Hard drive in a boot loop when other hard drives are plugged in

WhatComesAround · September 18, 2021

Backstory:

So I received a brand new hard drive a while back because one of my drives was ticking. Drive arrives, plug it in, turn on my pc, and it turns on and off constantly. So I return it. New one arrives, same thing. So I unplug all the other drives and use a sata cable from a different drive. It works! So the cable is faulty? No! I plug it in with the original cable but now it works (with other drives off and unplugged). Ok.... So I'll just plug everything back in. Now it doesn't work again... Ok let me unplug the other drives. It works! Excuse my French, but what the fuck?

Questions on my mind:
Why did 3 drives work before?

How does this drive know other drives are plugged in and therefore it needs to have a seizure?

(The actual serious question) What's wrong/could be wrong, how do I fix this?

Slayerking92 · September 20, 2021

All drives are connected to the same SATA power cable?

Any M.2 drives installed? that may disable some SATA ports on the M/B.

WhatComesAround · October 6, 2021

On 9/20/2021 at 10:07 PM, Slayerking92 said:

All drives are connected to the same SATA power cable?

Any M.2 drives installed? that may disable some SATA ports on the M/B.

Yes all drives are connected to the same SATA power cable. Didn't consider that. Might be the problem. Yes I have an M.2 drive installed, but I am not using those SATA ports.