8TB HDD stops PC from booting/getting into BIOS

[Real_Smoky]

Hi!

I have recently gotten a few used HDDs as a gift. One of them is an 8TB (8000 GB) HDD which stops my otherwise functioning Win10 PC from booting. The PC seems to successfully POST but gets stuck on a screen asking me to go into the BIOS settings. When I try to do so, the PC says something along the lines of LOADING BIOS, but it never gets to the BIOS screen. 

Faulty cable/SATA connector as a possibility has been eliminated by testing as other (smaller) drives function perfectly fine.

I have yet to test it in a second PC.

What could be the problem? How do I go about testing the drive?

Thank you very much!

[NunoLava1998]

Does your motherboard use UEFI? Without UEFI a lot of BIOSes just don't know what to do with hard drives larger than 2TB

[MrSimplicity]

Get yourself a USB3.0 to Sata adapter. After you are booted up you can plug the HDD in via USB and check it out in crystal or disk manager.

 

Also have you tried booting into your BIOS before it tries to boot to windows? You should double check that the HDD isn't setting itself as the main boot drive. By gift do you mean brand new or hand me downs?

[NLamki]

4 minutes ago, MrSimplicity said:

Get yourself a USB3.0 to Sata adapter. After you are booted up you can plug the HDD in via USB and check it out in crystal or disk manager.

 

Also have you tried booting into your BIOS before it tries to boot to windows? You should double check that the HDD isn't setting itself as the main boot drive. By gift do you mean brand new or hand me downs?

Different question, I have a 2tb hard drive that was working fine for a year but recently stopped working. After some trouble shooting, I discovered that the HDD still works on other pc and works when I connect it via USB. But does not work when I connect it through sata. I have 2 hard drives, a 2.5 and a 3.5, the 2.5 failed. I tested the 2.5 using the 3.5 wires and it still doesnt pop up on disk manager, only way I've been able to use it is thru a USB connection, any clue on how to fix this?

[OhioYJ]

Also you failed to mention what type of drive this is? Some enterprise drives don't function with the 3.3v line hooked to them. This should just prevent them from turning on rather than locking things up, but strange things happen sometimes. I believe this was primarily for 10 TB and up though? However might be worth a check depending on the drive. Just another random thought.

[ki8aras]

it brokey

[KaitouX]

43 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Also you failed to mention what type of drive this is? Some enterprise drives don't function with the 3.3v line hooked to them. This should just prevent them from turning on rather than locking things up, but strange things happen sometimes. I believe this was primarily for 10 TB and up though? However might be worth a check depending on the drive. Just another random thought.

My 8TB WD HDD needed to block the 3.3v pin to work in my PC, but like you mentioned it only wasn't recognized, it didn't block BIOS access or boot.

Maybe something weird is happening where the PC freezes because it keeps trying to recognize the drive while the drive gets turned off due to the 3.3v pin?

 

You could try searching if the HDD model you got have this 3.3v issue, if it does try blocking the pin to see if it solves the problem, I personally used a piece of non-conductive and heat resistant tape, not sure how it's called.

The other possible solution is the mentioned USB adapter, this would likely work, as you could just connect the USB after boot, in case the boot process still got blocked when using the adapter.

[Real_Smoky]

On 9/4/2021 at 11:53 AM, NunoLava1998 said:

Does your motherboard use UEFI? Without UEFI a lot of BIOSes just don't know what to do with hard drives larger than 2TB

 

On 9/4/2021 at 11:54 AM, MrSimplicity said:

Get yourself a USB3.0 to Sata adapter. After you are booted up you can plug the HDD in via USB and check it out in crystal or disk manager.

 

Also have you tried booting into your BIOS before it tries to boot to windows? You should double check that the HDD isn't setting itself as the main boot drive. By gift do you mean brand new or hand me downs?

 

On 9/4/2021 at 12:01 PM, NLamki said:

Different question, I have a 2tb hard drive that was working fine for a year but recently stopped working. After some trouble shooting, I discovered that the HDD still works on other pc and works when I connect it via USB. But does not work when I connect it through sata. I have 2 hard drives, a 2.5 and a 3.5, the 2.5 failed. I tested the 2.5 using the 3.5 wires and it still doesnt pop up on disk manager, only way I've been able to use it is thru a USB connection, any clue on how to fix this?

 

On 9/4/2021 at 12:06 PM, OhioYJ said:

Also you failed to mention what type of drive this is? Some enterprise drives don't function with the 3.3v line hooked to them. This should just prevent them from turning on rather than locking things up, but strange things happen sometimes. I believe this was primarily for 10 TB and up though? However might be worth a check depending on the drive. Just another random thought.

 

On 9/4/2021 at 12:25 PM, ki8aras said:

it brokey

 

On 9/4/2021 at 12:49 PM, KaitouX said:

My 8TB WD HDD needed to block the 3.3v pin to work in my PC, but like you mentioned it only wasn't recognized, it didn't block BIOS access or boot.

Maybe something weird is happening where the PC freezes because it keeps trying to recognize the drive while the drive gets turned off due to the 3.3v pin?

 

You could try searching if the HDD model you got have this 3.3v issue, if it does try blocking the pin to see if it solves the problem, I personally used a piece of non-conductive and heat resistant tape, not sure how it's called.

The other possible solution is the mentioned USB adapter, this would likely work, as you could just connect the USB after boot, in case the boot process still got blocked when using the adapter.

Hi everyone!

Thank you all for your input!

It seems to have been some BIOS/CPU compatibility issue. The drive does not work on a 3rd Gen i5, but it worked fine on a 6th gen i5. No idea whether it's a problem with the CPU, BIOS/UEFI version, Chipset or whatever, but it seems it just doesn't like older machines as much as newer ones.

Thanks!