"Why I Will Never Buy a Hard Drive Again"

On 9/13/2018 7:56 PM, Paul wrote:
Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 9/12/2018 9:16 PM, Paul wrote:
Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 9/1/2018 8:36 PM, Ed Light wrote:
On 8/15/2018 12:04 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

However, my office pc will not address the 8 TB internal drive.
It will address the 4 TB internal drive though.* So, my conclusion
is that my 5 year old Gigabyte Z68XP motherboard cannot address
the 8 TB drive.

Maybe a bios update. Also, for some brands, tech support is
helpful. For one board, Gigabyte spun me a new bios. But for
another they said get a more expensive board, even though included
bios settings didn't work.

I updated to the last BIOS released.* The mb is old, six years now.

Lynn


Is this a 4Kn drive ?

Get the model number off the drive label.

*** Paul

WD model WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 with the white label.* I am not sure but
I'll bet that it is a 4KB sector drive.

Lynn


OK, the good news is, you don't need a new motherboard
or endless BIOS updates.

Your drive has the "3.3V reset" feature.

"The Pesky PWDIS Feature In Newer SATA Specs"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hd...ure,36146.html

** "...the existence of the power disable (PWDIS) feature in HDDs
*** that follow the newer SATA 3.3 (announced on February 16, 2016)
*** and SATA 3.2+ specifications."

** "This means that if you combine a PSU with the older SATA connectors,
*** featuring 3.3V at P3, and a new HDD that supports the power disable
*** feature, the HDD won't ever start because it will see a continuous
*** high-state signal on P3. It will get stuck in a hard reset condition,
*** which will prevent the HDD from spinning up."

Translated into English, the SATA power is like this. Note, I didn't
look up the pinout, and just wanted to capture the "five by three" nature
of the pinout. SATA has three power rails, and enough ground connections
for the device to use any two rails if it wanted.

** 3.3V
** 3.3V
** 3.3V** === Not used on 3.5", but if 3.3V is present here, is a
RESET signal
** GND
** GND
** GND
** 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
** 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
** 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
** GND
** GND
** GND
** 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power
** 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power
** 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power

When you look in your PC, the ATX supply has five wires
feeding the 15 pin SATA power. That means your ATX is equipped
to power *any* storage device with SATA interface. Or, that's
what they thought years ago. They thought at the time, that
putting 3.3V on there was a good idea.

Hardly any storage devices use 3.3V today. There were some
1.8" SSDs with microSATA, which were powered by 3.3V, but
that has died out.

2.5" SSDs (i.e. for laptops) would use 5V.

OK, now consider the lowly Molex to SATA adapter cable.

************ X \
************ X* \___ pins not connected, perfect for your drive!!!
************ X* /
Molex* GND** GND
************ GND
************ GND
* red* 5V*** 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
************ 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
************ 5.0V** 3.5" logic board power
black* GND** GND
************ GND
************ GND
yellow 12V** 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power
************ 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power
************ 12V*** 3.5" drive motor power

Since a Molex doesn't have a 3.3V wire, there's no
way for PWDIS to be triggered if you use one of these
adapter wires.

While you can cut the 3.3V wire with side cutters,
on the feed from the ATX, that's a little bit harsh,
and there's always a danger the cut end could short
out to something in the PC and cause damage.

Try an adapter cable and it should start right up.

** Paul

Well, I tried the intertubes trick, "The Pesky PWDIS Feature In Newer
SATA Specs", of trying to get my shucked 8 TB hard drive to replace my
backup 4 TB hard drive last night. The 8 TB hard drive spun right up
but my office PC locked up during the BIOS boot. Looks like I need a
new motherboard, cpu, and ram to address that 8 TB hard drive. To be
fair, when I bought my motherboard and cpu, the largest hard drive
available was 3 TB.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hd...ure,36146.html

"To sum up, for products supporting the optional SATA 3.3 power disable
(PWDIS) function, the third pin (P3) of the SATA connector is now
assigned as the Power Disable Control pin. If P3 is driven HIGH
(2.1V-3.6V), the power to the drive circuitry will be cut. All drives
with this optional feature will not power up if a legacy SATA connector
is used. This is because P3 driven HIGH will prevent the drive from
powering up. The easy, and not so elegant, solution is to use a 4-pin
Molex to SATA connector or a power supply equipped with SATA connectors
that follow the SATA 3.3 specification."

Lynn