Samsung 850 EVO ssd stopped working within 3 hours of installing, after a restart

[caldeith]

I bought a 250gb samsung 850 evo ssd earlier today. I wanted to swap out my smaller corsair ssd as my main system drive. I attached it into the same power/sata port and reinstalled windows 7 pro from the cd. It detected my new drive properly, allocated the new partition and it was all fine. Then I spent several hours doing driver installing, windows updates and installing different programs, until windows update asked for yet another restart. Then starting up again, it wouldn't boot to windows. I did a restart and went into BIOS, saw that the SSD had disappeared completely. I tried different sata ports, didn't help. My BIOS was by default on IDE mode, so I swapped over to AHCI mode, which made the ssd show up in the boot order selection. If I try booting then, it says "bootmgr is missing" and wants to restart. Then I tried doing all the startup repair stuff from the windows cd , but none of them do anything. Windows does not recognize the drive at all (when trying to reinstall windows again, it's just missing from the drive list). Then I tried seeing if the ssd worked on another computer, but it's exactly the same there. And my BIOS is also up to date.

Is there any way I can breathe life back into it or did I get screwed already?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, caldeith!

If the SSD is acting the same way on two different computers, then it's most definitely the root of the issue. Have you checked how the other computer is detecting the SSD in Disk Management though? Maybe if it's listed there, you'd be able to initialize and then partition & format it there, and then try to install the OS on it on your PC.
If that doesn't work, you should definitely go and ask for a replacement or contact the SSD manufacturer and send your RMA request, because it's most probably faulty. 🙁

Good luck! Hope I was helpful!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ArtPog]

Assuming that your Corsair SSD is still available and contains a viable OS, why don't you use the Samsung Data Migration program to clone the contents of the Corsair over to the Samsung and see what develops. (I'm assuming your SATA controller is still set to AHCI mode.)

 

[caldeith]

Assuming that your Corsair SSD is still available and contains a viable OS, why don't you use the Samsung Data Migration program to clone the contents of the Corsair over to the Samsung and see what develops. (I'm assuming your SATA controller is still set to AHCI mode.)

I tried fiddling around some more and even if my SATA controller is set to AHCI and it does show up in BIOS under the boot order menu (and briefly during a boot, where it lists drives and then stalls for a few seconds then fails a SMART test and continues booting), it does not appear anywhere as a drive. Not in windows, not the device manager (not even as an unknown device), not in Samsung programs. The last of which flat out refuse to even function because they can't detect a Samsung drive. The only thing that I can think of that I haven't tried yet, would be to create a bootable firmware update disk and see if maybe that would recognize the drive (which I still doubt), but the way to do that is to use the samsung magician and that doesn't work if it doesn't recognize a samsung ssd. Also there's no downloadable version on the website for the 850 series drives, so I don't know where I'm going to get it.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hi again, caldeith!

I'd recommend you to contact the SSD manufacturer's technical/customer support and let them know about the issue. While at it, you can also ask about the firmware. Since it's a brand new drive, your warranty should still stand and you are eligible for a replacement from them. Just give them a call to get more details about the RMA procedure.

Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ArtPog]

I would tend to agree with SuperSoph's suggestion that you get in touch with Samsung probably to pursue a RMA. It does sound like you may be dealing with a defective SSD.

AFAIK, there's no *bootable* firmware update disk available for Samsung SSDs. And even if there were, my advice would be *not* to install a firmware update at this stage of the game (even if you could) unless Samsung tech support advises to the contrary. As you may know, Samsung had some serious issues earlier this year re their SSD firmware updates. I believe that issue has now been resolved but in view of the problems you're experiencing with the drive I think you best check it out with Samsung.

 

[caldeith]

I would tend to agree with SuperSoph's suggestion that you get in touch with Samsung probably to pursue a RMA. It does sound like you may be dealing with a defective SSD.

AFAIK, there's no *bootable* firmware update disk available for Samsung SSDs. And even if there were, my advice would be *not* to install a firmware update at this stage of the game (even if you could) unless Samsung tech support advises to the contrary. As you may know, Samsung had some serious issues earlier this year re their SSD firmware updates. I believe that issue has now been resolved but in view of the problems you're experiencing with the drive I think you best check it out with Samsung.

Samsung website has iso downloads for firmware updates for the 470, 830 and 840 series, where they say "ISO files may be used only via DOS using a bootable CD/DVD." Which is why I figured there might be something similar for the 850 as well. But that was more of a theoretical option than something I was going to try and do at this point.

I took it back to the store now, they'll send it off to be tested or whatnot and I'll hopefully know what's wrong with it and have a replacement sometime within a week.