Seagate 12TB ironwolf drives not recognized

TrueNAS General
1

I have been testing my Truenas with two 1TB drives and have been pleased so far. With that in mind I wanted to go ahead and build the full NAS with 5 12TB seagate ironhorse drives. Unfortunately when I start the PC the new drives are not recognized and the drive indicator light does not even come on. I moved the drives around in the cage and changed SATA ports but still no drives. Could the MB be the problem? I even installed a PCI SATA card but that didn’t work. The MB is an ASUS P8Z77.

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Sounds like the “new” SATA feature that allows resetting drives without removing power;

Some people fix this by using electrical tape over the drive’s “Enter/exit Power Disable (PWDIS) mode” power pins.

The Seagate Ironwolf drive spec sheet or user manual should have information about if PWDIS feature is included in the drive. Or not.

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Thanks for the tip. I hope you’re right since I have 5 of these drive and prefer to not build another system to accommodate them. If this works will it impact the hot swap feature?

4

Problem solved, cockpit error. I installed a 5 bay hot swap cage in the PC case and it was working fine for the smaller disks. When I put the new disks in the trays I did not have them forward enough to make contact with the connectors. They were snug against the front of the tray and snapped into place when I slid them about 1/8 inch. Whew!!!

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5

Electrical tape is a little too thick for my liking. I made it a habit to use Kapton tape over power pins 1 - 3 (yes, one through three) for every 3.5-inch SATA HDD that I purchase. Because the roll of tape is cheap and will last forever, I don’t even bother checking if it’s necessary. :grin:

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That seems a bit over the top…
3.3V PWDIS mostly affects (some) HGST drives, and the corresponding WD Gold. Using a backplane obviates the issue, as backplanes generally do not feed 3.3 V (and do not have 3.3V at all if fed from 4-pin molex).

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The problem is solved and the error was mine. I had the drives seated too far into the trays and they were not engaging the backplane of the cage. Everything is working fine now.

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