help with samsung m9t ST2000LM003 drive out of seagate portable Expansion external hdd

hi guys, been on notebook reviews before either via google or when looking for laptops but signed up due to reccomendation from a fellow member whom i bought an alienware 18 from.


I would greatly appricate if anyone can possibly help?

i bought a seagate Expansion portable drive to be able to take out the Samsung Hdd within to put in to my alienware 18 to have it as a 2TB hard drive.


once i install the hdd in to my alienware, on first boot system stalls at POST/alienware logo for a good 1 minute, then proceeds to windows which boots fine but wont detect the hard drive in my computer, cmd-diskpart or disk management
so i reboot and on the second reboot POST goes fine but now windows wont start, it stall for 5 mins and then says attempting to repair volume etc and i left it for over 2 hours with a result of only 7%.

it is detected in the bios and set to AHCI along with my samsung 840 Pro 240GB.

i unplugged the drive from my alienware, put it back in its enclosure and it works fine without any problems. i formated, clean all/ create new partition, and still same result. it will work fine with the usb 3.0 enclosure but not in the alienware. I even tried only the 2tb drive and tried to put windows on it and it would start the installation process (VERY VERY SLOW) and once i select harddrive and format and click install it will wait at 0% for 2/3 minutes before giving an error saying windows cannot be installed.


The only thing i wanted this harddrive for was to have it in my alienware as a backup drive. i used to have a HSGT 1.5TB drive in my previous m18x which worked without any problems.

The drive firmware: 2BC10005 REV.A (ST2000LM003)

is there something im doing wrong? (other than not buying a normal one and taking this out of the enclosure)

 

iceman88, did you try putting it inside different notebook, to localize the problem?

 

will try this now and get back and update thread. i used to have a 750GB hdd in here before i bought the 2TB which worked perfectly fine. i've been reading loads of posts on other forums and it might acutally boil down to the firmware. apparently many people are also using these for Playstation 4's but many have started having problems after the firmare 2BC10004. anything before, i.e 2BC10003 apparently works without problems. i'm wondering if somehow they stopped the drive from being used in laptops and restricted it to usb only?


Edit: Tried in acer laptop, similar result, even booting to the installation screen was incredibly slow and it kept giving this error when trying to format via windows installtion usb, "we couldnt format the selected partition. [ error 0x80070057].

edit2: just assembled the portable hdd back original form and its working perfectly through usb. i dont know why, its still conecting through its sata port to the usb converter. never mind. any one have any ideas why?

 

I have the same drive as you and it works fine in my MSI GT60. I have it installed in a ODD caddy though (SATA2 port) but I doubt that's the problem. Have you tried swaping ports with the SSD? Maybe a BIOS update can solve this.

 

iceman88, what options did you use while formatting it? Try removing partions and letting Windows installation utility (fast) format this HDD for you. Also, Windows installation is ridiculously slow on 5400rpm drives, especially compared to SSD.

 

i tried fat32 and ntfs with mbr. it wont let me delete partitions through windows installation utility, and when it does, it will let me create a volume, but not format it. even when i manually format it, still doesnt work as a primary hdd. i've installed windows 7/8 over 100 times in this past year alone so im very sure that this is extremely slow compared to other hdd's. when i say slow put it this way, i select language then it says setup starting for around 12 minutes beofore it gets to the intall windows page and this is before you even select what disk to install on. lol

i've kind of given up and i cant really return it to argos and say here, i tried a cheeky one but it didnt work, take it back. im sure i can find a use for it somehow but im just gutted that i lost that battle lmao. first time ever i've seen hdd behavior like this.

 

I'm using 2 of these in my NP9377 with no issues fw is 2BC1006 but they are bing used as data drives not as OS drives. Benched with hdtach gives expected results 130-60MB/s. Average 90MB/s with burst about 470MB/s. Otherwise booting and bios etc is normal speeds.
what speeds do you see from them once you have booted windows?

 

when i put the drives in as data drives windows wont boot. im running windows 10 and it says repairing volume.
i'll try summerise it like this:

1. Install 2tb drive in to bay
2. Windows boots fine, but its as if no drive were ever connected, it doesnt even show up in disk managment.
3. Reboot windows, (2nd boot since drive installed) NOW windows detects drive and before OS loads it tried to repair Volume. there is nothing i can do to stop this. no matter what windows wont boot, not even in safe mode.

---------------------4. i take out drive as it is, put it back in enclosure with usb interface, windows boots fine, it sees the drive fine when connected via USB. read speeds over usb 3.0 is 100mbps

i'll have another crack at it on wednesday as im off work then.

anytools reccomended tools that i could maybe use to format/partition drive with?

 

I've known Windows take a long time to figure out a new drive.

It may be worthwhile just leaving the computer overnight after rebooting and seeing if the problem is sorted by morning.

John

 

I have just recently purchased one of these bare drives and am having similar issues. The drive works perfectly when attached externally through an Apricot SATAWIRE USB 3.0 cable.

Trying to install it internally in the second drive bay of my ASUS N73JQ fails. The BIOS doesn't even recognize the drive. I tried flashing the most recent firmware update (from 2011) to no avail.

It does appear to be some kind of firmware issue that's very frustrating. I've dropped a note to ASUS support, hoping for a firmware update resolution.