Hard Drive Not Installed Correctly

Question

Dell 7586 '2 in 1', Windows 10 Pro, Samsung 970 Pro 1TB M.2 drive (upgraded the 512GB that came with, cloned original to 970 Pro), 32GB Ram. Power settings are set to 'never sleep', hard drive, screen, etc., are set to always on. Screensaver set to come on after 90 minutes of inactivity. If the system is idle for a couple of hours it will shut down on its own. Sometimes it will go to the initial pre-boot diagnostic screen, other times I have to turn it on. When the machine boots, sometimes Dell Support Assistance will run without prompting. The hardware test will show an error similar to 'the hard drive is not installed correctly'. If I run all the tests, it says there are no problems found, hard drive shows as passed. BIOS is set to all factory defaults.  Machine seems to be running fine besides this. Any thoughts?

Clintlgm · Accepted Answer

I'm not familiar with the Vision tec dock, I took a big leap and got the Dell 15 dock, With this 7386 I only have two ports a C port Gen 1 with display port and a regular 3.1 gen 1. My experience is only with LAN, 3 external hard drives and wireless Logitech button. All connected through that USB C port I had no problem booting my Macrium Recovery USB thumb drive, I was able to move the supplied 512 GB SSD to the 2nd SSD port install 1TB 970 EVO clone, then clean and format the 512gb as a data storage drive.

I also have run several large data transfers between External hard drives and between the SSD on board and External hard drive. I ran several of these test transfer or mixed data around between drives with no failures or lockup. So I'm happy with this Dock.

For better mobility, I am using a 7 port USB 3.0 hub, Atollo brand with 4 amp power supply I have it plugged into the Standard-A type USB 3.1 Gen 1, I have connected fan power for my laptop cooler and Logitech button for mouse and keyboard LAN, 1 4tb WD Passport for backups. I also ran the same data transfers by adding two other external drives and ran 125GB mixed file transfers between the three drives with no hiccups. I also ran that same file set and added a external Samsung 850 pro 1TB and ran a cryatalDiskmard benchmark as I knew this SSD on this notebook would bench at 500GBS read and 450GBs Write speeds, this stay the same under the load of the 125 GB Transfer all at the same time without anything dropping off or even slowing down. and then just to see I stuck in my Macrium Reflect USB recovery drive an booted to the Macrium Reflect recover mode with no issues.

My first try with USB hubs on this 7386 was with an Anker 7 port it fails totally and I had to return it to Amazon, I was surprised since I have had great success with Anker previously, in fact, I did hook up my old 4 port Anker and it works perfectly with all 4 port running everything I threw at it Still 4 port just is not enough for this notebook.

I am able to do just about everything I did on m 17" Asus G752 with this 13 7386 and I am way more mobile.

On Dell Tech support, my experience which isn't a lot yet. As soon as i see that the tech I'm speaking with or chatting with is not switch on. I say good by and call back in for another person. I have found some are very switched on. All are better than what we are getting from Asus. Which is the reason you all are finding me here in the Dell support forum

KaoDome · Answer

Which version of Acronis did you use? Was it an old one? (And was it WinPE based or Linux based?) The issue you had about it not seeing the Samsung drive could be related to the config you had for storage interfaces in the BIOS too. It's of no use this time but maybe for another occasion.

As for the auto shutdown... could it be some Dell software component the one messing with the power settings? Is there any relevant error in the Event Viewer (under Windows Logs -> System) at a time it shuts down?

DCELL · Answer

Did have problems with the Samsung. Using Acronis tried to do the clone after installing Samsung. Acronis would not see the drive-even though it showed up in the BIOS, etc. Long story short, took it back out and used another program to do the clone with the Samsung in a external bay. Honestly don't remember all the steps I used to finally get it working, it was a long night with a lot of research and steps.

Clintlgm · Answer

I would turn off fast boot in your BIOS and Fast Start in Windows. Check your power profile setting including Advance settings.

Check what happens when closing the lid

Check what happens when you press the shut down button

There is also a setting using GPEDIT to turn off Hybrid Shutdown.

I have no idea why you are getting the error message Hard Drive is not installed correctly. If you cloned the entire 512GB to the 1TB 970 and you physically installed the 970 correctly there shouldn't be an issue.

I have just upgraded my 512GB off brand SSD to Samsung 1TB 970 Evo and then put the 512 GB back in after Cleaning it with Minitool Partition Wizard. No issues did you experience any issues installing the 970?

DCELL · Answer

The newest version, PE based. I did research and act accordingly with the BIOS.

Clintlgm · Answer

Yea that's why I quit using Acronis back in 2012 or so, they just never did figure out how to deal with UEFI/GPT. Been using Macrium Reflect ever since I never have had a failure to create or restore or clone. When I cloned I did nothing with the BIOS, Just booted my recovery USB in UEFI mode and cloned, shut down removed the 512GB and put it in an external case and removed all partitions the created a GPT NTFS volume and reinstalled it in my 7386 2nd SSD slot, the whole operation took all of 30 minutes.

DCELL · Answer

Just for S&G's I took a VisionTek 7000 dock out of the mix completely. Previously, the monitor was plugged into the dock, dock to laptop. Ethernet cable & Logitech all in one fob plugged into the dock.  Now I have an ethernet adapter, monitor via HDMI and the Logitech fob all plugged directly into the laptop-no hubs. No issues since. Honestly, I don't remember if I had tried this or not before posting here. As far as during the cloning & initial set-up, it was NOT in the mix.  I don't think it should have been an issue, what do ya'll think?  I won't bad mouth Dell tech support other than to say they were not helpful.

DCELL · Answer

System restarted as before, with the 'hard drive not installed correctly' message, after about 36 hours of system being on. System was idle for a couple of hours except the screensaver. Fan was running very fast when system shutdown.  I've come across another 1TB 970 Pro M2. I have an unused Windows 10 Pro license. I'm tempted to pull the 970 in this system, put the new 970 in and do a fresh/clean install with no Dell software or drivers-except what's required for the system to run. I saw your suggestion here https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron/Bad-Hard-drive-in-Inspiron-5567-How-to-restore-to-new-drive/m-p/7243686#M48100 . If I go with the default settings in the BIOS do you think it will go smoothly? If I remember correctly, as far as the BIOS and loading defaults, there were 3 choices. Load defaults, load defaults from factory and load custom settings.  One of those settings out of the box was Raid...

Clintlgm · Answer

yes, the best I can tell is that Dell us using the IRST driver at least for units shipped with SSD. Asus does the same. I'm not sure why but I suspect that the IRST driver will work with any brand or model SSD. My experience is that there is no difference other than on a clean install you do have to load the IRST driver to install windows. I have run systems with both the IRST driver and Standard windows native NVME driver. performance wise there is no difference. Also, using the Samsung NVME has shown me no performance improvement.

Your BIOS and Windows have to match up. I Believe all notebooks ship now UEFI/GPT, Legacy BIOS/MBR is just that legacy.

So yes your BIOS needs to be set up for UEFI, your SATA settings need to be either AHCI and install windows with the native windows NVME Driver or RAID and then you'll have to install the IRST driver at the beginning of the install process.

However you set up AHCI or RAID you'll need to boot your install USB in UEFI mode, this is done by after pressing the start button spam the f12 key, this brings up a boot menu and selects UEFI USB

I don't know where you are with your 970 if all data is lost anyway, then I would just start another Clean install once the install window load hit Shift And F10 this will bring up a Command prompt, I would use diskpart to clean the 970

Type Diskpart, then enter

type list disk

Select disk {your 970}

Clean

exit

select the volume to install windows to and install windows.

Install Chipset drivers

Install Intel IO driver

Install Intel IME driver

Install "Dell Command update" run dell command update and it will tell you which drivers you actually need to install for your particular notebook

If you still have data to save on your 970, you could try to save it by the method of how to change from RAID to AHCI without losing data. There might be information in this tutorial that could get up and running again.

Inspiron

Hard Drive Not Installed Correctly

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