Samsung 860 EVO with MB Pro 2012 won't boot

I don't know how safe it (and I don't recommend it) but there's discussion about wrapping SSDs in aluminum foil and/or ESD bags to sort of shield them. My big thing would be that a loose conductor inside the case might cause a short somewhere.

http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/EMI-shielding-for-SSD/td-p/55124

But but but...

... that guy talks about wrapping his drive in an anti-static bag covered with foil, but does not mention his results. Then it links to an OWC article with a procedure to wrap the CABLE in a metal-and-mylar self adhesive wrapping tape.

That cable-wrapping does a lot of Brue Computing's "Red Tape" fix, but simply adds metalized tape.

I am not sure there is evidence there to support complex EMI-RFI issues or solutions. Just simple brute force busted cables. (in fairness, I suppose it does not rule out more complex failure mechanisms)

I dont know why but I know that I experienced it myself. As to drives I recommend, OWC’s and Crucial

I was thinking maybe a firmware update, but Samsung isn't listing any yet for the 860 EVO. Maybe look out for when they have one available.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

Did you figure out what the problem was? I am also experiencing these problems with the Samsung 860 EVO and I re-installed the old Hard Drive Disk to see if it was a problem with the cable but now the laptop is stuck on the loading screen and it takes forever to load and then it will restart the loading bar. Which has led me to believe it could be the cable acting up.

Have you found a solution? I am very disappointed that also I cannot make it boot from a external drive on a iMac.

dwb wrote:

Now it is possible your problem is the SATA cable. A flaky SATA cable can work with slow rotational drives but fail to function with fast SSDs - I've seen that happen.

I've heard that claim, but I don't get why that would make a difference. SATA III hard drives communicate with the SATA interface just the same as a SATA SSD. It's purely an electronic front-end, and it's pretty much just loading or reading from the cache and then letting the drive controller do its thing with the cache. Most newer hard drives have a SATA III interface (I verified that in System Report with a WD 7200 RPM drive), and the bits are communicating at the same speeds as an SSD. Hard drive communications might be stalled by the limitations of the physical disks being written/read, but it's communicating at the same speed.

There are a lot of reports of internal cables working fine with a regular drive, failing with a faster drive like an SSD. It's anecdotal, but there is a preponderance of evidence.

The two main proposed failure mechanisms are abrasion against the machined inner surface of the aluminum case, and conductor cracking (especially where the cable gets a strong crease to dive under the drive).

There is a close up of abrasion on a Youtube video by Brue computing, here: [unlike most youTube videos, this one has good camera work and deserves to "on film"]

MacBook Pro Hard Drive Cable Failure - Free fix and preventative maintenance - Question mark - YouTube

I have not seen anyone post a detailed technical analysis, so more information is not forthcoming from these posts. (Maybe on a hobbyist site?) But replacing the cable has solved this exact problem in case after case.