Should my Aspire-a515-55-31v3 accept a 2tb samsung 870 QVO ssd?

The laptop comes equipped with a 250Gb NVMe.
I try to upgrade it with the 2tb ssd via a flat cable to the connector under the wifi board (as various youtube tutorials for various A515-xx models show).
When the ssd is connected, and I reconnect power, I get a blip from the power indicater led (as always) - then nothing. No fan spinup, no bios acces, no reaction to any keys or buttons.
Booting without NVMe or ssd leads to "no bootable disc" screen, predictably.
Booting withfrom ssd only: dead!. Only black screen, not even backlit.
Whats happening?

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Commodore_1995#

Hi! What is the bios version? Is sata mode set to RST WITH OPTANE or AHCI?

Schulzss

Thank you for taking an interest!
Bios version: 1.13
Sata mode: "Optane without RAID"
Boot mode: uefi

ttttt

@Schulzss

Is the 2 TB SSD also bootable?

Schulzss

So far the SSD is brand new, as I have not been able to connect it to anything since I took it out of the box, I only have access to the a515 that just black out whenever I connect the ssd. I guess the ssd needs to be formattet once it is recognized by the laptop/windows.

I found the hidden AHCI menu in the bios (you had to type "CTRL+S" for the option to appear). Activating AHCI let the a515 get one step closer to startup - at least now it react to the start button. It immediately goes into some failure recovery mode though.

ttttt

@Schulzss

Do you have another PC you can test the SSD with? Even if the 2TB SSD is not initialized, it should not give you a black screen.

I suspect the SSD is faulty.

Commodore_1995#

I found the hidden AHCI menu in the bios (you had to type "CTRL+S" for the option to appear). Activating AHCI let the a515 get one step closer to startup - at least now it react to the start button. It immediately goes into some failure recovery mode though.

OK! Do it:

a) disconnect the 870 qvo and then start windows;

b) press windows+r and type msconfig;

c) go to system boot and activate safeboot;

d) restart windows;

e) windows will enter safe mode;

f) go to power options and disable fast startup;

g) restart windows, access the bios and change the sata mode to ahci;

h) turn off the computer and reconnect the 870 qvo.

Schulzss

It was a faulty connector cable.
The cable finally fried completely in a puff of smoke. By a miracle both motherboard and disk survived unharmed.
I found a new connector and after that, the hardest thing was to find disk manager in windows. Thank you for your time :-)

So to answer my own question: Yes, an Aspire-a515-55 will accept a 2tb ssd - provided you use a funktioning cable.

ttttt

@Schulzss

Glad that you have the issue sorted out. Thanks for reporting back.

Was it the connector is bad or the cable?

Schulzss

Since both laptop and disc is fine afterwards, I solely blame the cable.
The cable is a flat plastic strip inlaid with visible copper (or whatever) lanes. One end is equipped with a sata "plug", the other is free.
My guess is that the sata plug was sligtly misaligned with the cable, thereby shorting some of the conductive lanes of the cable.

I had misplaced the original cable (along with the hdd tray), and purchased a replacement cable at a repair-shop. As I returned the ruined replacement cable at the shop and got a refund, they admitted to have purchased it on ali-express...

After a thorough search, I found the original cable, incl. hdd tray and bolts, and everything turned out peachy :-) Beware of parts off ali-express :-)

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