Samsung NP930X5J / NP940X5J ATIV Book 9 (2014) 15.6" Haswell announced Jan 6, 2014

Yes, it is most likely because you cloned it.

Are you able to boot Recovery with F4? If not, then that's because the F4 link was lost when you cloned -- which generally makes SRS unable to work (see here and here).

As you suggested, SRS on the original SSD should still work if you swap it back in, in case you ever need to factory restore.

But just for getting to the System Software, you may have another option: The SRS Recovery partition was almost certainly copied to the new SSD when you cloned -- it's just that missing F4 link prevents the SRS software from running. But if you add a drive letter to the Recovery partition, you should be able to browse it like any NTFS drive, and access the SystemSoftware folder. Step (3) in this post explains how to do that with DISKPART. (In fact, that entire post explains how you might boot SRS5 even with a broken F4 link).

Whether your SystemSoftware folder contains Cyberlink YouCam is another question. Indeed, my old NP700Z3A came with it as well, but if it wasn't in your factory installation, and doesn't show in SW Update, it may not be there. And another question is whether it will help unlock those Webcam settings in Skype. They're grayed for me as well (except Low Light Compensation on the Camera control tab).

Edit: I see I didn't answer your question properly about whether you would ever be able to restore on the Crucial 512GB when your working Recovery is on the Samsung 256GB. You are correct, that will be an issue. SRS6 has a built-in clone feature that preserves intact Recovery, but SRS5 does not.

You would have to either factory restore on the 256GB, then clone again to get the factory installation onto the 512GB; OR you could you use the procecure described in this post to backup your Recovery from the 256GB and re-create it on the 512GB. It is a somewhat elaborate process, which wipes and re-partitions your SSD (the 512GB) but you would then have working Recovery on it, and can perform a factory restore anytime. Let us know if you want to do that, and we can help you through.

We also have a report from member go45cvi that he was able to clone his SSD with intact Recovery using Clonezilla. But only by cloning the entire drive, not individual partitions. I have not tried this myself, but go45cvi knows his stuff! Other non-Samsung cloning tools generally lose Recovery -- as you found.

 

I have a 940 being delivered this week and Samsung Chat just told me that there is no second SSD slot in that model despite their advertising. I contacted them to find out how to install it and what would be compatible

 

Wow! Why would they omit the 2nd SSD slot? I am glad my 930 has it! Perhaps the Chat person just had no clue!

 

Thanks for your reply!
I wish Samsung would just offer a 512GB SSD version of the 930/940 and save us a lot of time and effort.

 

That is the truth. Why they keep offering only 128GB and 256GB in their various models is beyond me.

 

Once YouCam is installed, you should be able to select Cyberlink Webcam Splitter as the webcam in the Skype video options. However, you have to go looking for it.

John

 

I've been looking at what it would take to retrofit the components for the second SSD slot (whilst I wait for Samsung to pull their finger out and release the UK model) . Using hubert's and notebookcheck.com photos for comparison, I've identified at least three differences.

The most obvious component missing is the M.2 connector or NGFF connector as it is sometimes termed. From looking at the footprint and the location of the large and small mounting holes, I am fairly certain it is a 'M' style key connector. However what I am uncertain about is the height of the connector as their is a choice of three. At a guess though I would say it is either the middle or tallest of the three which narrows it down to:

TE 1-2199119-3 - 3.2mm tall - available from Farnell 2377471
TE 1-2199230-3 - 4.2mm tall - available from Farnell 2377473

Hubert would you be able to measure the height of this connector from the face of the pcb to confirm which one it is?

Secondly there looks to be two possibly 0805 size capacitors beside the M.2. SSD connector. Not sure what capacitance these will be, but I expect they are most likely additional bulk capacitors for the SSD card supply. Probably will work fine without them, and are probably for EMC.

Finally there looks to be a 28-pin SOIC / TSOP style component to the right of the SSD slot, which is populated on hubert's S01US (2nd SSD slot fitted) and not on K02DE model. hubert would you be able to confirm the part number or markings on the top of this package? I would be interested to find out what this is for and if it is required for the 2nd SSD slot.

 

Hello guys,
Thank you for all these helpful information.

Helen, please let us know is there any difference in display reflection between touch and non touch version and how do they compare to Macbook Air display if you had a chance to use it. I believe that touch version should be more reflective.

The most important part of the laptop is display and yet it is technology that seems to be going backward. My 11 years old display Philips Brilliance 150p3 is better then most hd displays in most laptops.
Also i noticed that many reviewers prefer matte display but if done right, glossy display is much better. Macbook Air is a great example.
Interesting thing is that nanotechnology that solve reflection problem already exist.

 

That isn't good news. I also have a 940 being delivered on Monday and ordered a 512GB SSD to install in it (which is still back ordered). I guess cloning will be a two step process. Acronis to an image on a USB drive and then from the image to the new SSD drive.

 

According to the post by Dannemand above, I would use Clonezilla, which will keep your recovery partition fully functional.

 

Disagree. The matte displays on the 13" models put the air's to shame.

 

Thanks. I will use Clonezilla. It looks like Clonezilla has to store the image on the drive it boots from, so the image size cannot be larger than the boot drive. Does anyone know how large the base image is? The full 256GB's of the SSD drive or does Clonezilla compress the image to something smaller that might fit onto a 32GB flash drive?

 

Thank you, that's good to know. I remember I concluded back in the days that the CyberLink stuff was unnecessary bloat and on my list of latency suspects, but of course it makes sense that it actually provides some unique functionality.

 

I believe Clonezilla can clone directly as well as save and restore images (which I DID test, and which failed in my case). For the image route to work, you must image the entire disk to an external drive, not individual partitions, to make sure the all-important F4 link in the partition table is preserved.

On Win8.x models, the newer Samsung Recovery Solution 6 (SRS6) is the preferred way to clone, as it also preserves Recovery. The post here lists the four options available to owners of Win8-models (with SRS6) for getting software onto a new SSD.

For owners of Win7-models (with SRS5) the other option is a so-called USB Admin Tool, which can be used to create working, but empty SRS Recovery on a new disk, combined with a backup of the factory image (called Initial Image in SRS5). SRS5 can back up the Initial Image to a 16 or 32GB USB stick and restore it when Admin Tool creates Recovery partitions. OR you can make a complete File & Folder backup of the Recovery partition to an external drive and restore it onto the newly created Recovery partition (this will also preserve System Software). That is how I generally do it, as described in this post.

The thread linked below contains some overview of cloning with both SRS6 and SRS5.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...red-recovery-partition-samsung-notebooks.html

 

Here is a high-res photo with a ruler:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gn2hc8dup516j4a/DSC00604.JPG

 

Thanks Dannemand. I will review your links tonight after work. The 512GB drive has not shipped yet. It may be best to just do a factory restore on the new drive, but I don't want to wait another week to start installing my applications and migrating my data. I found an M.2 to SATA adapter on Amazon. I could use that with a SATA to USB adapter to migrate drive to drive.

 

That makes sense. If Clonezilla does it, you're in good shape.

Before swapping out the original 256GB SSD, I would still create an Admin Tool on a leftover USB stick (512MB should suffice). Then if Clonezilla turns out to break Recovery after all (we only have a single success report) you can still use Admin Tool to create working Recovery on the new SSD and manually copy the Recovery Partition files & folders from the 256GB SSD (now in the adapter). That WILL give you working Recovery. You'll need to clone just the Windows partition again after this (or image and restore it) but you can do that anytime without damaging Recovery.

Does that make sense? It's really quite simple, but I think I made it sound complicated

 

Yes, that makes sense. I have an extra thumb drive I can use for that. I just ordered the M.2 to SATA adapter and I already have a USB to SATA adapter.

 

Hi, sorry if this was extensively covered but we do have over 500 posts here Is there any Series 9 version with a matte 15" or 15.6" @ 1920x1080 screen available in any country?

 

The NP940X5J (touchscreen) comes with a glossy screen. The NP930X5J (non-touchscreen) is supposed to have a non-reflective coating, but those who have bought one are reporting that the screen is also glossy. Both models have a 15.6" 1920X1080 display. I have read this whole thread and no one has reported getting a matte screen in any country.

 

I booted a tuxboot usb thumbdrive of clonezilla. I used an external USB hard drive to store the image. I think once clonezilla is loaded you can remove the thumbdrive and attach the hard drive or you could also use a network share, not sure how tricky that is. I can't remember if the usb3 port worked, but I'm on sandy bridge. I then used the save disk as image option to save the image onto the hard drive without compression, opting instead to compress the directory in a winrar archive. The initial image was around 20-30GB and I shaved a few GBs off with light rar compression. Here's a tutorial:

Save disk image

Frankly, I might test that the clonezilla image worked on the 500GB SSD and then just install windows normally.

 

Samsung calls the NP930 screen "anti-glare". It is very similar to the MacBook Pro Retina as far as reflections go. See my side-by-side photos earlier in the thread. I would be curious to know if the NP940 screen is different.

PS: The 940 is now available on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Editi...&qid=1401469742&sr=8-6&keywords=samsung+np940

PPS: The 8.8 hour battery life quoted is based on MobileMark 2014 Test Scores (most likely the i5, 128GB SSD model) according to the description on the Amazon page.

My i7 256GB 930 with a 2nd 512GB Crucial SSD does 4-6 hours in real life heavy work mode, which is great, since that's all I usually do in a day on battery.

 

Thanks. This will help a lot. The 512GB drive still hasn't shipped yet and the laptop will be here on Monday. I don't want to wait a week or two to start playing with it, so I will install my apps and data on the 256GB drive. I probably won't do a fresh install of Windows. If it isn't performing well and I can't de-bloat the factory image, I can always do a fresh install on the new drive when it gets here.

 

Good plan!

 

I still LOVE my NP930X5J !!!

I have a question:
Since my NP930X5J works as a desktop replacement, I have it running in High Performance mode The fan hardly ever comes on. But first thing in the morning I notice that the fan is usually running. When I move the mouse to bring up the screen and log back into windows the fan stops. Checking Task Manager and Resource Monitor, there are no major processes running.
Any idea why that would be?
Perhaps it is because in Performance mode the Minimum Processor State is set to 100% plugged in (5% on battery)
I have reduced Minimum Processor State to 5% now and will see if that makes a difference.

 

NP. Yeah I couldn't leave it in the box either. I don't thing Samsung puts too much bloat on, and it's usually uninstallable. It might be tricky to reclaim the recovery partition if you want the extra 20GB. If it's Windows 7, you might try the built-in image feature to just migrate the windows partitions (and your new programs/files) to the larger drive.

 

It is Windows 8.1. I will keep the recovery partition.

 

That is almost guaranteed the reason. I would stick to Samsung Optimized for daily use. The biggest difference in High Performance (though not the only one) is Min processor state being locked at 100%, preventing the CPU from ever resting, even when there is nothing to do - and you tweaked that anyway.

 

In my experience the High Performance mode gives negligible performance improvement over the Samsung Optimized mode so I always use the latter.

If you want to verify this for yourself then run a benchmark such a PCMark using each of the power plans and compare the results.

John

 

New BIOS just became available. I upgraded BIOS P04AED to P05AED. Not sure what was fixed (for some reason Samsung does not publish release notes for their BIOS), but everything is running fine.

PS: Still very happy with my NP930X5J . Best notebook I've ever owned.
"The Best Kept Secret in the World of Personal Computers"

 

This happened twice now: The external monitor goes off for one second and then comes back on again.
Unplugging the HDMI plug and plugging it back in again fixed it.
Anyone have an explanation for this?

 

Did it just start with the BIOS update you installed or has it been happening before that?

 

It happened once before the BIOS update. I plug in and unplug the monitor daily. It only has happened twice so far. Just curious....

 

It could be a bad cable or loose connector. Did you knock or move the cable at all causing it to resync with the monitor? If so, you could try using a different cable and see if the problem happens again.

 

The Intel graphics driver has some power saving features that have taken users by surprise before (such as the now infamous Panel Self Refresh). I wonder if you might be experiencing such a "feature".

Does it happen when plugged in as well as battery?

Otherwise I'd agree with TJoseph that a bad cable or connector sounds most likely. HDMI cables can be finicky, I'd try another cable as the first. You prolly already did that

 

The fan came on again during inactivity, but now I found the real culprit: Disk Defragmenter was tring to defrag disk C (the Crucial 512GB SSD in slot 0) - even though it is an SSD and I have the Disk Defragmenter Schedule turned off.

For some reason the Crucial SSD does not seem to communicate to the Disk Defragger that it is an SSD. (Disk Defragmenter leaves the Samsung SSD in slot 1 alone - as it should.)

My solution for now is to disable the Disk Defragmenter Service altogether as follows:

Windows Search > Services > Disk Defragmenter > Properties > stop the service (Stop button) >Select startup type "Disabled" > "Apply"

 

Has anyone seen the touchsceen model and the anti-glare model side-by-side to compare the how glossy they are?
I am loathe to get a glossy screen but part of me thinks that in a couple of years I might be thinking "I wish I had the touch screen now".
If they are both as glossy as each other I might as well get the touchscreen option, unless there is a significant power saving by getting the anti-glare model.

 

The non-touch anti-glare NP930X5J has about the same reflectivity as the MacBookPro Retina. (see my side-by side photos earlier in this thread)
Perhaps someone can take a side-by-side photo of the touchscreen NP940X5J next to a MacBookPro Retina...

 

I highly recommend the 900X4 over the 930X5
I have both and frankly the 900X4 has much fewer problems...

 

The 900X4c is great - but it doesn't have the Full HD 1920x1080 screen and the 2nd SSD slot the 930X5 has.

 

If anyone knows of a place in Southern California where I can test drive the new 2014 edition (either version) please let me know, I'm really curious about upgrading from my NP900X4C, but don't want to spend a day calling all the Best Buys in a 100 mile radius

BasementDoc- I'd like to hear about your experience. I'm really interested in upgrading to a better screen, but the rest of the computer seems like a side-grade.

And if anyone is lucky enough to get their hands on the new 2014 edition and would post pictures of a side-by-side with a NP900X4C or NP900X4D I'd really appreciate it, along with a brief comparison. I'm wondering if the keyboard/touchpad is any better. Many thanks

 

I should point out that the X5J has also popped up without the 2nd SSD slot (the NP930X5J-K01IT and maybe others).

Go back up this thread to late April when huberth got his X5J and took such photos (but I posted the photos on his behalf).

John

 

Where or where can I get one of these for my second SSD slot? Samsung PM851 512GB M.2 SATA 6.0Gb/ SSD Looks like Samsung released this around May 30th.

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...duct/flash-ssd/detail?productId=7997&iaId=831

 

There are a few web pages listing the part "MZNTE512HMJH" but none have any stock.

Perhaps they will show up during the next month.

John

 

I just the read 60 page thread (in close to 3 hours) Even before reading this thread, I was searching prices for the 15" 2014 AB9, and landed upon 2 distinct models NP930X5J and NP940X5J. Couldn't make out the difference initially, but after reading the thread this is what I understood (correct me if I'm wrong), and I hope it should help others too:

NP930X5J
- Available only in 1 model for the US:
NP930X5J-S01US

NP940X5J
- Available in 2 models for the US
NP940X5J-K01US
NP940X5J-K02US

The Major differences between the 3 are:

	NP930X5J-S01US	NP940X5J-K01US	NP940X5J-K02US
CPU	i7-4500U	i5-4200U	i7-4500U
Touch Screen	No	Yes	Yes
SSD Capacity	256 GB	128 GB	128 GB
Screen Type	Glossy with Anti-reflective coating	Glossy	Glossy
Preinstalled OS	Windows 7 (upgradable to Win8)	Windows 8.x	Windows 8.x
Warranty	3 years	1 year	1 year

And these seem to be the concerns I noted:

- 2nd SSD slot not available on all variants (especially few european ones ??), although there are solder points available, but just does not have the slot and other pieces which contribute.
- The 930 variant was expected to be a Matte screen, but turned out to be glossy with the anti-reflective coating, very similar to the Apple Mac Book Pros.
- The Samsung support and updates is really bad (Having so many models with very similar model numbers and trying to gather information online about their differences explains their level of marketing.)
- Battery life averages around a little more than 8 hours on normal usage, and much less than the advertised upto 14 hours.
- Not much information about Linux support except for 2 to 3 users on this thread who posed about trying Ubuntu but had trouble with the touchpad drivers and the keyboard backlight/fn keys.

Anything important I missed here ?

I stumbled upon this notebook after researching a lot of 15" ultrabooks with a 1920x1080 resolution. I'm strongly leaning on 930X5J since I'm going to be using some variant of Linux (usually openSUSE) almost 100% of the time and I do not prefer a touch screen whatsoever. I just need a big (at least 15") high resolution screen for the most part with a good battery life (at least 5 - 6 hours). I have not taken Samsung notebooks seriously until I saw this model, but after reading the entire thread, it looks like Samsung has still not taken their PC market seriously and are trying to step away from it.

Also what has been the best prices in the US for these models you have found ? I have these so far (CA state - no tax when ordered from these sellers), any better ones you know of ?

NP940X5J-K01US
Adorama - $1498

NP940X5J-K02US
shopblt.com - $1931.50

NP930X5J-S01US
macmall.com - $1944

 

Also I know the WiFi chipset supports a/b/g/n/ac, but does anyone know what is the actual wifi chipset used on the 930X5J and 940X5J variants ?

 

MacMall charges sales tax to California. Provantage does not, but they will reroute the package so it's shipped from Ohio.

Provantage: Taxation and California. The items on your order are only available from a distribution partner's warehouse which is required to pay a substantial tax on orders shipped directly into California. This cost is unavoidable for direct express shipments and is included in the above Two Day and Next Day shipping method choices.
Ground Reshipping. Whenever possible, we will have your Ground orders shipped directly to you. However, when the cost for direct shipping to California becomes prohibitive, an alternative procedure will be used: We will first have your order shipped to our main Ohio warehouse, then we will immediately re-ship it to your location. This avoids the much higher cost of shipping directly into California and generally results in SUBSTANTIAL OVERALL SAVINGS to you.

 

Thanks John, only one problem: "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to John Ratsey again."

 

My 930X5J has the Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260

 

I received my NP940X5J-K02US yesterday. So far I am not a fan of Windows 8.1, but I think I can get it to work with a little more tweaking. I like the keyboard compared to my Asus UX31E. There is a little more travel in the keys. The screen is beautiful even if it is a bit glossy. My Asus was matte. I can confirm that it does not have a second SSD slot.

It is a bit bigger than my Asus:


But about the same thickness:


The power supply is roughly the same size as the Asus, but a different shape (both are 40W):


I ordered a second "slim" power supply. It is bigger (but slimmer) than the one that came with the laptop: