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520 Series SSD Incompatible with Sony Vaio YB Laptop

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Hello,

I am trying to use a 240 GB 520 SSD with a Sony Vaio YB laptop (VPCYB16KG). The two seem to be incompatible.

I cloned the original hard disk (WIndows 7, 32 bit) with a full version of Acronis (the same software as supplied for the SSD). The cloned SSD started to boot, displayed a message that the Intel migration had completed, then hung. Subsequent boots caused various behaviour. It always ran very slow and repeatedly tried to fix the drive, again very slowly. The startup never completed.

I tried to use the Vaio recovery disk (Windows 7, 32 bit), but it could not access the drive. I forget the error displayed, but I searched for it and found some hits, but none provided a resolution.

I tried to do a fresh install of WIndows 7, 64 bit from a Microsoft disk. It failed at the drive format with an error 0x80070057 "Failed to format the selected partition". Again I searched and found hits, but no resolution.

I formatted and tested the SSD on another computer and it was fine. It has since been installed successfully in a Dell laptop, so it doesn't appear to be faulty. The Dell has the smae processor and, I think, the same chipset.

Another person has reported the same experience here. http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony-owners-lounge-forum/552876-official-y-series-11-6-owners-thread... post9055525 Official Y series 11.6 Owners' Thread - Page 44.

Can anyone shed light on our experiences? Has anyone else experienced incompatibility with the 520 series? Does anyone have a possible explanation? Any help would be appreciated.

I can try an SSD from another manufacturer, but I would prefer to understand the problem first. I don't want to spend more money and find the same problem repeated.

Message was edited by: Howard Viccars

7 REPLIES 7

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

Sorry I can't. I don't have a Sony YP.

HDClone worked on my ASUS without having to make the Recovery and Boot Disks which Acronis requires.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I was able to borrow a Crucial M4 256 GB SSD to test. I was able to clone the old hard drive with Acronis and it works fine, so I am going to stick with that.

I'd still be interested to know what the problem was, but I guess that isn't going to happen.

VDrag
New Contributor

I know it's an old topic, but I can confirm a similar incompatibility. I've bought an Intel 535 240GB SSD to speed up a Sony Vaio vpcyb3v1e. The result is extremely slow operation after cloning (clonezilla and acronis true image used - did a few tries) the original HDD. I tried a couple of times to boot but it took about 25-30 min for Win7 to display the desktop, without loading any applications, after that I lost patience. CHKDSK reported problems with the filesystem, but it made no difference fixing them. When trying to perform a clean installation (Win 7 or Win 10 - doesn't matter) there was the error Unable to format the partition on disk 0.

I've tried the disk on a lenovo IdeaPad laptop and I successfully intalled Win 7 without any glitches. I even checked the SSD with Intel Tool Box and the tests said the SSD is fine! I've been using Intel 530 240GB for 2 years on the same IdeaPad laptop fluently, and I'm very pleased with it.

From what I've read above and my own experience I'm pretty sure there is some king of conflict between Intel 520 and 535 series SSD drives and Sony vpcyb**** notebooks - at least two Vaio laptop models are listed here.

I've installed another piece of the same Intel SSD type on a Lenovo x60s laptop, a few days earlier, without any issues.

I hope this post will save someone else's troubles in trying to upgrade his/hers Sony vpcyb**** with an Intel SSD !!!