Question Setting up my new Samsung 870 Evo 2.5" SSD ?

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travistee

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Nov 28, 2016
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I have a new Samsung 870 EVO 2.5" SSD. I also have the same model SSD as my current boot drive. I have the Samsung Magician software .

The new drive is in an external enclosure. I plan to use this drive to replace the older Samsung SSD primary drive.

When I rebooted the system the light on the new drive enclosure started blinking. It didn't give me any choices.

When it finishes I don't expect anything to be on the new formatted drive.

I expect I will have to use Magician to copy the boot directories and data to the new drive.

Any comments?
 
I agree with USAfret. I don't understand what you want to do, or what you expected would happen when you plugged in the enclosure. What kind of "choices" you thought you would get?

If you want to use the new drive as your OS drive then yes, you gonna have to clone your current C drive to the new one with Samsung Magician or any other cloning software, then swap the drives. But why do you want to do that if the drives are the same? Is the old one failing?
 
I want to clone my existing Evo 870 to other new one as a backup. That's all.
After I clone it I want to replace the old one with the new one and use the old one as a backup.

I expected to start the computer with the new one in the enclosure and then use Magician.
The light on the enclosure is still flashing, not 24 hours yet.

So I don't know what it is doing. I'm assuming it's formatting the 1 TB drive.
 
travistee said:
I expected to start the computer with the new one in the enclosure and then use Magician.
Click to expand...
You start the computer first.
Connect external drive after you have loaded into windows.

Note - you will not be able to start your computer from external drive.

Is your computer a laptop?
Why are you using external drive enclosures instead of connecting drive directly with sata cables?
 
travistee said:
I want to clone my existing Evo 870 to other new one as a backup. That's all.
After I clone it I want to replace the old one with the new one and use the old one as a backup.

I expected to start the computer with the new one in the enclosure and then use Magician.
The light on the enclosure is still flashing, not 24 hours yet.

So I don't know what it is doing. I'm assuming it's formatting the 1 TB drive.
Click to expand...
1. The Data Migration part of Magician will often NOT clone into an external drive.

2. A clone is a poor method of 'backup'. What you want is an Image, done with something like Macrium Reflect.

3. If these are both 870 EVO, why the swap?
 
It's not failing. I just want to have a backup.
When I plugged in the enclosure it didn't do anything. When I restarted the computer the enclosure started to blink.
I assume it's formatting the drive.

I expected it to do nothing until I could choose how to , for example, partition the drive and choose when to format it.

It's a laptop so there is no other way to connect the drive.
I cloned the original SSD from the old IDE drive this same way.

I guess it will stop eventually but the blinking light means its formatting. I'll let you know if it stops.
 
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External (portable) drives come pre-formatted, internal drives don't. If you are wating that your computer format the new drive automatically then you gonna wait forever because it's not going to happen. New internal drives have to be formatted manually (even when connected with a usb enclosure). But you don't need to format a drive to make a clone (the cloning software will format it anyway).

However, cloning a drive is not the best way to make a backup. As someone else suggested, you should make an image. Even Windows has a built-in image backup tool that can run periodically so your image is always up to date (mine is done once a week to an external drive).
 
I don't like image backup. I may just want to get some files that were somehow lost. So I don't have to restore the whole drive.

The drive doesn't know its going to be an internal drive. It's just in an external case for now.

Anyway Samsung replaced it already. Getting my new one in a few days.
 
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travistee said:
I want to clone my existing Evo 870 to other new one as a backup. That's all.
Click to expand...
My preferred cloning software for many years has been Macrium Reflect. The only thing I do with Samsung Magician is update SSD firmware. You could also try Acronis for cloning.

Sometimes Macrium fails to clone a laptop drive to an external USB disk enclosure. I blame the USB caddy. The cheaper the enclosure (AliExpress) the more likely it is to affect cloning. I have far fewer problems with more expensive Inateck USB enclosures.

When this happens, I remove both drives from the laptop and USB caddy, then connect them to a desktop PC motherboard using SATA cables. Macrium usually succeeds when it has direct access to both drives via SATA, as opposed to two USB/SATA conversions (one in the laptop, the other in the caddy).

travistee said:
The light on the enclosure is still flashing, not 24 hours yet.
Click to expand...
The cloning process should not take more than an hour with typical SATA SSDs. Quite often it's finished in under 30 minutes. There's no need to format any drives. Macrium takes care of everything for you.

On this Windows boot drive I have a hidden 100MB system EFI (FAT32) partion, a hidden 16MB (Other) GPT partition, a 223GB Windows System (NTFS) partition and a hidden 509MB (NTFS) Recovery partition. Theres'a no way I'd try to recreate all these hidden partitions manually before cloning. No point.

travistee said:
It's not failing. I just want to have a backup.
Click to expand...
When I'm travelling in remote areas, I take cloned backup SSDs for my two laptops. If I experience a drive failure whilst camping at 14,000ft, I can swap drives in a matter of minutes with minimal fuss.
 
travistee said:
I don't like image backup. I may just want to get some files that were somehow lost. So I don't have to restore the whole drive.
Click to expand...
So why do you want to clone the drive if you just want to recover lost files? A regular backup, done periodically, would do the job. It's how everybody makes backups. If you do a clone you gonna have your files backed up only once and they won't be updated. Are you gonna clone your drive every day?

I personally do an image of my system and also a full file backup every week, plus a file history backup that runs every hour. So I'm prepared for any situations. If you clone your drive, you just get a picture of your system and files at this very moment. If your drive dies in 6 months and you forgot to clone it again you will lose 6 months of data.

But you seem to be convinced that cloning is the right thing to do so, go for it I guess.
 
USAFRet said:
A former member here used to advocate that.

He was badly wrong.

A clone is a single snapshot in time.
I do an Incremental, every night. Keep for a rolling 30 days.

I could resurrect any of the dries in the state they were in any day in the last month.
Click to expand...
This part of my comment was ironic. Someone really advocated that 😂?

As I said, I also have weekly image backups and incremental file backups every hour.
 
Your enclosure may have some capabilities that you do not want.
I would have used a simple usb to sata cable.
Leave the drive hanging.
To do what you want have the new drive disconnected.
Start magician and select the clone option.
The source will be your current C drive.
There will be no target drive found.
Then plug in the new drive and select detect and you hopefully see the new drive as a selection target option.

Be prepared for a very long process, perhaps 4 , 8 hours or more on a usb connection

But, since I see that you have a sata slot available, temporarily connect the new drive directly with a sata and power cable.
Leave the drive loose .

My pc gets very little changes, non too critical.
When upgrading to a larger ssd or from a sata ssd to a m.2 I use the migration app.
I keep the old drive in case I need to recover from a failure.
In effect, what you are trying to do.
The benefit is that you are confirming the validity of your backup.

I have seen where backup procedures were done for many cycles, only to discover too late that the backups were no good when a recovery was attempted.

The process of cloning is too time consuming to do frequently.
 
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