Samsung 840 evo with x220 gives me the common 2100 error

Hello Lenovo Forums. As I am glad to see this forum, I wish I was doing something else with my time then writing about my problems with the Thinkpad X220 and my Samsung 840 Evo 256gb SSD drive.

Let me give you a rundown of my past 4 months...

October 2014.

• Purchased Thinkpad X120E. 1.5ghz processor and low memory made it horrible. Thankfully i bought it cheap.
• Put in 8gb and bought the Samsung 840 Evo 256gb SSD drive to help it. It made the laptop much more responsive but it still sucked...so I sold it. I kept the SSD drive for my 'future' thinkpad.
• I did the firmware update on the SSD as it required it. It currently has the most recent firmware
• When I bought the SSD drive, I plopped it in, installed windows then openSUSE and enjoyed it for a bit. Never gave me an issue at all.

January 2015

• Purchased an off-lease X220 with the 2.6ghz processor. Has a 320gig 7200rpm drive in it. Put in 16GB of memory and love it.
• After playing with it for a bit, I did the most recent BIOS upgrade (1.39) and prepared it for the SSD install.
• I put in the Samsung 840 evo. Turning on the laptop it sits at thinkpad logo a lot longer then usual. After a bit it goes to the Error 2100.
• I went into the BIOS, HDD is not detected at all.
• I kept trying to boot/restart but no go. I always see that Error 2100. I can tell when it won't boot because the thinkpad logo sits for a long time and it seems that the HDD light is always on.
• I tried to boot with and without UEFI...no go.
• I tried to boot with SATA as AHCI or compatibility, no go
• I put the Samsung drive into a dock and attached it to a laptop. Disk management see's the drive. I can format it and all.
• I put the SSD drive then into a friend’s computer tower. I formatted the drive using the Samsung software.
• I tried to put it back into my laptop last night, no go. Drive is not being read.
• My friends desktop detects the drive in his BIOS just fine...

So I'm lost.

I believe this is an issue between the BIOS and the SSD/firmware.
I looked at some of the updates for SSD's and the thinkpad BIOS, they identify a small part of the model number of the samsung drive but it is not the same.

I have no idea what to do. I bought this nice drive and can't use it in my small beast of a thinkpad.


I've searched these forums and I'm pretty pissed off that such an issue exists. Error 2100 seem's common and especially with SSD drives in the thinkpads.

Any suggestions before I sell this drive, lose money on it and buy something that this laptop will read?


-rant

 

There's a number of people running these drives in their X220 systems with no issues, but you're not the first one to report this kind of bug either.

Personally, I'd say "goodbye" to Samsung and get a Crucial for a slew of reasons, one of them being that I've never had any grief with their SSDs on ThinkPads. Obviously, YMMV.

Good luck.

 

Funny to note - my t440s seems to have a vendetta against Crucial M500's (error 2100; I tried multiple drives of different capacities and firmware versions), yet works nicely with an 840 evo. Never figured that one out.

 

Well, ThinkPads are loved - amongst other reasons - for having a character.

Now, sometimes they have a bit too much of it.

My last X220 had an Intel 730 in it, but I also had Micron C400 (aka Crucial M4) and Samsung 830 in some of the previous ones.

Trial and error at owner's expense...

 

I almost hate to say this, but on the biz side, my interest is shifting from Lenovo to HP. My x120e had a funny glitch (known issue on some models) where if you limited SoC, the SoC would occasionally drop by a third for no apparent reason, from 40% to 6%. And even though I no longer do that, I suspect one of the cells might be going bad. Plus, the realtek cards in x120e/x131e's will constantly drop on Xirrus WAPs unless you turn off power management in device manager (they work fine after that, but I shouldn't need to do that to begin with). Meanwhile, my t440s had a funky wifi driver for a while (7260AC), and the touchpad design is annoying. Meanwhile, the school district I work for over the summer has HP stuff everywhere, and I haven't had these kinds of issues with them. Of course, HP's biz 14" 1080p machines are really expensive, and I don't like their distribution channels for biz machines to end users as much. Customization costs a ton extra, for example. Easier to go through a reseller. I'm sticking with the t440s, but my next laptop may be an HP (although they seem to have gone the thin/light way with biz laptops on the latest gen, and their keyboards were never as good). Also thinking about getting a desktop at some point (not sure yet), and that might just be an HP Pro/Elitedesk.

 

Thanks for the replies.

I found somebody selling locally a Crucial mSata 128gb drive. I am tempted to buy it and throw it in there. I'm honestly really dissapointed with this issue between the bios and the firmware.

Depending how my time with this x220 goes, it will make my decision in the future in regards to its replacement. I was set and excited for getting a nice SSD drive into this laptop. Looks like now I'll have to suffer a small loss to get rid of it (or use it in my desktop) and buy another drive and hope that it works.


Wish there was a better answer.

So I'm guessing that sending this drive for an RMA and getting it replaced wouldn't really help?

 

There's a mismatch between the controller and machine's BIOS. Somewhere.

If it were a different drive I'd say RMA it for a replacement, install it and call it a day but with issues plaguing EVOs lately and not getting resolved for quote a few users, your best bet is to sell it even if you lose a few bucks on it.

Good luck.

 

Controller? on the hard drive or the motherboard?

I find this completely poor either way from a consumer's standpoint. Don't release products if bugs and issues aren't worked out. Companies should be fined for stuff like this. In my example I am stuck with the drive.

BestBuy in Canada won't return the hard drive at all after purchase, due to it being a storage device.

I'm currently looking at the Crucial MX100 as a replacement

 

SSD.

Not to defend Lenovo but...it would be next impossible for them to test *every* platform with *every* storage drive, let alone all the other stuff that's on the market. That's why all the manufacturers only guarantee that their own (often too expensive) setup will work...

I hope that one will work well for your needs. EVO leaves a lot to be desired IMO anyway.

Good luck.

 

Yes, but as someone was pointing out in my case, isn't this all supposed to be standard? A SATA drive is a SATA drive, right? Apparently not.

 

It's not a matter of standard.

It's about how a particular controller communicates with the BIOS.

Not all of the BIOSes are the same and neither are all the controllers. Hence the mix & match problem.

 

Well small update.

After thinking about spending a bit of money and getting the Samsung 850 Pro, I wanted to slap myself for that thought. Why would I take another risk like this and be stuck with two SSD's lol

I came to mys senses and after contemplating between the Crucial M550 and the MX100, I went with the MX100.

Xubuntu is now on the drive and it's working good.

Great laptop this x220 is.

 

Good to hear.

Let's hope it keeps on serving you well. Enjoy!

 

Well I have a small...positive update.

The MX100 works just fine in my X220. I didn't bother doing any firmware upgrades to the MX100 as it worked right out of the box and I'm on linux.
But...with my x220 having 16gb of memory, the 2.6ghz i5 processor...I didn't want a medium range SSD drive.

I went out and gambled.... I bought the Samsung Pro 850 drive (250 gig).

The moment of truth, I installed it and fired up the laptop. The thinkpad screen flashed quickly as usual (not like with the Evo 840) and I was back at the Xubuntu installer.

The install went great and the Samsung Pro 850's been great on this laptop.
Much happier knowing I have one of the best SSD's out there at this time.

The 850 Pro is great....my faith restored somewhat in Samsung.