Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsVERY frustrating!!!
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2015
I was replacing my (relatively new/fully functioning) Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD with this brand new Samsung 850 PRO 512GB SSD. I had a full system image of the W510 (there were no proprietary "hidden" partitions on this system, just a straight Windows install), restored it to the 850 PRO, the laptop booted without any issues, and everything looked fine. No errors in device manager, and it appeared as if it was a complete total clone of exactly what was on the EVO drive. However, all the USB ports on the left side of the laptop (one 2.0 and two 3.0) lost functionality. (Lenovo Thinkpad W510, Win 7 Pro 64 bit) I took out the 850 PRO, reinserted the 850 EVO, no problems -- all USB ports functioned perfectly. Took out the 850 EVO, put back in the 850 PRO -- no USB ports. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. (Device manager is showing a Code 10 error for all USB devices whenever a drive (flash or HDD) is inserted, but shows no error(s) otherwise when no USB devices are installed/inserted.)
This is insane. (And no...fortunately...I did NOT do the dreaded firmware update; Magician said I had the latest firmware already installed.) So I am at a loss here. It's the weekend and I can't call CS for some relief/RMA. I have 3 Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSDs installed on my other laptops, and have never had any problem. I decided to "upgrade" to the PRO from the EVO and man...what a mistake.
UPDATE: I called Samsung CS and was told, in no uncertain terms, that this could not POSSIBLY be a hardware conflict with my Thinkpad W510 -- it HAD to be a software issue. So I took a Lenovo rescue disc, installed it so that everything was pristine/out of the box fresh, and for a little while the USB ports worked. Then they stopped working.
So...being the stubborn type of person that I am...I went to my Lenovo V570 laptop (that had a Crucial 500GB SSD) and used a Paragon system image backup and restored to the Pro 512. It worked. No problems. I then reformatted the 512 and used a OneKey system image backup. That worked. Then I reformatted the 512, went back to the W510 and tried two different types of system image backups -- same problem; it would boot up, everything looked okay (no errors or yellow warnings in Device Manager, Event Viewer was solid, etc.), but as soon as I plugged in any USB device it was a no go.
Therefore, I'm stumped. The drive works, yet it doesn't work. It works in the V570 but it doesn't work in the W510. I've had 3 different drives in my W510 and they all work -- but the Pro 512 will not. (In fact, there's a Samsung EVO 500 in there right now and it works fine.) Something's going on here. But rather than send this SSD back only to receive a "refurbished" drive (how in the world does a company "refurbish" a SSD anyway?) I'll use it in the V570 even though that was not my original intent. My original intent was to install the 512 in my W510 and give a friend of mine the EVO 500 for her Thinkpad T410. Now I'll give the relatively brand new Crucial 500GB SSD to my friend instead.
NOTE: Since this drive does work in one of my laptops I've upgraded the stars from 1 to 3.