I’ve spent each weekend for a couple of weeks now trying to get my new Samsung RF711 laptop set up to use a solid-state drive (SSD). It has been an experience of unmitigated pain. Today is gone, and nothing to show for it.
Not that this is the fault of Samsung. Their kit works well, and the easily accessible hard disk bays are wonderful. It’s quite simply that setting up any hard disk to work with Windows and boot the Samsung Recovery Solution from the F4 menu is strictly for people with plenty of time. Which is not me. It’s strictly for people with day after day on their hands.
I’ve found a link here and here which helped. The problem is getting the wretched Samsung recovery partition created correctly.
My current approach has required a lot of disk swapping. You also need to create an admin USB key drive. Unless yours is 32GB, tho, it won’t be big enough.
The best way to do this is to start with the original hard disk in its original bay, and the SSD in the spare bay. If Paragon will create your recovery partition (it did the first time I used it, not today) then all you need to do is to remove the hard disk, restart with a USB stick and use it to fix the MBR on the SSD so that the recovery solution will run from your new recovery partition. Restart and you are done.
What I had to do was create a partition at the end of the drive using normal tools, and format it and assign it a letter (G:). Then boot from the stick, and copy the Z: drive using robocopy to the G: drive in the DOS box under the hidden menu. Then reboot from the stick, and use the new menu to fix the MBR. Then boot and check F4 takes you into the recovery; and then you can delete the other partitions (not your G: drive!) and do a complete restore, and reboot, and … you’re done. Phew.
It’s brain-teasing stuff the first time you see it, really it is.
What I have decided to do is keep the original HDD in a bag somewhere, and instead just fit a new HDD as my data store. So I can always go back to factory settings that way.
Mind you, having Windows on an SSD does mean that it boots incredibly fast. Booting from the HDD was utterly turgid.
Manufacturers need to stop supplying HDD for Windows, and supply an SSD main drive with ancillary hard drive.
Hi Roger.
Very sorry to learn of your troubles, but it sounds as if you are in fact laying out a very persuasive argument for a MacBook Air, which supplies what you want but without requiring so much time and angst. I had always been reluctant to spend this kind of money, but I can now see a very good reason for it!
Well, I got there. But it involved repeated swapping of drives (although this wasn’t necessary in the end – I could have simply altered the boot order) and much pain!
But in the process I got to see how incredibly slow booting Windows is, from an HDD; and how much faster it was from SSD.
I put in a Agility 3 and found that there was a issue with their firmware amazingly sent back two drives before speaking with OCZ in Holland returning drive to them getting it back and bingo RF711 SO8 recognise the drive. The drive is very fast I use a Momentum Hybrid 500gb in the 2nd bay I have 7.9 transfer rate and a Windows Exp index of 6.6. 20sec reboots makes windows pain free Unfortunately as samsung put their recovery partition on the drive I have a vanilla setup and manually setup the drivers etc.
over all I am loving my setup you notice how fast file transfers are etc compared to 7200rpm drives
You can set up the recovery partition on the SSD, but it’s a pain to do.
But yes, the speed is well worth while. How long, I wonder, before all laptops come with an SSD in the first drive bay?
I had to purchase a new internal hard drive for my samsung RF711 laptop recently, then had to download the drivers, unfortunatly i didnt have access to another laptop and couldnt get on the internet to download the drivers, im currently using this one at work illegally to get advice can anyone suggest what to do after i manage to download what happens then