Samsung Pro 840 SSD Dual Hard Drives - 2nd Hard Drive Not Seen

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Level 1

4 points

Samsung Pro 840 SSD Dual Hard Drives - 2nd Hard Drive Not Seen

Hello all and thanks for taking the time to read this post and help out. For my christmas gift to myself, I purchased a brand new 2012 Mac Mini and upgraded the processor to 2.6. I then went online to NewEgg and purchased 2 Samsung Pro 840 256GB hard Drives. Finally I went over to iFixit and purchased the addtional SATA drive connector with their add a drive kit.

Pulled the Mac Mini apart following the instructions and added the second hard drive. I also removed the original 1TB drive so that I now had 2 Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD drives installed. Plugged in power, monitor, had my new bluetooth keyboard and was madly pressing command r. Turns out that bluetooth was not working for I went a purchased an additional keyboard at Best Buy. Plugged it in, used command r and it found the Apple servers and downloaded the OS. However, it only saw one drive.

After the install, still only saw one drive. The Primary. Opened the Mini up again, checked everything, reassembled, no dice. Pulled it apart a third time, and decided to change the secondard additional drive to the original 1 TB drive. So now I got a 256 SSD and a 1TB. Boot the OS, it sees the Hard Drive so I am thiking ok the SATA cable is fine.

Next day I take the second SSD and put it in my alienware computer. Windows sees the hard drive immediatly. So I am like Hmm. Hard Drive must work, SATA cable works, so why does Hard Drive and SATA cable not work together.

I posted to Samsung who said, well if widows sees the Hard Drive its not the Hard Drive. Contact Apple

I posted to iFixit and am waiting on a response.

I am posting here before I get on and call Apple. I am away on business till Friday anyway. Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 3, 2012 6:14 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Dec 3, 2012 9:19 PM in response to Hallowed

Hi, no real knowledge, but I'm betting 2 SSDs wont work in 10.8.2, as it expects an SSD will be a Fusion drive. 😟

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Answer 2

RRFS

Level 5

4,522 points

Dec 4, 2012 6:44 AM in response to Hallowed

The Disk Utility of the new OSX (12C2034) has specific features and doesn't work like some of us expect. Your best bet would be to call Apple Phone Support (you get 90 days free) and run this by them, they were quite helpful in assisting me a month ago when I added a 240GB SSD and the DU in Internet Recovery created a Fusion (Logical) drive. They may tell you 2 SSDs aren't supported.

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Answer 3

Hallowed Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 4, 2012 6:13 PM in response to RRFS

Thank you both RRFS and BDAqua. I will contact Apple Support. It does not make sense that you cannot have two Solid State Drives as the Server Option Mac Mini allows two as an upgrade. 2 x 256 GB SSD is $600. I simply bought my own SSDs and actually did upgrade to OSX server on my own through the Apple Store as well.

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Answer 4

RRFS

Level 5

4,522 points

Dec 5, 2012 7:02 AM in response to Hallowed

So by running Server are you able to see both drives?

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Answer 5

Dec 5, 2012 8:05 AM in response to Hallowed

Hallowed,

It should work, it's exactly what I have ordered and there is a guy in this thread who has the same configuration running:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=16400019#post16400019

it's post 146 in the thread or thereabouts. He has two Samsung drives, he didn't say what size but it's for audio so I expect at least one is at least 256 GB.

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Answer 6

Hallowed Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2012 12:12 PM in response to montagular

Could of, would of, should of....

Well needless to say I tried another SSD, this time a Samsung 830 Serioes instead of dual 840s...No Dice.

RRFS, I did indeed call Apple Support and it was escalted to a Senior Technical Advisor. Sorry to say that it was not even worth the time to speak to her. I was told "I am sorry the Computer was shipped out to you configured with One Drive and 2 drives are not supported" To which I asked not supported as in your not going to help me or not supported as you have intnetially disables something to which the answer was intentionally vague.

I was told that two have 2 hard Drives supported would require the server model. I then asked well if I RMA this and get the server model is that going to support me adding the 2 SSD's or am I going to be told you did not buy them from Apple so sorry your on your own. You can guess what I was told.

So its back to a 256 SSD and the 1 TB as a secondary which to me is not satisfactory at all.

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Answer 7

Hallowed Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2012 2:04 PM in response to Hallowed

I guess Final Update. I switched the Hard Drives around. I put the First Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD as the Second Hard Drive. I then put the Second Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD as the Primary Drive. This time Disk Utility sees it but says there is an error. When I go to fix the error it flashed briefly does whatever and it is still red. Repeated 3 times.

I then took my other Samsung 830 256 GB SSD and what do you know, the same error. Disk Error. When I go to fix the error it flashed briefly does whatever and it is still red. Repeated 3 times. So I am thinking ***. I turn off my Alienware computer, install both the 830 and the 840 HDs and poof:

You can see that Windows 8 picked up both Samsung Drives. So I guess at this point the only thing to do is suck it up and have the MacMini Server that I am stuck with as opposed to the MacMini Server I bought.

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Answer 8

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Dec 7, 2012 10:09 PM in response to Hallowed

Good work, but since Apple doesn't like users to have options, I think you've nailed it. 😟

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Answer 9

Hallowed Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 8, 2012 8:21 AM in response to BDAqua

I do have one more update that may be the fix or not, do not know enought on the technical side to give a definitive answer. The 238.15 parition in the picture above for the two samsung drives are not what they appear. My original goal was to take the 830 drive and use it as a desktop replcement, however, when I went to install I got an error stating:

"windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style." I had to erase the whole drive using windows before installing. I had to do the same thing on the 840 once I added it as an additional hard drive. I am not sure and unable to test (I am now using that 1 TB HD in the Mac Mini) if that is the fix. So right now its still a mystery.

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Answer 10

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Dec 8, 2012 10:54 AM in response to Hallowed

Do keep us posted if you figure out more.

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Answer 11

Vilzu

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2013 12:52 PM in response to Hallowed

I have exactly the same hardware, Mac Mini late 2012 and two Samsung 840 Pro SSDs and having problems too. I got mine installed fine and they're seen by Finder and Disk Utility but I can't use the other one. The system SSD works just fine but the other SSD can't be written to, because it causes errors all the time. Disk Utility shows that it produces a lot of UltraDMA CRC Errors when the system SSD has no errors.

Then I installed the original 1TB Apple disk as the other disk and it works just fine with one SSD. This ***** big time if you can't install two SSDs and it is told nowhere. I've spent something like 20 hours investigating this problem and bought an expensive flagship SSD and now it's good only in decorating my book shelf?

Apple?

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Answer 12

Oct 22, 2013 3:02 PM in response to Vilzu

I'm looking at the MacMini Server and I wonder if there has been any news since your post?

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Answer 13

bmonitor

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2013 5:34 AM in response to Howell Selburn

I had the same problem with adding a Samsung SD as second drive to a 1 TB spinning drive. I did put the Samsung 840 in an external Harddrive Case and connected it to another mac. Than I formatted it, using the disk manager.

I reinstalled the Samsung in the mac mini and it worked. If you got a late 2012, the Disk Manger will create a Fusiondrive with one click.

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Answer 14

Dec 23, 2013 11:27 AM in response to Hallowed

I wonder if you configured RAID 0 on the drives in disk utility if it would make any difference?

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Answer 15

trebor27

Level 1

0 points

Mar 10, 2014 11:34 PM in response to Hallowed

Some people have had trouble with the sata cable as supplied in the iFixIt kit. They reported a standard hdd work fine on it, but the ssd failed to work.

The common solution was to move the hdd to the iFixIt cable and the SSD to go on the Apple cable, not that this helps you much with 2x SSD's

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