XPS 8700 trying to install Samsung 840 EVO

Hi Tanroop,

You're not providing much information. Installing an SSD as what? System drive, extra storage, or what? The computer is not recognizing it where? In the BIOS? Did you disable secure boot?

Tanroop:

Definitely more information is needed in order to help you. However, if you're trying to install a Samsung SSD and make it a boot drive, follow the instruction here...I made a post earlier on this:

k. I just completed SAMSUNG EVO 500GB on a dell XPS 8700, win 8.1. Here's how I did it.

(system spec: xps 8700 special edition, 16GB RAm, 2TB HDD, 32GB MSATA, win 8.1).

First....perform backup  or create restore disks. Use dell provided s/w or any other means you prefer.

shutdown the PC, connect the 500GB SSD in any open sata connector with a sata III cable. Don't touch original HDD that came with computer.

Boot your PC back up on the original HDD. Install Samsung data migration software. Run Samsung data migration software.

Ensure you select the C: partition on your original HDD as source, then SAMSUNG EVO as your target. Make sure the cloning is successful to 100%.

Shutdown your PC.

You need to disconnect original HDD from SATA 0. Connect the 500GB SSD on SATA 0. SATA 0 should be the cable where you disconnected the original HDD from. So, only the SSD should be connected now.

Power up your PC and keep hitting F2 (or DEL) to take you to BIOS setup. From BIOS, go to Advanced option, built-in controller settings and then SATA settings. The wordings might be different for your own DEll desktop. Change the SATA mode from "RAID" to "AHCI". F10 to save and reboot. You should now be able to boot successfully from your Samsung SSD.  Once you're back up in windows, install and run the Samsung other software that allows you to optimize your windows installation to run on SSD. Reconnect your original drive and configure as secondary drive. This is the point where I am with my newly purchased Dell XPS.

My final advice: Do not format the original HDD yet. Wait for a few weeks and make sure your SSD install is stable  and then you can format just the C: partition on the HDD. No need to mess with smaller partitions for drivers, etc that Dell created.

Hope this helps!

C102690

Glad to know you had a successful install and my post was helpful.

I learned a lot from other people's posts and it's logical I share my experience hoping others benefit from it.

Goodluck!

Your info was helpful as far as knowledge about what to do.  I had my OS hard drive fail about 12 days ago, at least it was giving me a code that ended 0142 and when it was looked up online it said hard drive failure.  So I removed it but for my work I need to run premiere pro, photoshop and lightroom.  My computer is a few years old - Xps 8300, 8 gb ram - so I took an hdd out of my previously dead Dell Vostro 400 (motherboard failure 2011) and installed that into the 0 sata slot.  I had read somewhere online that the recovery discs would be insufficient so I went on ebay and bought the same Windows 7 home premium (fighting win 8 as long as I can) 64 bit disc but turns out the recovery discs worked perfectly fine.  I ordered a 250 gb Samsung 850 Evo and just installed it.  I did have a secondary hard drive in the 1 slot, and now added the old Vostro 500gb drive to the 4 slot, 3 slot is the dvd. 

The SDD installed the recovery discs in a fraction of the time it took the Western Dig 500gb hd to do it.   

Oddly enough I had just bought an IO magic sata drive enclosure and the original 1.5 tb hdd works just fine.  Go figure.  Either way though I've learned a bit about working with the hardware and now I have a faster puter with the new drive and best of all no loss of data. 

Thanks for having this info available, found via google.  Though I didn't do the install as you outlined I did disconnect the other drives and will reconnect after the software and drivers are added. 

Cheers.

Well it was much appreciated and I do have a semi-question, more curiosity than anything.  No matter what I do the Sandy Bridge Graphics Rev: A02 driver will not install.  It simple says each time - 'This computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing the software.'  I couldn't actually find what those requirements were (I've since found them online) and thought maybe the hard drive had to be more than 250 gb so I changed it back to the 500gb drive and tried that but the same message came up.  Photoshop CC wouldn't run since installing the SDD, even with the Catalyst Control Center from AMD removed.  However, whatever I did now it does work so I'm fine but not being able to install the sandy bridge driver is perplexing, particularly for a guy with limited computer knowledge.  

After searching online I found a computer forum where a couple guys had a similar problem but they had built their computers and they blamed it on bad motherboards.  I found on the Dell forum that initially there were some problems,  a recall, on the motherboard so I downloaded a program CPU-Z and found my board is the B3 version, up to date.  One oddity from the CPU-Z report is the graphics card they show is an AMD HD 5770, I have the HD 6770.  I deleted the driver right from the device mgr and reinstalled the 6770 driver from the Dell Resource cd and it still shows the wrong graphics card but perhaps that is an error on CPU-Z.  The graphics card looks like other 6770's I've seen online and the dell box says it's a 6770 and the device mgr calls it a 6770. 

Initially I enabled the Intel Multiple Monitor feature in System Settings/F2 at boot and then changed it back to disable and either way Sandy driver wouldn't install. 

Now that photoshop is working I am not concerned that Sandy Bridge won't be available.  I ran diagnostics, the long version, and it came back good for everything.  Again, I don't think I will miss it, not sure how much it helps and in the end the SDD itself really reduced rendering time in Premiere Pro from an expected 2+ hours for a 12 minute video (I have a model website) to no more than 25 minutes, though I didn't have many demanding edits in the vid.

If you do know how to get the driver to work that would be helpful but at the same time I'm pretty much done with all of this hardware/software computer stuff for now.  I have to get back to work.

Cheers.