SSD Upgrade Problems

[Mike Soda]

Literally all day for the past 9 hours I've been trying to perform an SSD upgrade, which I was told over & over to be the simplest of tasks. Yet no matter what I try I'm running into countless issues, none of which I don't think I can call the company over as they'll likely just give me some marketing speak to buy some proprietary USB cable or use the disk that contains outdated software which would likely corrupt something, all of which I don't need. So now I'll explain what I've done & the issues in depth, sorry if this is a long post but it needs to be clear.

 

As always, I was told to disregard the Disk that came with my 250GB Samsung 850 EVO as installing the outdated software on it, then trying to update said software can result in corruptions. So I just mounted the SSD, plugged in the SATA power & SATA 3 cable to my SATA 2 Motherboard, triple checked all the connections to ensure they were 100% seated (spent 2.5 hours on this) & then booted my PC. After taking pics of my BIOS just in case I then proceeded to initialize my SSD in Windows Disk Management as instructed by various online sources. Following this I was told to create a "New Simple Volume..." via that same tool, this is where I encountered the first failure. No matter what I did the RAW SSD refused to format when quick format was selected. Desperate I tried unchecking that box which resulted in what I think to be a long format. This then hung & refused to finish or cancel no matter how long I waited, so I restarted my PC & it finally stopped.

 

After this point I finally found out that I needed Samsung's Data Migration Software in order to mirror my OS & everything to the new drive in a much simpler manner. So I downloaded that started the cloning process. It failed & gave me an error saying "Cloning failed. An error occurred during defragmentation. 301400[049958]". After clicking complete (the only option available) it then asked if I wanted to automatically restart & run a chckdsk which I said yes. That then ran & completed fairly quickly, the only thing I saw that sounded bad was "43 reparsed records processed". I tried cloning it again & the same thing happen, so now I'm fed up & really need some dumbed down help because I'm tried of making bad decisions on my own.

 

1a: Were my failed attempts at formatting the brand new drive via Windows what caused a corruption that's resulting in cloning failures?

 

1b: If not then what is & what the heck do I do? (My HDD is almost 6 years old so I'd like to get this fixed ASAP before it goes out & I'm left helpless).

 

2a: If the solution is to clean install Windows but to the new SSD then clone that to my HDD, how can I know I won't encounter the same or more issues that will keep me offline for months?

 

2b: I'm assuming the worst of that above because of what I've experienced so far & the fact my OS is an OEM Copy, could that in itself be the cause of cloning failure?

 

3: If I should just forget about this all together, how can I ensure my SSD doesn't have anything on it so I can put it away for new build in 2+ months?

 

System Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM

Hitachi 1TB HDS721010CLA

Samsung 250GB 850 EVO

Athlon X2 260

Radeon HD 6450

ASUS M4N68T-M-V2

TurboLink ATX-TL 500W-BK 12V

[Rohime]

4 minutes ago, Mike Soda said:

Literally all day for the past 9 hours I've been trying to perform an SSD upgrade, which I was told over & over to be the simplest of tasks. Yet no matter what I try I'm running into countless issues, none of which I don't think I can call the company over as they'll likely just give me some marketing speak to buy some proprietary USB cable or use the disk that contains outdated software which would likely corrupt something, all of which I don't need. So now I'll explain what I've done & the issues in depth, sorry if this is a long post but it needs to be clear.

 

As always, I was told to disregard the Disk that came with my 250GB Samsung 850 EVO as installing the outdated software on it, then trying to update said software can result in corruptions. So I just mounted the SSD, plugged in the SATA power & SATA 3 cable to my SATA 2 Motherboard, triple checked all the connections to ensure they were 100% seated (spent 2.5 hours on this) & then booted my PC. After taking pics of my BIOS just in case I then proceeded to initialize my SSD in Windows Disk Management as instructed by various online sources. Following this I was told to create a "New Simple Volume..." via that same tool, this is where I encountered the first failure. No matter what I did the RAW SSD refused to format when quick format was selected. Desperate I tried unchecking that box which resulted in what I think to be a long format. This then hung & refused to finish or cancel no matter how long I waited, so I restarted my PC & it finally stopped.

 

After this point I finally found out that I needed Samsung's Data Migration Software in order to mirror my OS & everything to the new drive in a much simpler manner. So I downloaded that started the cloning process. It failed & gave me an error saying "Cloning failed. An error occurred during defragmentation. 301400[049958]". After clicking complete (the only option available) it then asked if I wanted to automatically restart & run a chckdsk which I said yes. That then ran & completed fairly quickly, the only thing I saw that sounded bad was "43 reparsed records processed". I tried cloning it again & the same thing happen, so now I'm fed up & really need some dumbed down help because I'm tried of making bad decisions on my own.

 

1a: Were my failed attempts at formatting the brand new drive via Windows what caused a corruption that's resulting in cloning failures?

 

1b: If not then what is & what the heck do I do? (My HDD is almost 6 years old so I'd like to get this fixed ASAP before it goes out & I'm left helpless).

 

2a: If the solution is to clean install Windows but to the new SSD then clone that to my HDD, how can I know I won't encounter the same or more issues that will keep me offline for months?

 

2b: I'm assuming the worst of that above because of what I've experienced so far & the fact my OS is an OEM Copy, could that in itself be the cause of cloning failure?

 

3: If I should just forget about this all together, how can I ensure my SSD doesn't have anything on it so I can put it away for new build in 2+ months?

 

System Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM

Hitachi 1TB HDS721010CLA

Samsung 250GB 850 EVO

Athlon X2 260

Radeon HD 6450

ASUS M4N68T-M-V2

TurboLink ATX-TL 500W-BK 12V

 

the simple stuff first, to get it out of the way ... 

 

2b - OEM license for windows has nothing to do with it.

 

Paragraph 2 - Yes, most people will say  ignore the included CD/DVD.   *BUT* that does NOT mean ignore the included software.   It means download the current version of the software (that is on the disk) from the internet, instead of using the version on the disk.

 

Now... to look at your problem:

 

1a - Maybe.  I would recommend you retry deleting all partitions from the SSD drive and reformat.   Only once you have a clean format then try cloning.   If you cannot get a clean format, then think about returning the drive as faulty.     There is also a Samsung tool for checking the health of the drive.  Use that to check the SMART status of the drive.  Download Samsung Magician from here: http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html

 

2a.  Dont.  Worry about getting a clean install of the SSD first.  if you cannot return it as faulty.

 

3 - see 2a.

 

 

 

 

[Mike Soda]

3 minutes ago, Rohime said:

 

the simple stuff first, to get it out of the way ... 

 

2b - OEM license for windows has nothing to do with it.

 

Paragraph 2 - Yes, most people will say  ignore the included CD/DVD.   *BUT* that does NOT mean ignore the included software.   It means download the current version of the software (that is on the disk) from the internet, instead of using the version on the disk.

 

Now... to look at your problem:

 

1a - Maybe.  I would recommend you retry deleting all partitions from the SSD drive and reformat.   Only once you have a clean format then try cloning.   If you cannot get a clean format, then think about returning the drive as faulty.     There is also a Samsung tool for checking the health of the drive.  Use that to check the SMART status of the drive.  Download Samsung Magician from here: http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html

 

2a.  Dont.  Worry about getting a clean install of the SSD first.  if you cannot return it as faulty.

 

3 - see 2a.

 

 

 

 

Right now there is no partition, it just says Unallocated & Windows Disk Management asks if I want to use MBR or GPT style, which should I do? After that, do I just leave whatever automatic settings Windows picks for formatting? Should it be a quick format or uncheck that & just let it go for however many hours it might take? Opening Samsung Magician right now just displays a blank white screen.