Solved Samsung Magician driver

[csjag]

I have ordered a Samsung 840 EVO SSD and will be installing it in a few days. While looking at the manuals on Samsung's support page, I was reading the procedures for using the Magician software. After the system requirements, which my system is well over the minimums, there is a section on Driver Support. In this section, the table says that AMD chipsets are not supported.

What does this mean? I have an ASUS mobo with an AMD FX990 chipset running an FX-4300 CPU. What will not work - the Magician software, the 840 EVO SSD, or what??? I've seen plenty of reviews of this SSD and never seen any reference to not being compatible with an AMD system.

Thanks for any clarification on this.

 

[madcratebuilder]

I've not heard this before but you should be fine. I have a 840 running in my 990fxa/8350 no problems. I installed the magician software without issue. I have used the software and I had trouble with the auto firmware update, that's the only AMD compatibility issue I know of. Very minor technicality.

 

[csjag]

Thanks, madcrate, for the info. Yours is close enough to mine that if you have had no problems, I should not either. As soon as i get my 840 installed and up and running, I'll let you know.

Appreciate the help.

 

[cmmtch]

Only Problem was migration would't work

I installed the Samsung 840 EVO 120G, Motherboard is an ASUSTek M5A88-EVO with 880G AMD chipset. I never could get the migration application to work, ended up restoring from a backup image to the new SSD.

As soon as I opened the Magician software it detected the Samsung SSD and showed a firmware update, I updated the firmware before doing anything else. That maybe could have been the cause of the migration failure, I have no way of knowing.

Other that that one glitch I am happy with the SSD, it's very fast. Using the RAPID mode from the Magician has increased my score 3x, see snip below.

 

[Britton30]

cmmtch, it may be even faster if you move the SSD off of msahci and to an AMD SATA controller, probably SATA_0 or SATA_1.

 

[cmmtch]

cmmtch, it may be even faster if you move the SSD off of msahci and to an AMD SATA controller, probably SATA_0 or SATA_1.

Help me out Britton, what exactly do you mean? The SSD is on SATA_0 port on the MB, when I got my first SSD I did the registry hack/change or whatever it's called to enable AHCI. I haven't installed/updated any drivers other than printers since I built it except the BIOS which I updated to ver. 1001 12/30/2011.

I haven't had any problems so far and from what I've read on this forum and others unless you're having some sort of a problem it might be best to leave things alone.

I did go to this site AMD Chipset Drivers 7 - 64 and downloaded the AMD chipset drivers. I haven't done anything with them yet, it is an exe file and I'm not really sure how to install drivers other than clicking the DL'd exe file 13-12_win7_win8_32-64_sb. exe Is that all there is to it? Then I guess a reboot.

 

[whs]

@csjag, Once you are ready to migrate your system to the SSD, have a look at this.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html

 

[Britton30]

I would leave the SATA driver as-is, unless you have the driver disk that come with your motherboard. I went to the ASUS support site and it is not helpful, it only has info for Windows XP.

 

[cmmtch]

Samsung site not very helpful for the 840 SSD

@csjag sorry for the hijack of your thread any other replies from me will be on topic. I did find the Samsung site sorely lacking in information for this product, that was disappointing since Samsung is one of the better SSD manufacturers.

Britton, thanks for your input. It seems a lot of sites are not very helpful, see above about the Samsung 840 EVO SSD. Maybe other items are better represented on their site, IDK since I only had the SSD that I was interested in.

Good luck csjag, SSD's are great once they're set up and working as they should be.

 

[csjag]

Thanks, guys, for the answers. I am going to use a program called Mini-Tool Partition Wizard. It has the ability to clone my HDD to my SSD with the correct alignment at the same time. It looks like an easy to use program and is very versatile in what all it can do. The Home version, 8.1.1, is a free download and can be used for lots of things. This will be my weekend project, so I'll post back next week and let you all know how it turned out.

 

[whs]

Thanks, guys, for the answers. I am going to use a program called Mini-Tool Partition Wizard. It has the ability to clone my HDD to my SSD with the correct alignment at the same time. It looks like an easy to use program and is very versatile in what all it can do. The Home version, 8.1.1, is a free download and can be used for lots of things. This will be my weekend project, so I'll post back next week and let you all know how it turned out.

I know Partition Wizard can align partitions, but where did you see a cloning function in PW. I never saw that.

 

[Britton30]

I see no cloning function mentioned for Partition Wizard, maybe you mistook Partition Copy as clone, it's not the same thing.
I would still recommend Macrium, whs has done a good tutorial for it and it works very well.
Better yet would be a nice fresh install.

Whichever situation suits you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174907-clean-install-factory-coa-activation-key.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html#post16008

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164

 

[csjag]

Guys, look at the main menu page on Mini Tool. On the left side is a list of Wizards and a list of Operations. The second wizard on the list is "Copy Disc Wizard". After selecting this, you go through several steps of selecting source and target discs. On step 5, you review your changes and have several options at the bottom of the page. One is to fit partition to entire disc. This can work both ways - you can go up or down, depending on whether your SSD is larger or smaller than the source disc. At the bottom of this page, there is a box, that if checked, forces partition alignment while copying. After all of this, just reboot your PC and the cloning operation begins.

Yes, a clean install would be "better", but , frankly, it would be a pain in the butt, having to reinstall everything! I've already had one reactivation session with Microsoft when I upgraded my mobo last year, and I'm not ready to do that again. I've used cloning several times when upgrading HDD's in the past , and so long as I follow the instructions to the letter, I have never had a problem. There, I've said my peace about cloning.

 

[whs]

Hmm, my Wizards are different.

 

[csjag]

This page is for the several downloads available. If you download the Home Edition (freeware), then double-click on the exe file, you should have the page I mentioned. I downloaded my copy 3 days ago and got version 8.1.1

 

[whs]

OK - not that I need it because I only use Macrium for imaging.

 

[Britton30]

While a clean install is a pain, it's a bigger pain to continue with problems or have unknown ones lurking, waiting to attack. I have been told by Crucial that OS installing puts the most wear on a SSD, so the fewer the better. Having a clone in a drawer is great if you have to be back and running within 5 minutes, but it's not a backup plan.

That's why I prefer the imaging method and clean installs when replacing an OS drive, especially with a SSD. A clone will store only one version of a particular install, while that same drive could store 10-15 versions, any of which can be restored within 10-15 minutes and 2-3 clicks.