Well, I lost one...

Lost a tussle with a Toshiba L455-s5009 today. Machine came in with an HDD which was on it's last cruise, but still able to be cloned. So, the chosen replacement was a Kingston 240GB KC300 SSD.

Drive was cloned, but failed to boot period when the drive was set to AHCI. Set the drive to operate under the compatibility setting, and in the number one, or number two position in the boot order the PC would not recognize the drive. If it was left as the sixth boot device, the OS would boot about six times out of ten after the PXE-ROM failed to connect. If the onboard LAN was disabled, the machine would fail to recognize the drive.

Booted PC-Doctor more than once, and it picked up the drive every time.

All the drivers were fully updated, as was the BIOS to all the latest versions. Still no joy. Just in case there was any corruption of the clone, a fresh install of Windows was attempted, and the machine yet again failed to recognize the SSD or boot to the OS, eliminating the OS as far as any culpability. Even ran bootrec under multiple switches. No joy.

I blame Toshiba...

 

Try changing the PCIe lanes in the BIOS?

 

Unfortunately not an available option. BIOS extremely limited.

Plus, drive is on a SATA channel...

 

The L455 are evil.

BIOS update, reboot, then CMOS reset with the Kingston connected?

 

Yes ma'am.

The machine simply refused to run this SSD. I didn't unpack the BIOS, and I doubt I ever will. I'm taking a WAG here and thinking that the BIOS could not deal with the drive's controller. However, I really don't think it's worth a look. It literally would not boot under AHCI.

 

We see that a lot at work actually (Work = SSD tech support). Drives both us and our customers crazy to verify with a long string of brands using different controllers that they all work... except the ones we can provide as warranty replacements. If we can refund these customers, we do. Obviously. But if that's not an option, they're SOL. If the controller and the motherboard don't understand each other, there is nothing anyone can do about that. Other than to give up and get an SSD with another controller...