Samsung mSSD installed, HDD failed

[CardCase]

Lenovo W520: I just installed a Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB in the mSSD slot. I used Samsung’s Data Migration and transferred about 300GB to the drive from the HDD (HGST 7K1000-1000, HTS721010A9E630) 1TB). I removed the HDD from the lower bay, and booted on the SSD successfully. Used Samsung Magician to fine tune performance. It dropped boot time from 2 minutes 40 seconds to 50 seconds. It loads Photoshop 6 in 5 seconds. For me, it's a screamer. I'm ready to get back to serious large format panoramas again, except for one problem: I need the hard drive to store about 300GB of images. It's pretty new, 1TB, should do the job just fine. But I have missed a step somewhere.





The PROBLEM, the hard drive locks everything up when installed:



I want to put the HDD back in its slot and use it to store photographs that are in post process (in Photoshop). I removed the hard drive, and put it in an Apricorn EZ-UPGRADE case that I've had around for a while, turned on the computer, plugged in the USB cable, used Disk Management to remove the previous application volume, cleared the old data, then did a simple format. The computer suggested calling it drive E:, and I used that drive name. But when I install it in the drive bay beneath, the computer locks up during boot, leaving a black screen and a faint, blinking cursor at upper left. If I remove the drive, boot is okay and blazingly fast again. If I put the drive back in the Apricorn case and plug it in the USB port hot, it works and Windows identifies it as drive E:, and I can write to it and read.

 

[Paul NZ]

If its a msata slot it probably isnt for a normal 2.5 ssd

 

[uplink-svk]

One very simple thing, You need to first. Put the drive into usb ext. box, or bay, or whatever, and run Crystal Disk. Tell me if all is blue, nothings yellow, and nothings red. If not, check out the SATA mode.

Old drive was probably running in compatibility mode, new is in AHCi. Maybe not. Just please do the first step first

 

[CardCase]

One very simple thing, You need to first. Put the drive into usb ext. box, or bay, or whatever, and run Crystal Disk. Tell me if all is blue, nothings yellow, and nothings red. If not, check out the SATA mode.

Old drive was probably running in compatibility mode, new is in AHCi. Maybe not. Just please do the first step first

Thanks uplink-svk, but as soon as I picked the link here on Tom's Hardware for Crystal Disk, my ESET virus software found a virus loading in and stopped the load, forced a shutdown to clear it. I guess I will stay away from that software. But you may have something regarding the SATA mode. The SATA enclosure is about 5 years old, and may be causing the HDD to be programmed in an older format. I will pick up a new enclosure and try formatting again.
All the best,
--CardCage

 

[uplink-svk]

Did You try to download the Crystal Disk Info from official website? It does containt optionally installable adware, which can be unaccepted. Besides Crystal Disk, there's HD Tune and HDD Sentinel, but none of them has such good readings as Crystal Disk Info.

http://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoShizuku

here, a portable version. I'm gone now to bed, it's almost midnight. If no one else write You, I'll reply for sure tomorrow.

 

[CardCase]

If its a msata slot it probably isnt for a normal 2.5 ssd

Thanks for the suggestion Paul NZ. I did successfully install a Samsung mSATA in the mSATA slot, and it runs beautifully. My problem is in getting the HDD formatted to go back into the computer's main HDD bay to run as a data drive only. The HDD drive is less than a year old, 1TB, it should work if I can figure out how to reformat it correctly.

--CardCage