My new WD Red HDD doesn't play nice with my computer
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Thread: My new WD Red HDD doesn't play nice with my computer

  1. #1
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    My new WD Red HDD doesn't play nice with my computer

    /Cool Story time:
    I used to come here back in the early 2000's. Drifted away, and lately I've been bemoaning the lack of help I get on other, better-known forums like Reddit. I thought back to how many times ppl would pull solutions out of thin air in the past, and wondered where those days had gone. I dug back 12 years in my gmail acct to find the name of this board. I CANNOT believe you guys are still here! CRAZY respect for keeping on all these years!
    /CSB time over

    About a week back, I bought one of those Western Digital Easystore 8TB drives when they were on sale, as they had WD Red 8TB 256mb cache NAS drives in them. Big storage, high reliability, and the Easystores are much cheaper than if you bought a plain bare 8TB Red drive. Go figure. I bought it to shuck it and put it in my mid-tower case, as many have done. I've installed many HD's over the years, starting with my Commodore Amiga. I've built my own Windows systems since Win95. I'm not highly skilled, as I only install hardware for my system every 6-12 months, not like ppl who do this as a job or serious hobby, but I have a background. I play with hardware when my system needs upgrading.

    I shucked it and installed it. First thing I noticed was that the holes on the bottom of the drive did not line up with the holes in the HDD caddy that came with my Nanoxia case. My 6-year-old WD Black drives fit it perfectly, but I could only get 2 of the 4 holes in the bottom of the Red to line up at the same time. Are they changing the standards? Really the LEAST of my problems, but it puzzled me and it's related, so I thought I'd ask.

    I installed it and plugged it in, intending it for use as a data drive only. It didn't show up in device manager. I rebooted and it showed up. I formatted it. Transferred a few gigs of files. Seemed slower than I'd like. For one reason or another I eventually had to reboot. It took a full five minutes to shut down, instead of the few seconds it normally takes. When it started up again. the BIOS screen flashed, then it sat there for 15 minutes before I shut it down and gave up. I timed it after the shutdown issue.

    I don't know what happened, but between it not showing up the first time, then my system not booting, I thought the drive wasn't getting along with my computer. I pulled the Red, put it back in the external enclosure and have been running it that way since. I've noticed some delays and system hiccups when I've been away from the computer awhile and come back to use it. The performance seems reasonable over the stock USB interface, no great shakes. A week later, things seem to be working fine except for the hiccups.

    THE BIG QUESTION:

    I thought I'd ask here if anyone had an idea why it didn't work as a data drive over the internal SATA 3 interface. Any thoughts? I suspect it may have to do with the BIOS and the age of the motherboard, but I CANNOT construct a search to find that info, all I get is a bunch of unwanted data. Would a PCIE board with SATA help, do you think? I'd LIKE to put it inside my big new case with the dozen free drive bays, where it would stay cooler, and possibly run faster. If it were internal, I think I could also avoid the hiccups and momentary freezes I've been getting since plugging it into my USB ports. Just seems better all the way around.

    Thanks in advance. You kind of made my night just by still being here.

    ___________________________
    HARDWARE & OS INFO
    ___________________________

    ⦁ i5-2500k

    MSI P67A-C43 (B3) Motherboard

    12GB RAM- CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) (2x2GB), DDR3 1600, matched sets

    Seasonic G Series 550W PS

    ⦁ Gigabyte GTX 960 4gb RAM Video card

    ⦁ A couple WD Caviar Black drives, and an SSD boot drive. The SSD is running off SATAIII, and I tried to run the WD RED off the other SATAIII
    ⦁ The other drives are running off the SATAII ports.

    ⦁ Windows 10 64-bit

  2. #2
    photolady's Avatar
    photolady is offline Lifetime Friend of Site Staff
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    It's possible that your motherboard doesn't support HDDs over a certain Terabyte. Most older boards don't support HDDs over 3TB, without a BIOS update.

  3. #3
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    UEFI with MBR will max out around 2TB. You'll have to change the partition to GPT. Unless you have a 3rd party software to change it over, Windows will require you to reformat the drive.

    Extra reading
    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Train View Post
    UEFI with MBR will max out around 2TB. You'll have to change the partition to GPT. Unless you have a 3rd party software to change it over, Windows will require you to reformat the drive.

    Extra reading
    https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx
    I've never heard of UEFI & MBR, or GPT. I know NTFS and FAT32. . . I'll read some.

    Other folks have told me it might be my BIOS. How can I go from, "It might be your BIOS" to, "I now know that is/isn't my BIOS"? I've suspected the 8TB size being an issue myself, but I've UTTERLY been unable to confirm or disprove this. My google searches have not turned up useful info,but mostly unwanted results.

    A BIG question here - if all else fails, do you think a PCIE-SATA board will solve my issues? Would an expansion board with SATA controller bypass any issues my motherboard and BIOS might have?

    Thanks again for the suggestions/help.

  5. #5
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    As far as the drive mounting holes issue goes, they did change some of the higher capacity drives. The locations for some of the previously used mounting holes cannot be used on the new larger capacity drives due to interference with the drive platter housing area.

  6. #6
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    I've never heard of UEFI & MBR, or GPT. I know NTFS and FAT32. . . I'll read some.
    NTFS and FAT32 are file systems. UEFI is the replacement for the BIOS. MBR and GPT define the partition tables.

    A BIG question here - if all else fails, do you think a PCIE-SATA board will solve my issues? Would an expansion board with SATA controller bypass any issues my motherboard and BIOS might have?
    No. You still need to use GPT to define partitions larger than 2TB. The thing is that it should have already been using GPT. Did you repartition and format, or just format the drive?

    The drives will spin down after a while. I'm not sure what the exact timing is for the RED drives, but that's probably why you're seeing "hiccups". It takes a little while for the drives to spin back up to speed.

  7. #7
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    That motherboard apparently does not fully support UEFI or GPT. You may be able to find an add-in drive controller that would allow GPT formatting and use of the 8 TB drive.

    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2270840

    https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=254308.0

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Midknyte View Post
    NTFS and FAT32 are file systems. UEFI is the replacement for the BIOS. MBR and GPT define the partition tables.


    No. You still need to use GPT to define partitions larger than 2TB. The thing is that it should have already been using GPT. Did you repartition and format, or just format the drive?

    The drives will spin down after a while. I'm not sure what the exact timing is for the RED drives, but that's probably why you're seeing "hiccups". It takes a little while for the drives to spin back up to speed.
    I had issues with it at first. I definitely re partitioned - one 6TB partition for media, and another for other purposes. I may or may not have formatted. I no longer remember. None are boot partitions.

    - Would the PCI-e SATA cards be able to use GPT to define the partitions, assuming my BIOS doesn't like large HDDs?
    - If my BIOS doesn't handle large HDD's, is there anything I need to buy to bypass that issue?


    I need to dig in and read that link you gave me thoroughly, but I have to go out I have to go past Best Buy now for other reasons, and it's all the way across town where I don't usually go. Now would be a good time to know if I need to get something else.

    EDIT: OK, thanks JDC2000. I'll look into it further. Everybody, including myself, has been thinking my motherboard/bios might be the issue, but I coudln't definitively nail it down. Now I guess I have to find a PCI-e SATA card.
    Last edited by Docjon; November 8th, 2017 at 03:14 PM.

  9. #9
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    That motherboard apparently does not fully support UEFI or GPT
    Ok. I stand corrected then. I'm surprised that an i5 board wouldn't support UEFI/GPT.

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    I assume that you are currently using the PCIe x16 slot on your motherboard for the video card. If so, that leaves only a PCIe x1 slot for a SATA controller. I have not found any SATA controllers for that type of slot that would support an 8 TB drive. You may have to keep that drive external. You could get an NAS (Network Attached Storage) enclosure that would take the drive, but that could be somewhat pricey. Or, it might be time for a motherboard, processor, and memory upgrade.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Midknyte View Post
    Ok. I stand corrected then. I'm surprised that an i5 board wouldn't support UEFI/GPT.
    So, PCI-E SATA board then?

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    So, PCI-E SATA board then?
    If you can find one that works in a PCIe x1 slot, which is not likely since that slot won't support the faster drive speeds. Even if you could find one, the price might be too high. I did not find any.

  13. #13
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    I definitely re partitioned - one 6TB partition for media, and another for other purposes. I may or may not have formatted. I no longer remember. None are boot partitions.
    If you repartitioned the drive, then you would have had to format the new partitions. You didn't say what tool you used to repartition the drive. You may need to use a third-party partition tool, like Minitool instead of Disk Management.
    https://www.partitionwizard.com/free...n-manager.html

    The other forum posts mention UEFI boot, but not using GPT drives for storage. If the UEFI is running in legacy mode, that could affect the GPT support. I don't have that MB, so I can't really say for sure.

    So, PCI-E SATA board then?
    Looks like jdc2000 already answered that.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdc2000 View Post
    If you can find one that works in a PCIe x1 slot, which is not likely since that slot won't support the faster drive speeds. Even if you could find one, the price might be too high. I did not find any.
    Well, crap. Thanks to everyone for the help.

    I wish the info on this were easier to find. I know the board and CPU are older, but 2500K's are still in use quite a bit, and older motherboards go with the CPU. I did a little reading a day or 2 ago. I remember finding one that should have speeds in-between SATA2 and SATA3.

    I formatted and partitioned it while it was set up inside as a SATA3 drive. Seems to be working fine the past 5-6 days as an external. Think there's an issue lurking there? I have 1 6TB partition, and I partitioned the remaining 2TB into two partitions.

    EDIT: You guys are posting faster than I can keep up, never mind!

    And thanks again.

  15. #15
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    I found this about MSI's 3TB+ Infinity Technology. It doesn't mention my motherboard, and I'm having trouble finding references to it AND my motherboard anywhere. It seems to cover earlier chipsets, before the p67.

    I can't find the release date for my motherboard, but the earlier reviews start around March 2011, where the above is dated in April.
    I'll post back when I've done my reading with whatever I figure out. Busy next couple days. . .

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