Dual Hard Drive kit with Samsung Pro 840 256

Well, same here... I installed a Samsung 840 (non-pro) 256GB using the iFixit-cable - the drive was recognized but if I try to create a new partition I get the error message: "Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed", whatever that means...

Now it's a bit unclear to me if I should change the drives in the bays. Even *if* the original 1 TB Apple drive would seem to work with the iFixit cable, shall I trust this drive/cable-combination? Would you?

Merry christmas from Berlin - Matthias

I also have this problem, not from this site, but I bought OWC dual drive kits.

Also I have Samsung SSD 840, not pro. Mac mini doesn't recognize the 840.

Did all kinds of stuff, tried different SSD (OCZ Vertex 2 -> didn't work either), tried different slot, reseated the cable, didn't work.

Because other drives didn't work, I suspect this is problem of cable at the moment.

I wish we could get some confirmation on this from iFixit. It is a bit of an expensive endeavor to find out the real cause of the problem.

In addition to what I've said earlier - I have tried to plug in the two SSDs I have into an earlier model of MacMini (Mid 2011). Still using the cable I bought from iFixit. And everything was functioning properly. So, it is clear that the SSD are functional, and that the cable is functional. What is still unclear is whether the cable is incompatible with late 2012 models, or that the secondary controller on the Mini is faulty.

From what I gather - all of these parts should work with Mid2010 and later models.

I can say that I'm having this exact problem as well, brand new mac mini with two samsung pro 840s, whatever drive is installed on top seems to work perfectly fine, and any drive on the bottom seems compromised, causes disk utility to crash, and when formatted gives the error, "could not mount with name (null) after erase". I'm guessing the way to determine whether it's an issue with the cable itself or with the second sata port on the motherboard is switching the ifixit cable into the first sata port to see if that remedies the situation. I will try this later on today, if not -- what software issue could possibly cause this? It's unlikely that the second sata port on the new mac mini's would be different than the first, and when I contacted ifixit support, they said they were leaning towards this being a software issue....

Bought a cable from OWC and that fixed my problem -- everything working 100 percent now.

Same problem here. Luckily, since I only plan to have 1 Samsung 840 256GB SSD while keeping the original 500GB HD, I did what others have done and relegated the 500GB to the secondary slot. It works fine now.

Hi,

I had a pre-formatted Samsung 830 drive that I added to my late 2012 mini. I added it in the 2nd bay, next to the stock hard disk, using the cable part referenced in one of the posts above. It was detected without an issue and has so far worked well, present when the mini woke from sleep. I will submit it to some endurance testing, running a VM off the disk for a couple of days and post an update here.

I have exactly the same hardware, Mac Mini late 2012 and two Samsung 840 Pro SSDs and having problems too.

I got my SSDs installed fine and they're seen by Finder and Disk Utility but I can't use the other one. The system SSD works just fine but the other SSD can't be written to, because it causes errors all the time. Disk Utility shows that it produces a lot of UltraDMA CRC Errors whereas the system SSD has no errors at all.

Then I installed the original 1TB Apple disk as the other disk and it works just fine. So, SSD + HDD = works fine. SSD + SSD = Only one disk works.

Update: my setup is still working. Also replaced stock hard drive with ssd so now running a dual ssd setup.

I ran into the cable issue, too. Switching the drives and cables made it work, now. When I read the trouble some of you had, I thought that I had a different issue I had.

I just updated the Mac Mini 2012 i7 2,3 Ghz. I wanted to add the Samsung 840 Pro to the existing 1TB drive and have Windows 8 on the SSD via bootcamp and Mac OS on the original drive. Adding the SSD as additional drive with the ifixit cable worked well at first, but I was not able to get Windows or Mac OS to boot from the SSD, no matter what. Windows started installation alright, but could never survive the first reboot in install. For Windows 7 and 8 it showed "Disk Read Error". I tried all kinds of partitionings, I tried copying Mac OS via CCC - nothing was able to boot. The SSD worked fine and I got no errors other than when trying to make it bootable.

When I switched the drives, so that the Apple HD used the new cable and the SSD the old one, I was able to install and boot from Windows just fine. Booting into Mac OS from the original drive works as well.

Greetings from Bavaria!

I had similar issues as others in this thread when yesterday I added a Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD into the upper bay of a late-2012 (i5 model) Mac Mini. The SATA cable supplied with the iFixit kit (purchased 11/2012) caused issues when trying to install OS X. I could see the SSD drive in Disk Utility, but the OS X install would have errors or if it did complete, I wasn't able to boot to the drive. I always got a white screen with a circle and slash through it which means the system couldn't find a bootable drive with an OS.

After reading this thread, I switched the drives and put the stock 500GB HDD in the upper bay (using iFixit SATA cable) and the Samsung SSD in the lower bay. All worked correctly using the Apple SATA cable in the lower bay with the Samsung.

Previously, I had an Intel 520 Series SSD in the upper bay using the iFixit SATA cable and it was compatible and worked with no issues. So, it appeears the cable isn't compatible with Samsung drives.

I don't know if iFixit has started supplying a different SATA cable with their Dual Drive Kit since my purchase.

My computer has had problems with freezing after sleep, then reboot, some corrupting data, tried all fixes known.

I have just found that I have racked up 163600 UltraDMA CRC errors on my Samsung 840 SSD in a short time, using the dual cable. Followed the instructions to keep HDD in original place.

First tried to reset the small connector, but the counter continued to increase. Did not reset the large connector. Instead I did a disc swap and the problem went away for the SSD using the original cable. Have no UltraDMA CRC error counter for the HDD thou...

I just received my Dual kit for my mac mini 2012. I installed the kit per direction provided on here and after completing the transplant ( original 1TB on top and my 500 GB - 820 Evo on the lower ) I power on the unit and it booted up to the apple white screen and the circle icon with a slash in the middle. I read this topic on here before and decided to do it the way they explain it on FIXIT. Well I went back and switched the cable as per several other on here ( The original Hard drive is now using the provided cable by FIxit and the the 820 Evo is using the apple cable ) and it booted up like it should - I went ahead and checked disk utility and everything seems in order.