power disable feature SATA Extension cables for shucked Hard Drives with Power Disable Feature

amardilo · March 4, 2019

Hi there. Not sure if this is the right place to ask this or not.

I bought some WD My Book 8 TB Desktop Hard Drives and I would like to take the hard drives out of their enclosure and put them into my PC/NAS (custom Unraid build). Looking online these drives have WD White Label drives in them which are like WD Reds expect they have a Power Disable Feature enabled on the 3rd SATA pin.

There seems to be a few options such as using a Molex adaptor (heard about bad issues with these so I don't want to use them in my build as the server runs 24/7), using tape on the 3rd pin (seems a little too fiddly for me) or cutting the 5th wire on the SATA cable (I'd rather not do something destructive).

I've seen SATA extension cables online that only have 4 wires (looks like the 5th wire that sends the 3v isn't there). Would something like this allow me to use the shucked drives?