Hello again,
I'm pleased to report that it 'seems' that the problem might have been solved.
I was really annoyed with the issue, so i thought i do some trial and error myself.
Note: I used to work for Toshiba in the past as a H/W technician with a little training for laptop repairs,
so i'm pretty much confident (and learned the hard way to be very thorough) when it comes to
taking care of PC H/W, especially laptops.
Note: You will need a little bit of basic H/W knowledge to do this. If you can't or don't want to, for any reason,
you can always contact a certified engineer to do this for you. Nobody who is not authorised or does not
have the expertise should NEVER mess around with H/W. Especially laptops, since the H/W is much more
delicate and much easier to damage if you are not careful and don't know what you're doing. Even by misplacing
a screw into a different hole (than it was) you might risk damaging the board! Or simply by bending a very
thin and tiny cable the wrong way.
So, initially, i tried to fix the issue by removing the SATA disk entirely and leaving only the SSD, did a clean
Win7 install but right at the next reboot, got the same message. Disk was gone!
Tried several restarts, power off's and on's but with no change.
SSD would be 'invisible" most of the time (confirmed in BIOS) and therefore laptop had no disk, so it simply did not work!
Strangely though, when i booted the Win 7 installation, i could always see the SSD in the setup.
Anyways, I tried to swap the ports, just to see if it would make any difference (normally shouldn't).
In other words, i took out the SSD from its existing Port and placed it in the other one.
To my suprise, it seems that when the SSD is attached to the Port 0 1st port (as seen in BIOS) it will work (be detected always).
See attached pictures from BIOS screen shots.
At first, i simply attached the SSD to the other Port and left the extra drive bay empty.
Did a Win 7 installation, and it seemed to have completed successfully without any issues
(after a few reboots i was at the logon screen).
Then, just to make sure, I shut down the laptop, re-installed the SATA disk to the remaining Port (Port 1 as seen in BIOS) and tried
to re-run a Win 7 clean installation on the SSD. Again, it worked just fine, and then again after some reboots i was at the logon screen.
Now, i have been restarting, powering off and on the laptop for some time now (approx. 30 minutes) and i haven't got not even once
the 'not detected' issue as before. It could of course be just a matter of luck, or just happens to work now.
I will continue to test and confirm back in 1-2 days if all is good.
But it seems as though, the G53SW-A1 (exact model i own), will always try to boot the 1st SATA port. (Port 0 in BIOS).
Also, if you have 2 drives like myself, 1 SSD and 1 SATA, you will also need to go to the Boot Order Section in BIOS (see additional pics)
and set your SSD as 1st Boot Option, then the 2nd Boot option will auto-set to the internal DVD drive.
Finally, you should go to the 'Hard Drive BBS Properties" on the same page were you set the SSD as 1st, and Set as well the
Boot Option #1 to the SSD (will be seen as P0: Samsung SSD etc or your own SSD), and then set Boot Option #2 to your other SATA
drive, seen as P1: STXXXXXXXX (in my case). Obviously, the P0 and P1 stands for PORT 0 and PORT 1, where the laptop always tried to boot from the P0 drive.
Now just in case you are wondering which PORT is which (physically), the PORT 0 bay (as seen if you open and flip your laptop) the PORT 0 is the one which is in the middle (more or less). The one on the side is PORT 1. In other words, the slot directly below the touchpad is PORT 0.
I hope i did not bore you much. I just wanted to be thorough as possible.
Hope all you G53SW owners enjoy!
P.S. In case all of this is just temporary and i might have issues again, i will reply again to this post, with updates,
so you may want to wait a while before doing anything.
Still proud owner of the G53SW!
I'm pleased to report that it 'seems' that the problem might have been solved.
I was really annoyed with the issue, so i thought i do some trial and error myself.
Note: I used to work for Toshiba in the past as a H/W technician with a little training for laptop repairs,
so i'm pretty much confident (and learned the hard way to be very thorough) when it comes to
taking care of PC H/W, especially laptops.
Note: You will need a little bit of basic H/W knowledge to do this. If you can't or don't want to, for any reason,
you can always contact a certified engineer to do this for you. Nobody who is not authorised or does not
have the expertise should NEVER mess around with H/W. Especially laptops, since the H/W is much more
delicate and much easier to damage if you are not careful and don't know what you're doing. Even by misplacing
a screw into a different hole (than it was) you might risk damaging the board! Or simply by bending a very
thin and tiny cable the wrong way.
So, initially, i tried to fix the issue by removing the SATA disk entirely and leaving only the SSD, did a clean
Win7 install but right at the next reboot, got the same message. Disk was gone!
Tried several restarts, power off's and on's but with no change.
SSD would be 'invisible" most of the time (confirmed in BIOS) and therefore laptop had no disk, so it simply did not work!
Strangely though, when i booted the Win 7 installation, i could always see the SSD in the setup.
Anyways, I tried to swap the ports, just to see if it would make any difference (normally shouldn't).
In other words, i took out the SSD from its existing Port and placed it in the other one.
To my suprise, it seems that when the SSD is attached to the Port 0 1st port (as seen in BIOS) it will work (be detected always).
See attached pictures from BIOS screen shots.
At first, i simply attached the SSD to the other Port and left the extra drive bay empty.
Did a Win 7 installation, and it seemed to have completed successfully without any issues
(after a few reboots i was at the logon screen).
Then, just to make sure, I shut down the laptop, re-installed the SATA disk to the remaining Port (Port 1 as seen in BIOS) and tried
to re-run a Win 7 clean installation on the SSD. Again, it worked just fine, and then again after some reboots i was at the logon screen.
Now, i have been restarting, powering off and on the laptop for some time now (approx. 30 minutes) and i haven't got not even once
the 'not detected' issue as before. It could of course be just a matter of luck, or just happens to work now.
I will continue to test and confirm back in 1-2 days if all is good.
But it seems as though, the G53SW-A1 (exact model i own), will always try to boot the 1st SATA port. (Port 0 in BIOS).
Also, if you have 2 drives like myself, 1 SSD and 1 SATA, you will also need to go to the Boot Order Section in BIOS (see additional pics)
and set your SSD as 1st Boot Option, then the 2nd Boot option will auto-set to the internal DVD drive.
Finally, you should go to the 'Hard Drive BBS Properties" on the same page were you set the SSD as 1st, and Set as well the
Boot Option #1 to the SSD (will be seen as P0: Samsung SSD etc or your own SSD), and then set Boot Option #2 to your other SATA
drive, seen as P1: STXXXXXXXX (in my case). Obviously, the P0 and P1 stands for PORT 0 and PORT 1, where the laptop always tried to boot from the P0 drive.
Now just in case you are wondering which PORT is which (physically), the PORT 0 bay (as seen if you open and flip your laptop) the PORT 0 is the one which is in the middle (more or less). The one on the side is PORT 1. In other words, the slot directly below the touchpad is PORT 0.
I hope i did not bore you much. I just wanted to be thorough as possible.
Hope all you G53SW owners enjoy!
P.S. In case all of this is just temporary and i might have issues again, i will reply again to this post, with updates,
so you may want to wait a while before doing anything.
Still proud owner of the G53SW!
