On Tuesday, 7 May 2024 08:50:26 BST Dale wrote: > William Kenworthy wrote: > > See https://www.disctech.com/powerdisable > > > > BillK > > I'm aware of what it is and the cable part. I was curious what it looks > like to BIOS and the OS when one is connected and that pin has the drive > disabled. From what I've read in some places, the drive doesn't power > up at all. I've seen some claim it shows up but you can't access it. > I've read different explanations of what the drive does and maybe it > varies from one maker to another. What I was hoping for, someone on > this list has connected a drive with that pin disabling the drive and > can confirm what I posted is what it looks like or explain what the > system does when one is connected. > > When I connected that drive to my NAS box, it was very slow to go > through the BIOS post and where it usually lists the connected drives, > only the drive with the OS showed up. When connected to the older Dell > rig, it booted up normally. It doesn't list connected drives like the > NAS box does. It did show up in /proc/partitions. The SMART command > showed a different story. It makes it look like the drive has power but > may not be spinning up. It can get the info such as model number, > serial number, capacity and other info but can't read the SMART data, > which I assume is written to the platter part of the drive. I'm not > sure on that tho. What I don't know, is that because of the PWDIS pin > or has nothing to do with it. > > As it is, the seller agreed to take the drive back. If the seller says > the drive works for them, I guess it has that PWDIS feature. If it > doesn't work for them, just a bad drive, perhaps damaged in shipping or > something. I'm just curious as to how a drive behaves when it has that > PWDIS pin and the drive is disabled. > > I did notice in the pic on your link that the new power connector has 5 > wires. It has the PWDIS ability. Mine has 4 wires. However, I've read > that on the older systems, the pins inside the connector apply power to > pin 3 which disables the drives. Mine doesn't have that extra wire but > I don't think that really matters. Maybe I need to put a voltmeter on > the connector and see if there is anything on pin 3 or not. I suspect > there is tho. > > Has anyone had one of these drives connected and remember what the > system reports when disabled?? What clues it gives that shows it is > disabled if any?? > > Dale > > :-) :-)
I don't have a drive like this, but as I understand it when the drive receives voltage on pin 3 it powers down. This requires a MoBo and firmware which supports such a function - probably unlikely to be found on consumer kit. https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/ public/western-digital/collateral/tech-brief/tech-brief-western-digital-power- disable-pin.pdf If the drive does not spin up, you could try to insulate pin 3 with electrician's tape and see if the disk spins up, or use a molex power adaptor as already discussed. Usually you can feel the disk vibrating when powering up. Since you managed to make it spin but smartclt barfs, I would think there is something wrong with it. Either way, life is too short to bother with disks which do not work as you reasonably expect them to work. RMA it and/or buy a different disk after you confirm its replacement does not come with a PWDIS feature.
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