Samsung 850 EVO issues

[coboltjet]

ok so i just bought 2x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB, to run them in RAID if possible, however my BIOS detects them, but when i boot to windows (8.1 pro) i cannot see them in disk management so i can format them to be used in any way,

so my motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97X-SOC R1.0 BIOS version F5 (havent updated to F6 as its just 5th gen intel CPU support)

i currently have 2x Samsung 840 EVO 250GB working perfecty fine in the system.


Any idea whats going on?

 

[ahnilated]

How/where did you set them up to run in raid first off?

 

[coboltjet]

i have not set them up AT ALL. i have simply installed them physically doubling checking all connections, then booted up my PC, checked BIOS to see if they were there(they was), then booted to windows to find they are nowhere to be found

 

[MarkW]

Move the mouse to the upper right corner, then drag straight down. You should see a black panel slide out. Select Search, and type in Disk Format (nothing will be formatted) and press Enter. The Disk Management screen will open for you. Now expand that window to see what's in the lower parts of the window. You should see the two 850 SSD's on their somewhere.

Now, since you are running Windows 8.1, instead of using Raid, Take a look at Storage Spaces. You can find the icon for it in the Control Panel. This is pretty much raid, without the restrictions. Drives can be various sizes, hard drives and SSD's can be mixed, and windows will automatically move files you regularly use in a storage space (pool of drives) to the SSD quietly in the background. If you want parity, you can do it, spare hot drives are supported in case a drive fails, and the best part is, its all easy to setup and use. And since its controlled by Windows, and not a specialized chip, you can manage it from Windows as well.

 

[coboltjet]

Move the mouse to the upper right corner, then drag straight down. You should see a black panel slide out. Select Search, and type in Disk Format (nothing will be formatted) and press Enter. The Disk Management screen will open for you. Now expand that window to see what's in the lower parts of the window. You should see the two 850 SSD's on their somewhere.

Now, since you are running Windows 8.1, instead of using Raid, Take a look at Storage Spaces. You can find the icon for it in the Control Panel. This is pretty much raid, without the restrictions. Drives can be various sizes, hard drives and SSD's can be mixed, and windows will automatically move files you regularly use in a storage space (pool of drives) to the SSD quietly in the background. If you want parity, you can do it, spare hot drives are supported in case a drive fails, and the best part is, its all easy to setup and use. And since its controlled by Windows, and not a specialized chip, you can manage it from Windows as well.

It would be fine if windows would detect the 2 SSD's in the first place but it doesnt. they are visible in the BIOS labeled as "samsung 850" i cannot format them and they DO NOT show up in disk management or i wouldnt be posting here.

as i stated before i cannot see them in disk management, but i am currently using 2x Samsung 840 EVO 250GB without any problems, the 2x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD's are what im having issues with

 

[Eximo]

SATA controller set up for AHCI or RAID in the BIOS? That will be necessary if it defaulted to IDE Mode.

Also make sure all your potential SATA controllers are active and that you are using the appropriate ports:


1 x SATA Express connector
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
(SATA Express and SATA3 4/5 connectors can only be used one at a time.)

 

[coboltjet]

SATA controller set up for AHCI or RAID in the BIOS? That will be necessary if it defaulted to IDE Mode.

Also make sure all your potential SATA controllers are active and that you are using the appropriate ports:


1 x SATA Express connector
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
(SATA Express and SATA3 4/5 connectors can only be used one at a time.)

the way its setup physically right now is 1 drive to each Sata3 port, in BIOS its set to AHCI, everything is active/enabled apart from Sata express usage as i tried to see is disabling that might do something. which it did not.

 

[coboltjet]

ok so i managed to fix the issue, and what i had to do was change the ports of the SSD's, for now we shall call them A and B, for example previously had them in ports 4(A) and 5(B), so i then put them in ports 3(A) and 4(B), the SSD in port 3(A) was fine. formatted it. works perfectly. then to kill 2 birds with 1 stone i moved the newly formatted (A) from port 3 to port 5 which it did NOT previously work in, and the other (B) into port 3 strangely enough (A) worked in a port it previously did not while (B) was able to be located and formatted for use.

So lesson of today retarded problem.. do not install storage devices into the last few ports if they need to be formatted before use.

 

[MarkW]

Most motherboard manuals will tell you with SATA ports are controlled by the CPU, and those are the ones you want the SSD's connected to, because the CPU controlled ports are almost always faster than third party controller ports. For hard drives and optical drives, it makes little difference which port they are in since their maximum transfer rates are far below what even SATA II ports max out at.

Glad you figured this out though. From here, most of it seemed to make little sense.

 

[coboltjet]

no idea where the logic comes from or why logic like that exists, but either way it works flawlessly now