Samsung SSD Boot Drive Not Found By Samsung Magician.

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BobHelms

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Mar 18, 2015
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New laptop. Samsung 512GB SSD. W7-64 Pro. Installed Magician for anticipated cloning process to a Samsung 840EVO 500 still in shipment.

When system boots I get " Magician is unable to find a Samsung SSD connected to your system." The boot drive is a Samsung MZ7TE512HMHP-000L1. It was mfg for the Lenovo T540p laptop. It would appear that Magician is the only app that can't see this drive. Should I be concerned about drivers or firmware levels on the boot drive? Is there a better tool than Magician to perform the clone process? All opinions welcomed. TIA for any help.
 
Based on our experience with the Samsung Data Migration program included in the Samsung Magician package, we've found it to be a most reliable and easy-to-use disk-cloning program. We've used it about a dozen times with different systems and no problem was experienced with any of them.

Do I understand that your laptop presently is equipped with a Samsung 512 GB SSD and you're planning to clone the contents of that drive to a new Samsung 840 EVO 500 GB that you just ordered? If that is so, just out of curiosity, is your plan to do so in order to simply have a clone of the installed SSD for comprehensive backup purposes? Or you're just planning for some reason to replace the present 512 GB SSD with the EVO?
 
My intentions were to clone the OEM 512 to the 840EVO and then use the 840EVO as the system drive. I have used this "snapshot" routine for years with conventional HDDs. Every 6 months I perform another clone process and the "snapshot" gets updated. Now IF I lost the system drive or my OS I could fall back the the last good "snapshot" without any recovery involved other than restoring my private data. Thanks.
 
I am totally in favor of your basic intention for maintaining a comprehensive backup of your system so that in the event of a failed or corrupt system drive you would have at hand a bootable & completely functional drive that not only contains your OS, but all your programs/applications/personal data, etc. It's hard to imagine a better backup system.

I note that you indicate you perform the disk-cloning program every 6 months. As far as I'm concerned that is far too lengthy a period between disk-cloning operations. While it's better than nothing it does nothing to protect you in the event of a disk failure or system corruption that occurs within say, three weeks after the disk-cloning operation. Or 1 month, or 3 months, or 4 months.

The disk-cloning program I use (and strongly encourage other users to use) is the Casper 8 program. The enormous advantage this program has over every other disk-cloning program I've used is its speed of operation when it is used routinely & frequently. That last phrase "routinely & frequently" is the key. I usually clone my systems a few times per week, sometimes even daily in order to maintain reasonably up-to-date comprehensive backups of my systems. Using the Casper program it's not an onerous task timewise because the program does it work so quickly.

As an example, I just cloned the contents of the system I'm using at the present moment - the source drive is a Samsung 840 Pro SSD. The destination disk I used is a OCZ Vertex 460A 240A SSD. The disk-cloning operation completed in 1 min 40 sec. If I clone on a daily basis or perhaps every two or three days it generally will take less than a minute to complete the disk-cloning operation.

The Casper program is a commercial program that sells for $49.99. I've been using various versions of this program for more than 10 years now. It's only available through the developer at http://www.fssdev.com. I realize that the great majority of PC users are uninterested in a disk-cloning program that will cost them $49.99. They usually consider a disk-cloning program only useful for an initial cloning operation after purchasing a new HDD or SSD or perhaps using the program again (as you do) after some lengthy period of time following some disk-cloning operation. More's the pity.
 
The Magician app will not detect an OEM drive, which is what your boot drive is. It will not detect the Evo unless it is plugged internally directly to a SATA port.

Also, Magician is not the cloning tool, Data Migration is the Samsung cloning software.
 

I figured as much but the fact that the OEM hardware IS a Samsung SSD makes one wonder just what the OEM differences are. Thanks.
 


http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/software/Samsung_Magician_45_Installation_Guide.pdf

Look at page 4 under System Requirements.

They only list the Retail model drives.
Samsung SSD 850 EVO
Samsung SSD 850 PRO
Samsung SSD 840 EVO(2.5”, mSATA)
Samsung SSD 840 PRO
Samsung SSD 840 Series
Samsung SSD 830 Series
Samsung SSD 470 Series
 
ArtPog,
Early on in my cloning endeavors I had a virus destroy my OS after 4 months of up time on the volume. It took less that 30 minutes to swap to the first backup clone (I use 3 in rotation) and then restore my personal data from the last monthly backup. 6 months just seems like a prudent time period. In addition it's a Lenovo laptop so I must move the newest clone to position '0'. I guess I could change the boot sequence around in BIOS.
How to you control which position/slot your machine boots from? I was planning on using Macrium Reflect but I'll check out Casper 8.0 Thanks.

 
First...Palorim12's comment that the Samsung Disk Migration program will not detect an OEM drive. AFAIK, the program's only concern is that the destination disk is a Samsung SSD; the source disk is immaterial. And the destination disk is a Samsung EVO SSD is it not? So I can't envision any problem here. Perhaps Palorim12 can amplify...

Given the right kind of disk-cloning program, I'm a strong believer in the the desirability of users undertaking frequent disk-cloning operations to create reasonably up-to-date comprehensive backups of one's system as I explained in my previous comments. There's little to lose and an enormous amount to gain when a user experiences an unbootable & dysfunctional system.

On the other hand if you are comfortable with far less frequent comprehensive backups of your system, so be it. Frankly I would not then suggest you purchase the Casper program since you probably would be fully satisfied with freely available programs such as the Samsung one or the Macrium Reflex Free program.

I ordinarily do not make a practice of maintaining "generational" clones so I usually do not use any rotation scheme involving clones created at a particular point-in-time. Occasionally I will maintain an earlier clone for "historical" or other purposes but it's not my general mode of operation when it comes to disk-cloning. My virtually exclusive interest is maintaining a clone of my current system.

I'm not sure I understand your question about how do I "control which position/slot your machine boots from".
 


I said Magician doesn't detect the OEM SSD. I never said Data Migration doesn't. Your right that Migration only cares that the Target Disk is a Samsung SSD.
 
ArtPog,
No matter how/when I create a clone it's going to end up installed in hard drive bay '0' for practicality reasons. So when I create a clone I move the source drive out of bay '0' and connect it to a USB to SATA adapter. The target drive is then installed into bay '0' for an immediate boot after the cloning is completed. My question to you was since you clone frequently how does your machine know which drive to boot from? Based on your posted cloning times I would guess you're using multiple sata3 interfaces for cloning. So do you physically move the drives around or just reorder the BIOS startup sequence table. Thanks.
 
Bob:
I work primarily with a desktop PC for my day-to-day activites. My PCs are equipped with mobile racks accommodating removable HDDs (or SSDs) so I have virtually unlimited flexibility working with different OSs, booting to this or that drive, etc.

Since you're working with a laptop I'll confine my comments to that piece of equipment re the disk-cloning operations. I presume your laptop is equipped with a single bay to house the HDD/SSD - some laptops are equipped with two bays. That being so I assume you will clone your boot drive to a destination drive that's connected as a USB device. You mentioned a SATA-to-USB adapter. While that type of device is used by many users we do not use them. We've found them to be generally unreliable and erratic in operation. But if you have one and it seems to work OK then continue using it. We greatly prefer a USB enclosure with the HDD/SSD installed in such. Lately we've been working with a number of these Orico USB enclosures - see
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?
Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=orico+6518us3-bk&N=-1&isNodeId=1
and they seem to work fine. We picked them up at Newegg when they were onsale @$19.99
Note they accommodate both 2 1/2" & 3 1/2" drives.
Many users prefer so-called "docking stations" as their USBEHD device. You might want to take a look at them too. They also are designed to accommodate both 2 1/2" & 3 1/2" drives.

Virtually every laptop user that I'm aware of earmarks a particular HDD as the destination drive, i.e., the recipient of the clone. After the disk-cloning operation has completed the user is generally anxious to determine that the cloned HDD is bootable & completely functional. So generally it's necessary to install the cloned HDD in the laptop to determine this. After determining the clone is satisfactory the user will uninstall the cloned drive and re:install his day-to-day boot drive.

But if I correctly understand what you propose to do (or have been doing), since you're working with two similar SSDs you would simply install the cloned SSD as your "new" boot drive and the previous source SSD would next serve as the new destination drive during a subsequent disk-cloning operation. Do I correctly understand you?

If so, that's certainly "doable" even if unusual.

I should mention that another major advantage of the Casper disk-cloning program is that the clone that's created is bootable even when connected as a USB external drive. This is not to say that other disk-cloning programs do not have this capability but I'm not aware of any that do from past experience. If anyone coming upon this post knows of any having this capability I would appreciate knowing about it.

Now I have to quickly add that we have come across laptops that simply would not permit a boot from a Casper-cloned drive while the drive was connected as a USB device. I have no idea whether your Lenovo would fall in this category.

I do not understand your reference to the possibility that I'm "using multiple sata3 interfaces for cloning" in order to achieve fast disk-cloning times. The source & destination drives are connected to ordinary SATA connectors - there's nothing special about this. The fast disk-cloning speed is solely attributable to the Casper program. (Naturally using SSDs and the volume of data cloned will obviously affect disk-cloning speed.)
 
ArtPog,
You said ... "My PCs are equipped with mobile racks accommodating removable HDDs (or SSDs) so I have virtually unlimited flexibility working with different OSs, booting to this or that drive, etc." So I think I understand what's going on now. I'm currently waiting on another set of mounting rails for the 840EVO to fit my T540p laptop. I'll probably use reflect on the first clone process. Thanks for your insights.
 
Obviously you're free to use whatever disk-cloning program of your choice. But I fail to see why you would not use the Samsung Data Migration program for this purpose since your destination drive is (or will be) a Samsung SSD. We have worked with this program more than a dozen times with different systems and found it flawless.

I just noticed in your opening message to this thread where you described the problem of the SDM program not detecting your Samsung SSD that you stated you had installed the program on your present Samsung SSD (the disk that is to serve as the source drive) in anticipation of cloning the contents of that SSD to a new Samsung SSD "still in shipment". So it seems that when you installed the SDM program it was at that time the program did not detect the existence of a Samsung SSD as the destination drive. How could it if it wasn't installed?
 
A Samsung drive was present and accounted for. It was a SAMSUNG MZ-7E512. It came with the Lenovo T540p laptop. Magician could not or would not recognize it. I called Samsung support, they said "we don't support that drive."
I have successfully cloned that drive to a Samsung 840EVO 500GB, I'm using it now as I key this response. I used Reflect because it easily allowed me to adjust (512GB down to 500GB) partition sizes as part of the clone process.
 
That's interesting. It's the first time I've ever come across a Samsung SSD that Samsung indicated they didn't support. I do note you referred to that drive as an "OEM 512". It seems inconceivable to me that Samsung wouldn't provide support for one of their SSDs regardless that it was installed by the OEM. So the usual 10-year warranty provided by Samsung for their SSDs would not be in effect for that drive? Only the OEM's warranty, (whatever it is!) would apply?

In any event I'm glad things worked out for you. We have used that Macrium Reflect program a number of times with equally good results, however we generally lean toward the Samsung DM program when the destination drive is a Samsung SSD.
 
Samsung has never supported OEM products. From what they've explained to me, when an OEM company requests a product to be used in their system, Samsung designs the product to the specifications they ask for and then once the OEM receives the product, they put their own FW on it.

So that's why Magician cannot detect OEM SSDs. You can still clone FROM and OEM SSD to the retail SSD using migration.
 
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