Secure erase on Samsung SSD (EVO 840, 120gb)

[jaejoonn]

Hello all.

I've been trying to run secure erase on Samsung Evo 840 SSD 120gb from Dell's laptop.

I bumped into the frozen state drive issue, which I made it through with the help of this website.

But I got into another problem, that is, the erasing process stops in the middle with the error message saying 'unable to set the password. try again'

After that message, it exits out to Dos. I re-did the process from the beginning for many times but I always go back to the same problem.

I've tried to look up the solution but I couldn't find one.

Does anyone have any idea for solving this issue?

 

[Coup27]

What's the full model number of the laptop?

Is the 840 EVO a retail unit or an OEM model shipped with the laptop?

Did you use the latest version of Magician, v4.6 to create the secure erase CD/USB?

 

[jaejoonn]

What's the full model number of the laptop?

Is the 840 EVO a retail unit or an OEM model shipped with the laptop?

Did you use the latest version of Magician, v4.6 to create the secure erase CD/USB?

Yes it is the latest version of magician. Laptop is Latitude E6330 of Dell and it's OEM, not retail.

 

[Coup27]

Reading the Magician v4.6 guide it mentions a couple of things which may be the problem:

● Magician will not work on SSDs that are locked with a user password.

● RAID on mode in SATA configuration is not supported by Samsung magician and DOS application.

● While making a DOS bootable solution for Secure Erase or Firmware Update, please make sure the Device Manager window is closed.

● AHCI or ATA mode must be enabled in the BIOS during PC boot up.

● The DOS Utility may hang if the SSD is removed on PCs that do not support the hot plug feature (e.g. ICH5/6 chipsets).

● The DOS Utility will not work with devices attached via SATA 6Gbps (SATA III) operating in IDE mode.


Are you falling foul of any of these? Is hot plugging enabled (if possible)? If none of those help then it is likely this last nugget from the user guide:

● Magician is designed specifically for Samsung-branded SSDs. SSD-specific features like Firmware Update, Disk Health Status, Secure Erase, and Total Bytes Written are not supported for non-Samsung SSDs.

While this is still a Samsung SSD it may not be classed as a "Samsung-branded" SSD as it is an OEM model. You could email Samsung to confirm this or ask their opinion on this thread if you still cannot get it to work.

It's also worth mentioning that I do not think you have an 840 EVO in this laptop. According to the Dell driver download page for your laptop (expand the serial ATA tree) the only Samsung SSD which made it into this model was the PM830 which is the OEM version of the 830. Source

 

[jaejoonn]

Thank you for your help. I've confirmed the SSD is 840 EVO. I took the SSD out of laptop by myself and confirmed it.

Fortunately the program worked. I relocated SSD into desktop and ran Magician program. It worked out perfectly.

I think there was issue with user password on laptop. I couldn't troubleshoot at that time though.

If I get another chance, I'll troubleshoot according to your information. Thank you.