Samsung Magician says 860 EVO mSATA 1TB SSD is not supported

[jdrch]

I recently installed this new 860 EVO mSATA 1TB directly to the mSATA slot on Dell XPS 8500 Special Edition's stock motherboard, but Samsung Magician says the drive isn't supported.

1. Does anyone know why this is the case and how to fix it?
2. If Magician really doesn't support the drive, is there any way to update the firmware otherwise?

[Rulmix]

The Galaxy Note9 Can only support up to an extra 400GB Via expansion slot. It says on the trailer up to 1TB of storage, thats including the 512GB variant of the phone with a 400gb Card. It may also support a 512GB card

[jdrch]

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@Rulmix wrote:

The Galaxy Note9 Can only support up to an extra 400GB Via expansion slot. It says on the trailer up to 1TB of storage, thats including the 512GB variant of the phone with a 400gb Card. It may also support a 512GB card

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Huh? This is a PC storage question. Did you even read my OP? Not to mention Magician doesn't run on Android.

[Memory Product Expert -1 · Accepted solution]

Hello jdrch,
1. Samsung Magician will always say the drive is unsupported if, you are using any external connections or unsupported connections. Or if the software cannot properly communicate with your system and our servers, due to old motherboard SATA drivers, your system BIOS is not in AHCI mode, The Samsung magician does not have internet access and etc.
2. Yes, Even if Samsung Magician is not working, there are ways to download and install firmware by visiting and see the information displayed under firmware on our website. Please visit www.samsung.com/samsungssd for all Samsung SSD downloads.

[jdrch]

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@Memory Product Expert -1  wrote:
 your system BIOS is not in AHCI mode

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I think this explains it. The PC in which I'm using the SSD is a Dell XPS 8500, which ships with Intel RST. Intel RST needs the BIOS to be in RAID mode for the OS to boot.

I strongly suggest Samsung enable support for this configuration.

Thanks for the firmware link; looks like there are no updates for my particular drive.

[Memory Product Expert -1]

Hello jdrch,

The 860 EVO does not currently have any updates for firmware. Intel RST and Samsung Magician will both work as long as the System is in AHCI. Samsung Magician is designed to optimize AHCI systems and will add not benefits to a RAID system.

[jdrch]

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@Memory Product Expert -1  wrote:
Intel RST and Samsung Magician will both work as long as the System is in AHCI.

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I understand that. What I'm saying is, the latest version of Intel RST that supports my Intel chipset will cause the OS to BSOD on boot if AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. The only way to successfully boot the OS is to enable RAID mode in the BIOS even if (this is the important part) there is no actual physical RAID configured. I don't have a RAID, and neither is my 860 EVO part of a RAID, but if I set the BIOS to AHCI Windows will not boot.

Basically what I'm saying is Samsung Magician should check to see if the SSD is actually in (note the emphasis) a RAID, rather than just checking for AHCI being enabled and giving up if it isn't.

[Memory Product Expert -1]

Hello jdrch,
I apologize for any misunderstanding, but Samsung Magician checks your motherboard to see if it is in RAID, not the SSD. The reason your system does not boot when you switch to AHCI is because you need to reinstall windows in AHCI mode. Currently, your BIOS and windows are in RAID, which means windows is loading RAID drivers, which is the cause of the issue. Even if the drive is not apart of a RAID array windows will load RAID drivers to communicate with your drives. Samsung Magician needs AHCI drivers to communicate with your drives.

[jdrch]

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@Memory Product Expert -1  wrote:
you need to reinstall windows in AHCI mode.

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Not worth the trouble, but thanks for drilling down to the core issue and explaining what is happening!

[jdrch]

Good news: the latest version of Magician supports mSATA SSDs. Pass my thanks on to the Magician development team 🙂