Toshiba stuck at logo with new SSD installed

[nicholson3t]

My mother has a Toshiba E55-A5114, which I am trying to replace the hard drive with SSD. With the SSD connected, I can load to BIOS setup and see that the SSD drive is detected, but it will not load anything else past the Toshiba "Leading Innovation" logo screen.

If I reconnect the original hard drive, everything loads as expected. If I start the laptop without a hard drive connected at all, I can boot to a Windows installation USB drive, but without a drive to install Windows on.

I've also tried cloning the original hard drive to the SSD, but the laptop still will not boot past the Toshiba logo screen when the SSD is connected. The SSD drive itself seems to work just fine. I was able to use it as the system drive in a few other computers without issues

 

[Saga Lout]

I can't quite get paragraph 2 after reading that the SSD shows up in BIOS. The best shot at cloning would be from the existing disk in place on to the SSD as a USB add-on. EaseUS is my cloning utility of choice.

A 2.5" caddy with a three ended USB cable should be very cheap on e-Bay.

 

[nicholson3t]

What I mean is that with the SSD installed in the laptop, the BIOS displays the name of the new SSD on the "HDD/SDD" line, so it appears that the motherboard is correctly recognizing the SSD. The laptop itself has only a single SATA connector. Since the laptop will not load past the logo screen when the new SSD connected to the SATA connector, I cloned the drive with the SSD drive in an external USB enclosure. However, when I removed the original hard drive and connected the SSD to the SATA connector, the computer would still not get past the logo screen.

As I mentioned before, I can boot to a USB Windows installer with no drive connected to the SATA connector, but if I connect anything other than the original hard drive to the SATA connector, it stops at the Toshiba logo screen.

The only thing the computer will allow me to do when I attempt to connect any other drive to the SATA connector is enter BIOS setup. It seems like Toshiba might have locked these laptops down to not work with anything other than the original hard drive. I've tried suggestions I've read elsewhere to disable Secure Boot and switching boot mode from UEFI to CSM, but neither of those changes have made a difference either.

 

[Saga Lout]

In the BIOS is Legacy an option? It's a safe bet if all else fails. I wouldn't put it past Toshiba to do that. They're the outfit that used to password BIOS without providing the secret word to their customers

 

[nicholson3t]

There isn't a legacy option in this laptop's BIOS. After further troubleshooting, it appears that the Toshiba motherboard may only be allowing certain recognizable brand named drives to be used.

The SSD that I'm trying to use now is from a company called Drevo. The Toshiba laptop also got stuck on the logo screen when I tried connecting the SSD that I've been using in my 2009 Dell laptop for the past few years which is from a company called KingDian. I just found the original Seagate hard drive from my Dell laptop, and was able to install Windows 10 on it from a USB drive with no issues.


The Seagate hdd is 500GB smaller than the Toshiba drive, but the computer is running much better now. The Toshiba drive was causing the computer to stop responding for minutes at a time showing 100% disk utilization even after a clean install, but the Seagate drive has remained a consistent 3 to 6% disk utilization and the computer hasn't slowed down at all.

 

[Saga Lout]

Well done you. Was the Toshiba drive one of their own or a HGST? They had high failures a way back when Hitachi ran the show but they've improved under Western Digital.

 

[nicholson3t]

The Toshiba drive has a Toshiba label. It looks like the model number is MQ01ABD075 with a manufacture date in 2014.

 

[Saga Lout]

I've seen and replaced so many four year-old HDDs this year so far. I'd have to get the accurate figure from my accounts but I reckon I've replace 25 at least.

It's getting to be similar to a well-known motor manufacturer in Britain in the 1970s. It was dubbed "Planned Obsolescence" and the idea was to force folks buy a new car every four years by making the old one fall to bits.