsung SSD CD, so I popped that in. The install routine could not find a signed driver in any folder on the CD.

Back to the Surface Pro 3, and I went to the Samsung site to download the driver (with the silly notion that I could put the driver on the USB and get Windows installed.)

You know by now that I found no driver files to download for the 850 EVO, only Magician. I installed Magician on the USB and tried again. The Windows install routine still cannot find a signed driver in any folder. So I'm stuck.

I can't find a thread addressing a fresh install on a new unbootable SSD, so I must be searching incorrectly, or I graduated from the "School for the Galactically Stupid" and am missing some obvious step here.

I apologize for my apparent need for hand-holding, and thanks in advance for any assistance....

 

[Colif]

its possible its the USB drive you are using as it could be windows 10 doesn't have the driver for the USB or the installer itself is corrupt. How big is the USB? it needs to be 8gb at least Try another USB drive.

is the bios seeing the ssd?

 

[WHL Dad]

its possible its the USB drive you are using as it could be windows 10 doesn't have the driver for the USB or the installer itself is corrupt. How big is the USB? it needs to be 8gb at least Try another USB drive.

is the bios seeing the ssd?

Thanks for your reply.
Before the Media Creation Tool reformatted the 16GB USB, I was able to successfully boot into Macrium Reflect Windows PE with it, so I doubt it's the USB drive. (I have my backups on a Synology Diskstation that the Win PE environment could not see.)

UEFI does not see the SSD.

 

[Colif]

It sounds like you got a bad ssd, need to rma it and get a replacement.

before you do that, any way to test it doesn't work in another PC too?

Sounds like your PC doesn't like EVO drives, or you just having a bad run. When was last time you updated the UEFI?

 

[WHL Dad]

You may be onto something. I used a different power supply plug into the back of the ssd and tried again. This time the UEFI saw it. I am installing windows now. I guess the power plug to the ssd was bad. Success still not guaranteed, but lots of progress.

Thank you!

 

[Rynoski777]

All you should have to do is run into the BIOS and set your SATA controller to AHCI. You should always start with a clean disk though (if possible) which you can do with DISKPART and the CLEAN operation when the drive is attached or slaved to another machine.

Should this fail, consider the SATA port. The reason the SSD 850 wont go on our HP Z640's is the RAID controller driver needed by the hot plug drive cage. You can go traditional SATA by adding the drive to the board mounted SATA ports which should be picked up by Windows 10 during setup. When we set to AHCI the drive gets picked up by Windows 10 setup, setup commences and eventually when the proper raid controller is installed via HP drivers or Windows you cna swap it back to RAID state.

-PS: Im replying to this thread yes its old I KNOW - because there seems to be not a definitive answer across threads. Since TH is hit by techies all over the place I thought it best to add it in case someone else needs it.