Warning: some low quality Molex-to-SATA adapters have been known to catch fire! Please do your research before using the solution at 4:03. For a comprehensive guide on Western Digital's Easystore drives (including the 3.3V issue), you can visit this excellent writeup compiled by u/jppowers at reddit's datahoarder sub: www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/7fx0i0/wd_easystore_8tb_compendium/ Much obliged 🎩 to all my viewers. Like. Share. Subscribe. Enjoy. Support links ☕ BuyMeACoffee: buymeacoff.ee/accessrandom 🐦 Twitter: twitter.com/accessrand0m ► Subscribe: ru-vid.com
@@accessrandom for some reason i couldnt reply directly however this video saved me a ton of headaches. i just used a molex to sata adapter i had in part bin and the drive is running like a champ internally. thanks for the link to the r/datahoarder reddit too tons of great info there
No it's not. Dude wears an ESD wrist strap, but the clip of it, is fastened to the computer case while it's not connected to the power supply ..... That doesn't deflect any ESD at all.
Note for anyone having a hard time getting the tape to stick: You can actually cover up pins 1 and 2 in addition to 3. It makes the tape stick much better, and your hard drive doesn't use 3.3V anyway.
The 3.3V "issue" is actually an Enterprise Feature - it is used to spin up multiple Disks one after the other instead of all simultaneously This way you can use way smaller PSUs in a Server and/or drive enclosure :)
I agree it is an enterprise feature, but the purpose is not to spin up multiple disks sequentially. Staggered Spin-Up has been around for a long time. According to Western Digital the reason is so you can power cycle a drive to perform a hard reset, saving the long walk out to the rack just do hard reset. It requires specialized, compatible hardware to leverage the feature. documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/tech-brief/tech-brief-western-digital-power-disable-pin.pdf
@@VladdyDaddy45 Actually it's a enterprise hard drive. I even test it. I have WD80EDAZ-11TA3A0 the one you suppose to put tape on. Wouldn't work on my desktop but was able to be detected on my Dell Power Edge T710. :D
Using an earthed wrist strap can be as dangerous (if not more dangerous) as not using one at all. There's no guarantee that your mains earth is going to be at the same potential as whatever you're working with. You could actually fry the drive BECAUSE you're wearing it. What you should do is make sure everything is at the same potential so no current can flow anywhere. To do this, plug the data cable into the drive while you're doing this and plug the other end into your PC. Then attach your wrist strap to a grounding point on the PC. One of the shields of a connection port would be okay, or to the ground pin of the power plug (the PC shouldn't be plugged in). Then everything is a closed circuit at the same potential.
Note that there are WD white-label drives with and without the pin 3 issue. Easy enough to tell, as you said, because the drive just won't spin up in some environments. Thanks for helping to keep the world informed!!!!
Thanks this has been driving me nuts and I assumed it was my motherboard getting a bit old. I removed the pin with a dental pick and works great internally now.
I wouldn't have thought of using a dental pick but now that you mention it, it sounds like the perfect tool :) Thanks for the comment, and glad you found the video helpful.
@@cajunflix1movies728 Others in the comments below have used Xacto knives. I think anything thin and sharp enough to get under the pin should work (sorry I don't have a video on this, but I myself was trying to do it non-destructively).
Alternatively you can also cover pins 1 and 2 together with pin 3. They aren't used either, so it's much easier. Using a Molex adapter can be dangerous, because the low quality ones are getting moulded after the cables are plugged into the plug. This leads to the cables moving and getting close to each other and then burning the whole disk (Molex to SATA, loose all your data). The good ones are crimped and just stuck into an already finished plug without the cables being able to touch each other.
Unusual to get a video with this many views and no down-votes. Well done a really good video. I've also learned what shucking is and now know what sales to avoid on Ebay.
Kapton tape worked perfectly. Use tweezers and a toothpick to place and smooth the tape. After spending 45 seconds smoothing / pressing the tape into the pin I tested plugging / unplugging the connector a few times and it stayed in place perfectly. Thanks for the guide!
@@accessrandom Hey, I have a quick and easy question for you; I found that I have about four sata to sata splitters / extension cables; If I hold it with the female connector(s) facing up; the wires from left to right are: Yellow, Black, Red, Grey, and I just wanted to see if you knew if these adapters also will work or not; because I haven't removed the external drive yet, and would like to be certain I have the correct resources on hand before starting; not sure where to get tape, as that is a new solution I also wasn't aware of; but I would imagine if I cannot find it locally at lowes or home depot, it wouldn't be to hard to find using the correct search term; thank for any info. Peace
Wow, I can see why you'd go through the trouble for this. It seems the cost of these external drives is about half the cost of a normal standalone 3.5" drive. Just goes to show how inflated the prices are.
@@accessrandom really? how much are the white label drives? The Seagate 3.5" BarraCuda 8TB drives specifically sold for internal storage are $230USD atm.
White label drives generally aren't sold as internals, but they have the same or similar specs as the WD Red label drives. The Barracuda Compute 8TB drives that I've removed from external Seagate Expansions in my other video seem to be different than the Barracuda Pros as they have slightly different model numbers (ST8000DM004 vs ST8000DM0004 respectively). At any rate, agreed there's a lot more bang-for-the-buck with the externals.
Thank you. Honestly one of the best, clearest instructional videos I've come across. Thank you for not having overly loud muzak. Thank you for describing everything so well. Wish me luck on my first shucking.
THANK YOU!!! I bought a WD 8TB MyBook (WDC WD80EDAZ-11TA3A0) but it was overheating like crazy in its external case (60c) so I decided to put it in my computer, but of course it wasn't detected. A piece of tape on the 3rd pin did the charm. Now it's idling at 31c rather than 60c :)
Same here. I thought about cutting it at the end but I decided to just pull the connector and wrap it in electrical tape in case I need to re insert the 3.3v connector.
Mine was a WD Blue drive, from a MyBook 6 Tb. 5400 RPM :((( The pins inside the sata power connector are spring-loaded so I ruined the pins ability to reach the contacts with a tiny screwdriver. Worked perfectly well, thank you very much :)
Hey fellas, thanks a ton for this video. Instead of using either of these solutions listed I used an automotive pick to pull up the third tab on the power side and moved it gently back and forth until it broke smoothly at the base. Now windows/bios sees the drive and works fine.
@@accessrandomi used this guy's tip and lifted the 3rd contact up on a female to male sata extension cable and this also works fine and no setting fire to the house problems that it appears a lot of people have had from the molex to sata extension cables - excellent video and suggestion reply that led me to this solution - Thanks a lot :)
The nail polish doesn't have to be clear. I used blue nail polish on one of my drives (because that's all my daughter was willing to lend me) and it worked fine. The only type I might not recommend is nail polish with sparkles &/or other metallic materials in it. :-)
Most SATA to SATA or SATA splitters do not have the 3.3 V pin connected as well. The 3.3 V is Orange, and the SATA to SATA contain Red, Yellow and Black wires.
I ran into this problem when purchasing a 10TB WD external that I shucked. I ordered the tape and molex adapter and tried to fix today. It still doesn't get recognized in Windows 7 (unless I plug it in via usb and power to wall outlet). I removed the third pin entirely and it still won't show up in Windows (again, unless I use the external case's USB/power board). This is in a rack mount server running Windows 7 and runs through an LSI controller. I was so excited for a fix, but I am confused at what might still be the problem. I will try the adapter eventually, but would rather fix it this way for future drive expansion. Another concern is that it is on a hot-swap back-plane, so not sure how the molex to sata adapter will fit in until I open up the case. Also, it seems like the drive is powering up, as when I remove it from hot-swap it feels like it is still spinning... Any ideas for a fix, or what I might be doing wrong? Thx EDIT: I tried moving the drive around within different bays of my server and got it to work. I have (5) Rows of (4) Bays. It appears that a whole "row" of (4) bays is out. These are all on the same back-plane, so I'll need to investigate later (though I do not need all the bays at the current time anyway). Thanks for the great video!!
Thanks for the update - I was just reading your comment and was a bit stumped as to why it wouldn't work with the tape method (and even when you removed the pin). I guess the failure can happen anywhere along the chain back to the power supply.
Did this, but didn't have any kapton tape, used electrical tape instead with similar results (obviously the electrical tape was a tad thicker and I believe has adhesive that may leave a residue). I did order some of the linked kapton tape though (curiously the Amazon description does not say kapton tape) and will use that on future drives. Just bought two more 12 TB from Best Buy for $189 USD/each, hoping for a nice holiday sale on 12/14 TB externals and will likely do this again with those. =)
Thanks for the tip - I've tried electrical tape before but I found it was a bit thick and it stretched out the connector slightly on the SATA power connector before I switched to Kapton (not sure of the long term effects of the electrical tape). That's a great price on the 12 TB - hopefully the 14 TBs will drop to $200 as it did last year...
Thank you very much, I knew it had something to do with power when my drive was not spinning and not detected in the BIOS. A simple piece of Scotch Magic tape was enough for me !
Molex to sata power adaptors don't include the 3.3v line, I assume using one of these would get around the issue? EDIT: annndd this is what I get for not watching the whole video ;)
thanks, I didn't use either of the 2 options, I cut the cable on the power supply sata connector that corresponded to the 3rd pin (was the first cable in my case) and it worked perfectly. Only drawback is that if you plan on switching out a new hard drive in the future, just make sure it's a schucked one or use a different sata cable .
Dear, sir! What a fine and excellent tutorial you have generously given to us here on the YT channel! Most clear and pedagogical step-by-step advice you are helping us with installing an HDD from external use to internal use! A very big and warm THANK to you, dear, sir! Stay blessed and safe and healthy in these perilous times with the Coronavirus infection risk! Best Regards and wishes for all good things coming your and your whole family way! (Now subscribing and giving thumbs up!)
You can cover pins 3,4,5 does not have to be just pin 3, I have done that to my 8TB Ultrastar Data Center, Hey Presto, HDD booted up, and detected on BIOS, previously would work on a USB 3.0 HDD caddy.
Thanks so much for this explanation! I was getting ready to blame WD (and my cheap-ass self) because its budget priced MyBook (which was already a pita to get out of its enclosure) wasn't being recognized as an internal drive on my old pc (which I repurposed as nas). The tape solution already worked like a charm, luckily I had an old sata to molex (only power) adapter lying around, which is an even better solution!
Very useful video. After watching it I checked en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_3.3 for further details about "Power disable". Anyway I have to point out that almost no power supply I've seen, with the exclusion of the few high-quality ones, had the 3.3V connected, so, in short, one's gonna experience the problem only with a good PSU: that's weird ;)
Btw shucking doesn't always void the warranty on the drive I've had a faulty shucked drive and WD replaced it no issue. FYI I just got 2 year warranty instead of 3 year
I found that if you can open the SATA power connector, you can pull out the left most cable which is the 3.3V. Great for those with no electrical tape nor the extra power cable (me)
Fantastic video! Very professional. Had a high production quality and feel. More to the point, it provided useful information without the long drawn out routine some multimillion subscriber channels use! which is why I subscribed and will return. Thank you.
@@accessrandom It Works! It Works! Now I have Successfully converted, installed 4 x 10Tb external to internal. Thank you so very much! by using the tape! Thank you. Thank you. And now my second PC!
I've got two WD Whites from the same batch. One needs this fix, the other works fine without it in the same system. Strange things happen in the world of computer hardware.
My solution, snip the 3V wire on the SATA power connector. I don’t think any commercial drives use the 3V feature. In a server, you will want to verify that your other drives do not use that feature.
There have been reports that certain model numbers of the white label drives are indeed HGST Helium drives. This thread goes into some detail: www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8evpx8/evidence_that_the_wd80emaz_drives_found_in_some
Thank you very very much, I wasn’t able to know why it didn’t power on when used internally, I suspected that it had to do with something in the PSU regarding the SATA connector, because it worked on other external enclosures (and was planning to test it in other PC) my plan was to use a Molex to SATA adapter not because I new it but because I suspected my PSU wasn’t managing all the voltages that its own cage did and maybe with Molex been more powerful and streamlined it may work, it would have worked as I just now seen but entirely from different reasons and was quite inconvenient wait for the Molex adapter. Was quite hard for me to find your video as basically all searches involving the words HDD and no powers was flooded with external hard drives. Luckily in the end the full model plus no power “wd100emaz-00wjta0 no power” clicked and was able to find you, again thank you so much
well explained video I congratulate you, just a note, in my case putting tape on pin 3 did not work, but I read some comment below say that covering the first 3 pins worked and it is, it is easier to cover the first 3 pins so removal of problems.
Just ran into this with a 8tb HGST drive and a EVGA Supernove PSU, molex to sata fixed it for me. I just don't trust the tape, Im more worried about the tape comming off inside the plug after in ages and you remove the plug from the HDD.
Hey buddy, great video! Would you mind if I make a Spanish version of this video? I haven't been able to get one of those in an external drive yet. I'll give you credit ofcourse.
It sounds like a bad physical sector, which is independent of the power being delivered to the disk. You may want to perform a chkdsk /r in a command prompt (started as an admin). If it detects any bad sectors, I would see if you can exchange the drive for another.
@@accessrandom tried that turns out windows 10 2004 update damages SSD's and mechanical Hard drives microsoft has warned people to turn off automatic defragmentation of drives turns out the SSD isnt being trimmed but defragmented instead damaging the hard drive the same thing is happening to mechanical hard drives there getting trimmed instead of defraged
@@johnDingoFoxVelocity Interesting - thanks for the tip. I did hear about SSD problems with the latest update to Windows but I hadn't heard about problems with HDDs.
the 3.3v pin is used to power down the drive completely in case of it not being used at all by the pc (host) so it saves power and also prolongs the life of the drive by not running non stop and overheating in that plastic case
This saved me several hundred dollars! I was going to go out and buy five new HDD's, but I was like "no, wait, why is this Red drive working, but these two White drives not working...? They all worked in the old system last week without any issues...." I took one of the power supply cables I had purchased previously, with the right-angle plugs, and just snipped the first wire - the one closest to the "L" part of the power cable - and electrical taped it off carefully. Plugged the drives in, and everything worked. It's insane that this is a problem. Wish there were a "switch" or "BIOS" fix, but removing the 3.3 volt line will harm nothing, as this is in a personal computer, and I don't need to "remotely restart" a hard drive. I would like to know more about the transition...why this happened, and why no one seems to care about making drives obsolete with a weird cable/power supply issue. My power supply is a brand-new SeaSonic Prime TX-1600, so I couldn't imagine that being the issue. Nice to know it's that "pin 3" so easy to mitigate. Thank you so much!
I panicked a little when I shucked my WD Elements and the drive didn't show up and I freaked a bit when you mentioned having to go buy tape, but boy did I rejoice when you mentioned the molex to sata workaround. Actually had one laying around and now the drive is showing up just fine. THANK YOU!
I would have never guessed. Thanks for the heads ups. I have a Netgear ReadyNAS that I just replaced 4 drives in ... meaning I probably blew away my OS, but I was thinking it might be this problem that the drives are not spinning up.
Thanks for doing this. Just shucked two Easystores and got whites. They don't work with my Corsair HX 650 PSU :( Can you recommend a brand/model/link of Kapton tape and also maybe a link to a Molex-to-SATA adapter you recommend?
There's a good video on the subject on RU-vid: just search for "How To Spot Molex To SATA Adapters That Won't Catch Fire". For the kapton tape, I ordered from a uline catalog years ago (it's not something I use often, except when I'm dismantling a laptop and putting it back together). But I think any roll of Kapton tape from either uline or Amazon would work fine.
Thank you Access Random! I shucked an 8TB Easy Store which only worked while in the case. I verified that before shucking it. Formatted and assigned a drive letter to it. Once installed inside the case, it was not detected by the PC. It was a white drive. Glad I came across these video's and some others, but yours were the most useful. I ordered both the Molex to SATA cable and the Kapton tape. I've seen the tape used to protect circuit boards while soldering in repair video's so wanted it anyway. I decided to use both while I had the HTPC out again. Worked flawlessly after replacing the existing SATA cable as well as adding the Kapton tape. Got the tape at www.ebay.com/itm/111893269568 and cable at www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=5184&seq=1&format there are others there too. It's a little hard to navigate the site, but very reasonable and picked up some other spare cables with it. I've bought cables before from them. Don't let the cheap prices scare you. FYI it did not catch fire. Good luck!
I schucked six of these drives and got the white label EMAZ version with the 3.3v issue and 256MB cache. I was originally going to use them in my Dell Poweredge R510 server but they randomly drop their negotiated speed from 6Gb to 3Gb which brings the RAID to a crawl. Not all of the drives, maybe 2 or three of the six on every bootup. Not the same drives either - which drives run slow is completely random. I moved them to my QNAP TS-451+ server and they work fine and stay at 6Gb. I'm not sure why my Dell server has speed issues with these drives but I ended up going with 6TB Toshiba's (MG04ACA600E) and have no issues.
Interesting - this is the first time I've heard of speed slowdowns on a Dell server. The reddit sub I link in the description has it confirmed working (anecdotally) on the Dell R510, but there's some question as to whether all optional configurations of the backplanes (and all revisions/firmware of them) would work. Thanks for sharing your experience.
If you get a molex to SATA adapter cable (the better solution in my opinion), make sure you DON'T get the one that was made by injection moulding since those are known to short circuit and cause fires. There are videos about it on RU-vid. Get the adapter which has discretely separated cables/pins on the SATA side.
I was struggling with tape and annoying if you want to pull the drive in the future and forget about this, I just clipped the 3.3v wire entirely on that SATA connection, much easier and I'll remember in the future. I left enough length on the connector and cable side in case I need to resolder them together in the future. Apparently the 3.3 volt connection is rarely used so I don't really care
