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I've bought a new 10 TB internal SATA HDD. It does not power on when connected with SATA power + data cables and does not show up in BIOS.

Another drive in the same PC works fine, and the drive did not work on another PC either, so I assumed a DOA and returned. However, the replacement disk exhibits the same behavior. I've tried various power and data cables on three working PCs, no avail. Disk stays silent.

Yet when I finally connected the disk to a USB adapter, it immediately powered on and I could hear it spinning. What could be the reason for this behavior and how would I go about fixing it?

  • The drive is a Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC510 10TB, 512e (4k sectors with emulation), SE, P3, SATA 6Gb/s (HUH721010ALE604/0F27454)
  • The mainboards and BIOSes in question are between brand new (2017/18) and a couple years old, the most recent being a MSI Z370 SLI Plus (7B46-002R), 6x SATA 6Gb/s (Z370).
  • The PSU is a be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W ATX 2.4 (BN253)

I verified that a 128 GB SSD as well as a 2 TB HDD (SATA 3Gb/s, 512e) are well recognized with the same power and data cables.

BIOS and chipset drivers were updated to the most recent. The merchant explains that it may be an incompatibility due to the large size of the drive.

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    Most likely incompatible with the SATA controller.
    – user931000
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 22:07
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    I've never known a controller incompatibility to prevent a drive from spinning up. I'd connect other drives to the mb in question and see if the problem is isolated to these specific drives.
    – I say Reinstate Monica
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 22:23
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    What do your pc power cables look like? How many & what colour wires do they have?
    – Xen2050
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 23:49
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    Spinning hard disks need a lot more power than SSDs. So guess: cable is not delivering enough power. Either a broken cable with a voltage not needed for SSD, or power supply trouble. Try different cables, if you can, and different output lines from the power supply, if you can. Also check for loose contacts.
    – dirkt
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 8:29
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    @TwistyImpersonator Sorry for the confusion, this recent time it actually was a small mechanical disk. It spun on immediately.
    – mafu
    Commented Oct 27, 2018 at 7:08

2 Answers 2

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This issue is caused by older power supply units providing 3.3 V power on SATA pin 3 which collides with the Power Disable feature of drives implementing SATA revision 3.3.

I had the same issue with a Seasonic PSU "Prime Modular 80+ Platinum, 750 Watt" and a modern Western Digital DC HC510 (10 TB "data center drive") that refused to spin up when connected to the PC-internal power supply, but ran without problems when connecting it to an external USB-to-SATA adaptor with an external power supply.

Installing a Molex to SATA power adaptor and by that eliminating voltage on pin 3 solved the issue and made the HDD spin up again.

You can find details on this at en.wikipedia.org: Serial ATA: SATA revision 3.3 and on hgst.com: Power Disable Feature Tech Brief (archived at web.archive.org).

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  • I cannot test this anymore but it seems like the most likely cause. Nicely digged up :)
    – mafu
    Commented May 4, 2020 at 12:24
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    Thanks a lot Johannes, you saved my day - with very brand new & recent hardware, i had the same issues (14TB WD not spinning with a Be Quiet modular PSU). Putting molex in-between also solved the issue on my side.
    – Sergio
    Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 14:14
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I verified that a 128 GB SSD as well as a 2 TB HDD (SATA 3Gb/s, 512e) are well recognized with the same power and data cables.

Was the sata cable also always connected to the same place? Because your motherboard is probably very similar to mine and when a nvme is plugged into the motherboard it disables a sata port Example: with my nvme on slot 1 of the motherboard (which has 3 Z370 asrock taïchi) the port sata 0_3 is disabled.

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  • There is an NVME connected. The mainboard manual stated that out of the total 6 ports, ports 4 and 5 get disabled from this, so I tried ports 0 and 3. But I will try it again to make sure.
    – mafu
    Commented Oct 29, 2018 at 18:34

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