Rich Freeman wrote: > On Tue, May 7, 2024 at 6:04 AM Michael <confabul...@kintzios.com> wrote: >> On Tuesday, 7 May 2024 08:50:26 BST Dale wrote: >>> 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 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. > I have had these drives. If the drive is connected to many ATX power > supplies via a standard cable, the drive simply will not be detected > by the computer. With some power supplies it will work fine. It all > depends on whether the power supply follows the original SATA spec, or > was designed to be compatible with enterprise drives which use the > revised spec, which isn't backwards compatible (I don't know who the > genius was who had that idea). > > In order to actually toggle the reset line you need SOMETHING able to > switch the line in-between the drive and the PSU. That might be a > motherboard (especially with the newer trend towards running all the > power through the motherboard), or some other accessory card. Unless > the HBA provides the power it won't be there. > > However, you don't need any fancy hardware for the drive to just work > - that is only needed to send the hardware reset to the drive. All > you need is to not have that pin powered. That just means the right > power supply, the right cable, the right adapter, or some improvised > solution (tape over the pin is a common one). > > In any case, if the pin is the problem, the drive simply won't be > detected. Your SATA issues are due to something else. It might be a > bad drive, an incompatibility (maybe the drive isn't in the > smartmontools database yet), or maybe an issue with the HBA (for USB > HBAs in particular you often need to pass command line parameters as > there apparently isn't a standard way to pass these commands over > USB). I doubt the power line is your problem. > > As far as shucked drives go - that is typically indicated by the > label/model. If it isn't branded in any way it may have been shucked. > That shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't have the power issue > - the drive might simply be bad. >
So, since the drive wasn't seen at all on my main rig or the NAS box, with a straight sata power connector, then it likely has the PWDIS pin. On those two rigs, the drive wasn't seen at all not even in the BIOS. Since it was seen on the old Dell rig with a molex sata adapter but SMART spit out a lot of errors, then the drive is bad. Now that makes sense and was kinda what I was thinking but not sure about. Not only did I get a drive with the PWDIS feature, I got a bad drive as well. While the box had no damage at all, it doesn't mean it didn't get hit or dropped and was damaged or went bad some other way. My take on this for future reference. If a drive isn't seen at all even by BIOS, either the drive is completely dead or it has the PWDIS feature. Oh, I wonder to about the genius who forgot to make this new feature backward compatible. I hope someone Gibbs smacks him real good. Maybe twice. Now to avoid buying another one of these drives again. I really wish sellers who should know would put in the description or list of features that the drive has PWDIS. After all, most buyers of small quantities of drives likely can't use that feature. The ones who do likely buy in bulk since they putting them in large systems. Thanks to all. I knew there would be someone on this list who actually had one of these things. Dale :-) :-)
