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    Samsung PM830 in Alienware m17x R3 SSD DEAD

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by eduardboss, Feb 9, 2013.

  1. eduardboss

    eduardboss Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi,


    [​IMG]
    I have an issue, my laptop is alienware m17x r3 3D, 16GB RAM, 2860QM, GTX580M.
    Laptop shipped to me with 2 hard drives, one 256GB samsung pm830 SSD and other 500GB Solid state hybrid.
    After i flashed soft called (fix alienrespawn or something, downloaded from dell website, and might not be for my computer, i think it was this one: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=R243967) i get freeze 10 minutes later and then BSOD. I dont know if it is related that i did flash alienrespawn to the death of PM830 but anyways after that i get message operation system is missing. I thought alright because of BSOD my MBR got damaged, and thats fine... So i went into bios and i saw insted of showing me "Samsung PM830" it was showing me "Samsung SSD" and capacity 1GB. That scared me off and since then i tried to recover the drive with several programs but did not succeed. I tried samsung firmware update tool but it does not detect drive.

    [​IMG]

    After that i tried to install windows on my 500GB drive (tried 2 different windows install disks even original alienware recovery disk) and after i press install it said that some CDROM/DVDROM drivers are missing (insert disk) and did not let me install windows. I had to clone Windows 8 from other drive to 500GB drive and then it booted up and it is all good.
    No BSOD, everything is smooth and great.


    I have now ordered OCZ vertex 4 SSD and because my laptop does not have warranty i dont know what to do with that drive...

    All help is appriciated :)
    Thanks,
     
    eduardboss, Feb 9, 2013
    #1
  2. sigan

    sigan Notebook Enthusiast

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    Also this looks like you have messed MBR record, try to boot to recovery console (from Windows disk or usb) and execute commands:

    BOOTREC.EXE /FixBoot
    BOOTREC.EXE /FixMBR

    Also if this is not helped, you can try to recover partition information (the patch you have installed messed it, tools like Partition Magic, Partition Editor, Acronis and so on),
    but you should fully understand "how" and "what" you should do.

    And,
    Did you checked SATA settings in bios?

    Did you tried to update Samsung SSD firmware in DOS?


    If you don't want to recover, you can use samsung safe cleanup tool or simply remove all partitions and fix MBR.
     
    sigan, Feb 13, 2013
    #2