Multiple DOA drives - 8TB WD Ultrastar DC HC320

AndrewB · 15 Feb 2020 at 22:08

So I decided to get a larger 8TB hard drive for storing my games and virtual machines on, as my current 3TB Hitachi deskstar was starting to get full. I ended up ordering the drive in the title as I've had good experience with HGST drives in the past, and someone else I know has this drive and has had no issues with it.

I ended up ordering the drive from elsewhere, as Overclockers no longer sells this model, and had no issues doing the partitioning, formatting and copying with robocopy using my Startech hard drive dock, however when I installed it into my PC via the native sata controller, I started having issues with the drive.
I installed the drive by replacing one of my currently installed hard drives, and it showed up in the bios when I turned my PC on while it was partially disassembled. However, when I put everything back together, the hard drive disappeared from the bios and wasn't recognised by Windows. I ended up swapping the original drive back in and trying different Sata ports and it was apparent that there was something wrong with this drive, even though it worked fine in my Sata dock. I also noticed that the HGST website said that the drive was no valid for warranty through HGST and it should be returned to the point of purchase.

This hard drive ended up getting rma'd by the retailer and I received a new drive, which I noticed had the same manufacturing date as the first drive. Instead of initiallising and formatting in the dock like I did with the first drive, I connected the drive directly to my sata controller, which my PC detected on first boot with no problems. Intiailising the drive went fine and I started formatting it with the full format option. Around 15 minutes into the format, I heard the device eject sound within Windows, and a "disk removed" popup from Intel Rapid Storage technology, which I've never seen before.
I also noticed that when the drive disconnected, I had 3 warnings in event viewer, "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued." from iaStorA, 7 "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 during a paging operation." from disk, and finally "Disk 2 has been surprise removed." from disk.
The drive didn't reappear after a soft reboot, hard reboot, and a complete power off than back on, so I reinstalled the WD Black that I'd removed, and had no issues detecting and using that drive.

This drive ended up getting rma'd and I got a refund, but I am wondering if I was just unlucky with these drives or if it's an issue with the sata controller on my motherboard.

I've got a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H motherboard, and have not had any issues with disconnecting hard drives other than the 8TB drive.

I've ended up ordering another one of these 8TB drives from another company, so I'll have to wait and see whether I'll have the same issue again.

Cyber-Mav · 16 Feb 2020 at 14:35

Test in ur stardock and see if drive works fine. Then put in pc and if it fails put back in stardock and test again. If it works in the stardock then your mobo or drivers is the issue. You should have tested more thoroughly before you sent the first drive back.
If you have issue with 3rd drive id have to put it down to user error.

AndrewB · 16 Feb 2020 at 15:19

The first drive was working fine in the dock, but when I tried to format initially, the software I used froze and I had to completely reboot my PC and try again. I also noticed the drive itself started to get very hot when copying files over, I believe it reached 60°C while in the dock, and the corner of the drive was also dented, which is one of the reasons I contacted the retailer in the first place. If they didn't raise an rma straight away, I would have done more testing on this drive.
I did also run WD Diagnostics on the drive and it didn't find any issues when running the Quick or Extended tests.

AndrewB · 20 Feb 2020 at 19:52

So I got my 3rd drive, this time from a different retailer, and actually has a valid warranty according to the HGST warranty check page. The main difference I've noticed with this drive is that it was manufactured in October 2019 instead of March 2019, and it's got newer firmware on - V8GNW460 instead of V8GNW410.
Unplugged my 1TB WD Black from my PC and installed this drive in it's place, and it got recognised instantly. Left WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics running on it overnight and it passed, then I copied over all my data from the 3TB HGST drive.

Today, I removed the 3TB HGST drive and reinstalled my WD Black, and my BIOS wouldn't detect the 8TB drive. After multiple sata cable reshuffles and the 8TB still not being detected, I decided to unplug the WD Black again and the 8TB was getting detected once more. I noticed that the power on count had not gone up on my 8TB either so it must have not been powered when the 1TB Black was plugged in.

I'm going to try using a sata extension cable to connect the WD Black from another SATA power port to see if it sorts the issue, otherwise I'll try contacting WD about the black drive. My PSU is an EVGA Supernova G2 750.

AndrewB · 20 Feb 2020 at 20:57

So I connected my HC320 hard drive via a SATA power extension cable to one of my spare SATA power ports on another modular cable and now the BIOS detects both the Black and HC320 consistantly. I've sent an email to EVGA as I'm unsure if it's overloading my PSU or if there is a fault with it.

EssexBoy · 20 Feb 2020 at 21:11

I have this week sent that same psu back to evga in Germany as it has died 6 months from new.Last time i get an evga psu i reckon it's that.

Avalon · 22 Feb 2020 at 16:06

So far you’ve blamed HGST and now EVGA for multiple RMA’s but done no conclusive fault diagnosis. A hard drive uses very little power, it’s highly unlikely that your drive would overload your PSU - your CPU/GPU doing any moderate workload will likely use many times more power than the drive ever could.

AndrewB · 22 Feb 2020 at 18:22

Avalon said:
So far you’ve blamed HGST and now EVGA for multiple RMA’s but done no conclusive fault diagnosis. A hard drive uses very little power, it’s highly unlikely that your drive would overload your PSU - your CPU/GPU doing any moderate workload will likely use many times more power than the drive ever could.

I am questioning whether it's an incompatibility between the WD DC drive and the WD Black, but I am not completely certain. All I know for certain is that both drives do work in the same PC if they're on different SATA power cable assemblies from the PSU.
Now, I don't think it's actually the PSU that's the issue to be honest, as having my 1TB Blue, 3TB HGST 7K3000 and the 8TB WD DC HC320 on the same SATA power cable assembly worked fine - it was only when I removed the 3TB and reinstalled the 1TB Black that the issue occurred. The original configuration was the 1TB Blue, 1TB Black and 3TB HGST 7K3000.

I've sent an email to Western Digital for now asking whether there is any intercompatibility issues between these 2 drives, but for now I'll continue powering them off seperate cable sets.

Avalon · 22 Feb 2020 at 19:22

Power generally doesn’t work like that, on a multi connector lead you could conceivably have a fault between connectors (connector, damaged cable etc) but powering two drives from the same power cable generally won’t result in one preventing power to the other, a drive has no mechanism to do that.