New Samsung EVO850 SSD- windows doesn't see it!

[nobiffbetter]

Hey guys so I recently bought a Samsung EVO850 pro 256gb SSD from Newegg. This is my first time having any issues. I Bought it for an upgrade from my older SP 120gig SSD. The speed on the 850 Samsung is MUCH better plus more space is never a bad thing specially with SSD's.

Here is my issue, when I first got the SSD I put it into my computer in sata-0 where my old ssd was which still has windows 10 installed on it.. I removed all other hard drives so that I only had the Samsung ssd installed. I popped my windows 10 pro instal cd into my Dvd drive and went into bios. My computer/bios instantly saw the Samsung ssd so there was no issues there. I then booted from DVD player so that I could install windows 10 on it from the windows 10 installer but when I got to the window where you choose which drive to install windows to there was no drives there.

I then figured well maybe I need to format the new ssd or initialize it.. so I put my old ssd back in sata 0 where it always is, and put the new samsung in sata1 port and booted windows 10, as I thought was gonna happen windows 10 was not seeing my Samsung SSD. So I went to computer management then to disk management where it showed the Samsung drive as "unallocated" so I right clicked and did the disk volume button, proceeded though the steps and after I finished my Samsung drives instantly popped up and windows said "found new hardware"

NOW when I went to "my pc" and looked it showed my old 120gig SSD as well as my new Samsung 256gb SSD. So I thought for sure I had fixed it..

I shut my pc down pulled out my old SSD again and moved the Samsung from sata1 back to sata0 port.. (sata0 is where I always keep my windows OS installed SSD so I like to keep it that way so there is no issues) and from there I powered back up my pc and booted from Dvd drive to install windows.. and just as my frost attempt went windows 10 installer again did not show any drives what so ever to install windows to.

I went back into windows again with my old ssd and the new Samsung both installed and tried to format the drive, I did a full format and then again pulled my old hard drive out and tried the windows installer again, and it still wasn't showing any drives to install to! At this point I was getting so annoyed.

As a last ditch effort I did some Googling and found a guy who said you have to go into the command prompt once in the windows installer and format the drive this way. Apartly once you do that then windows 10 installer will see your drive.

So I pressed "shift +F10" I believe it was to enter the command prompt though the windows installer and went though then steps to "clean" or in other words format the new SSD so that windows installer will recognize that I have a drive installed.

Needless to say it STILL did not come up. And I was still left staring at a blank page with no drives to install my windows 10 to.


I even tried installing the programs from the Samsung cd that came with my new ssd, one is for cloning hard drive to hard drive (which I don't want to do, I would rather do a clean install) and the othe program is just for benchmarking and do No heath checks on your SSD. None of which helped me to initialize the SSD so that it would be located under the windows 10 installer.


Somebody please help! What the heck am I doing wrong?? This isn't my first rodeo with installing windows 10 and formatting hard drives so I have no clue why this new SSD is giving me such a hard time.

As I said before, it shows up in my bios, so that tells me that the drive is not broken. And once I initialized the drive though windows I was able to store pictures and videos onto the drive (Jose for testing purposes) but no matter what I try I CAN NOT get windows 10 pro installer to locate or SEE the drive so that I can continue on with the fresh install.

 

[alceryes]

Try going into your BIOS and switching to legacy boot option (it's probably set to UEFI).

 

[ArtPog]

1. When both your 120 GB boot drive & the Samsung SSD are connected can we assume you can boot to the OS without any problems and the Samsung is detected in Disk Management as a secondary drive?

2. At this point have you tested the Samsung with Samsung's Magician program to determine it's a healthy non-defective drive? That's ALWAYS a first troubleshooting step whenever you run into a problem with a HDD/SSD.

3. Assuming the Samsung checks out OK and you uninstall your present boot drive and attempt to install the Win 10 OS onto the Samsung, explain PRECISELY what occurs when the system reaches the Win 10 Setup and immediately following your selection of the Custom option to install the OS. Presumably you reach the Windows Setup screen with the message "Where do you want to install Windows?"

4. Or doesn't that screen & message display? What is the precise message that appears? Are you indicating that the screen noted in 3. above never appears?

 

[nobiffbetter]

Alceryes, yes you are correct I have always tried it in UEFI, I will switch it and see if that works! Didn't even think about changing this.

And to artpog, I'll answer your questions I. The same order you asked them..

1. Yes with both connected I can get into windows just fine, under "This PC" it wasn't listed as a secondary drive at first, and wasn't even showing up on windows at all untill I "allocated" the drive by "initializing" it though the volume setting under disk drives in "computer management" once I did this it indeed WAS coming up as a secondary drive which is why I thought I fixed the problem but once I tried to install windows again using the installer it still didn't show up in the white box to "select the drive I want to install to"

2. Yes I did go to magician, the Heath said it was good, also windows heath check was good under computer management. I also tested to make sure it was an authentic drive by clicking the "check authenticity" button or whatever it was called and it came up ok. I did notice however that magician said "this drive needs to be initialized" under one of the tab sections in the program.. and even after I did the volume thing to initialize it under "computer management" in windows it still did not show up as "initialized" under the magician software... even tho the drive was now showing up as a secondary drive under "This PC" so I just assumed maybe the magician software didn't recognize that the drive was initialized yet and ignored it because as I said it was now showing up under "this pc" as a secondary drive where before it wasn't.

3. I can't tell you exactly what it said.. but after the first screen in the installer I selected the language and all that, and it said something like "setting up windows" and then it went to the next screen which was choosing which drive you want windows installed on. It was like a large white box where normally all your drives should appear.. then normally you would select the drive or check the box of the drive you want to install windows on and click continue.. but when there was no drives shown I would click "search again" for the drives and a display message would pop up saying something like, "you do not currently have any drives installed, if you have the driver CD for the drives then you can take windows install cd out and put the driver CD in at this time."Basically telling me it couldn't find any drives and that it was ok to pop the windows cd out and put a driver install cd in to install the driver for the drive... at least that what I got out of it.. I will try and take a picture I'm gonna give it another shot now.

But first I'm gonna try to take it out of UEFI like the guy above you said and see if that works.

Let me know if you need any other info.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[nobiffbetter]

Ok so I tried legacy mode instead of UEFI and still the same results. No drive found in the windows install. I will show you guys the pics.

Nvm I can't figure out how to post pics on this site

 

[ArtPog]

1. Ordinarily there's no reason to initialize, partition, & format a drive that's installed for the purpose of installing an OS on the drive. The Windows OS Setup process will accomplish that based on the user's preferences. But there's no harm in doing so; that shouldn't be the cause of the problem you're experiencing.

2. It's difficult to understand precisely what is causing the problem you're experiencing re the inability to install the Win 10 OS onto that SSD.

3. Just as a kind of shot-in-the-dark...
With the SSD connected as a secondary drive (of course, detected in the system), use the DiskPart utility to "clean" the SSD. I don't know if you're familiar with that useful Windows utility so if you're not, just do a Google search on "using diskpart to clean a drive". The instructions are detailed & quite clear. You should be familiar with that useful utility.

4. After the drive has been "cleaned", try the installation process once again. Ensure the SSD is the SOLE drive connected in the system - properly connected & secure. See how it goes.

 

[alceryes]

Boot into windows off the old drive and make sure your BIOS is up to date.
What motherboard is this? Make sure you are using the chipset sata ports and not a third party controller on the board.

As @Artpog said, running the 'clean' command from diskpart won't hurt, but it shouldn't make a difference either.