~Toughbooktalk~

Good evening toughbook techies,

Hope everyone had a safe, relaxing, and enjoyable holiday season.

I have a relatively new TB31S (1200hrs), which I installed/transplanted a Samsung 840Pro 256GB SSD in when it was brand new; every couple of days when I boot up my TB, after the BIOS POST completes, I get a media drive failure. I power cycle it and go into the BIOS "F2" and it shows that the Hard Drive Bay is "EMPTY".

If I put my Acronis True Image USB boot stick in and power it up...the BIOS shows the there is 256GB HD installed.

Once the 256GB HD is seen the in the BIOS and power cycled, the TB will correctly boot in my W7-64.

I have completely run the "Diagnostic Utility" from within the BIOS but is shows there are no problems. I have run every antivirus and malware/spyware program known to man against the OS but still nada.

Would anyone have any idea(s) what might cause this behavior?

I backup my internal 256gb SDD to an external HDD weekly just in case "Murphy" decides to make a visit...LOL.

Any ideas or suggestions that anyone would be willing to share would very much appreciated.

Thank you all for your time and continued assistance.

Have a great evening,

Nick

Put the ssd at the top of the boot list.

Check the connection to the ssd inside the caddy and also look for any dirt/damage on either end.

Any other issues with the unit or the boot problem is it?

When you installed the OS on the SSD did you do a new install or did you use Acronis True Image to move it to the SSD ?

toughasnails,

good evening sir...long time no talk...

It was a ground up complete install of W7-64.

Acronis is only used to restore it if/when "Murphy" swings by for a visit.

Thank you for your time sir and have a great evening.

Nick

mklym,

Thank you for your quick reply sir.

SSD is #2 in the boot list, non-existant DVD is #1

The original 500gb plotter drive is still in the original caddy. That caddy is in a box, just in case my employer makes me give this beast back to them when I leave.

I purchased 2 empty TB31 caddies from Mr. ROB, thank you ROB for the low price and availabilty, these things are GREAT.

1 of the new caddies has a Kingston SV100 128gb SSD in it, hardly used(Win7-32 and Ubuntu 12.04LTS), the other caddy is this one with the Samsung 840 Pro 256gb SSD (W7-64) in it.

I checked the external connection on the caddy, no dirt or damage. I opened up this caddy and checked the HDD connection but no dirt or damage either.

I just exchanged the SSDs with the 2 caddies, just want to see if the caddy is the issue.

Thank you very much for your time and assistance, it is very much appreciated.

Have a great evening sir.

Nick

mklym,

The only other issue I have encountered with this beast was a complete shutdown while sleeping, after massive forum searches, it was discovered that the issue was related to the "sleep" function in conjunction with the Samsung Magician app.

The app was removed and the issues went away.

If you have no boot issues with the other drives, then it is a problem with the Samsung Pro. Check to see if it has the latest firmware and while on the Samsung site, look for a drive test utility. If the drive has the latest firmware and the test comes through with no problems, contact Samsung support.

mklym,

Thank you once a gain for quick reply.

I will check the Samsung Site as you suggested and see what I can find sir.

Thank you for the suggestions and have a great evening.

Nick

If your SSD went to complete shutdown while it was in sleep mode you may have issues that will necessitate you reinstalling the OS. Now... There may be a wild/weird way to fix this... And sometimes this (for some reason) doesn't bother the drives sometimes. But I have had this happen to me in the past. Here's how...

I think the laptop is off and I am not paying attention and I take the battery out and the drive out to do a modification... Then when I put everything back together... It won't boot correctly.

Windows doesn't like sleep/death/life... It likes to be managed and shut down and can be unforgiving. Just like Mr. Gates himself!

Sounds like a trim support issue to me... This is why I don't use SSD's...