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I just installed a Samsung 840 Pro SSD in my box, NOT as the system drive, but just as a regular HD. I have a Gigabyte board[*] with 6 SATA ports in an Intel controller and 2 additional ones in a Gygabyte controller; I plugged it into the Gigabyte controller, which was set in the BIOS to work in IDE mode, and things worked pretty well. However, Samsung Magician 4.1 warned me that the drive wasn't in AHCI mode, so I went into the BIOS and changed the Gygabyte SATA controller to work as AHCI... and now everything still works, but Samsung Magician can't detect the SSD.

The software says that "no Samsung drives were found on the system"; the funny thing is, you can select the SSD in the software's disks dropdown, but it will treat it as a regular drive, without giving any additional information nor any options. This means that I can't check the drive's health, nor upgrade its firmware.

Anyone knows what's going on? (This is all on Windows 7, BTW).

[*] A Gygabte GA-P55-USB3, to be exact.

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  • Try removing the drive from the device manager and then rebooting. Jul 17, 2013 at 12:28
  • Just tried it. Didn't work.
    – PaulJ
    Jul 17, 2013 at 12:42
  • @PaulJ - Have you verfied the firmware being is used is the most recent version?
    – Ramhound
    Jul 17, 2013 at 13:10
  • The firmware in my SSD is version DXM05B0Q, which a quick googling says was released in May. If there's a newer version I don't know... but then again, considering that the only way to update the firmware is using Samsung Magician, and Magician does not detect my SSD, I'm not sure what good would it do.
    – PaulJ
    Jul 17, 2013 at 13:19

3 Answers 3

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Answering my own question: in the end, I unplugged the SSD from the Gigabyte controller and plugged it into the Intel one, which is also set to AHCI, and the Samsung software magically found it.

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  • Please mark this as accepted. Jul 7, 2014 at 23:15
  • Even if it's my own answer? Can you do that?
    – PaulJ
    Jul 15, 2014 at 21:12
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    Yep, self answering is accepted and helpful for those who find this question on Google. Jul 17, 2014 at 4:48
  • yes I found this is the problem on mine too! it can see all the drives on my Intel SATA controller. but Samsung MAgician can't see my two drives on the Gigabyte controller!!! what gives. and its twice as slow like this too. I am going to swap the cable over.
    – hamish
    Sep 30, 2017 at 9:42
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I went around these problems a lot of times, trying different cables, boxes and bios configurations.

In the end, I found that http://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html fixed the problem - just ignore the Samsung software until it works again.

I did a sector by sector copy (may not have been necessary, but I wanted to make sure it worked).

For Windows 10, I found that in addition to this I had to make sure my BIOS was set to force AHCI mode - just making it optional didn't work.

So far this has worked on Samsung Chronus and Sony Vaio laptops (mine and my wife's).

ps - I have absolutely nothing to do with this company, I just got fed up with waiting for a version of Magician or Data Migration that worked all of the time even with the more intelligent usb to SATA boxes (and the above software works free, although I suspect the paid version might be quicker)

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  • this does not solve the problem of upgrading the firmware Jan 16, 2016 at 8:27
  • It solves the problem of getting the SSD to get a mirror image of the hard drive. Rather than wait for a new bios which may never happen, it moves the user forward. If you have a better solution, please post your answer Jan 23, 2016 at 18:13
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I have the same issue on Windows 10 Pro x64 - Samsung Magician 4.9.7 warned me that the drive wasn't in AHCI mode. In event logs I found that "The MagicianSataModeReader service failed to start due to the following error: Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file."

(event snapshot)

So after disabling Driver Signature Verification (according to this guide) MagicianSataModeReader service was able to start and the Samsung Magician shows that AHCI mode is enabled.

But unfortunetly after the next Windows reboot - issue come back. So Samsung must sign his software in order to fix this issue.

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