Can anyone shed any light onto my HDD visibility issues?!

[Rtorbs]

Kapton tape is nice (and useful for other stuff, so no need to cancel your order), but for a quick and dirty test, just use whatever scotch tape or similar you have lying around. All you're looking for is confirmation if the drive spins up or not.

As for this not being a PSU issue - it's possible that there are PSUs that use modded SATA power connectors where this pin isn't present to avoid this issue, but given that this is an optional and IRL enterprise-only feature of the SATA spec, the vast majority of PSUs will not support drives like this. Your PSUs being on a "not supported" list is down to nothing more complex than them being regular off-the-shelf consumer PSUs, alongside the vast majority of PSUs out there. I would guess there are some PSUs targeted at professional workstation users and similar high-performance computing that might account for this possibility (as those users might come across a datacentre drive once in a blue moon), but other than that, I wouldn't expect PSU manufacturers to bother to source asymmetrical SATA crimp pins to avoid an issue 99.999999% of their PSUs will never encounter.

Right tried the tape (again....) defo doesn't work lol FML

Without sounding like a douche spending 80 quid on another psu to ruie it out seems like a sensible solution right now, I'm kinda thinking my time is more important than my money

 

[Valantar]

Right tried the tape (again....) defo doesn't work lol FML

Without sounding like a douche spending 80 quid on another psu to ruie it out seems like a sensible solution right now, I'm kinda thinking my time is more important than my money

Well, just make sure you buy from somewhere with a sensible return policy. I'm leaning towards the drives (for some reason, can't say I have any theories on why, sadly) being dead. This is very, very weird (I've had plenty of HDDs die on me, but none as mysteriously as this!), but sounds like the only sensible answer to this mystery. Perhaps there was a power spike when you first powered up the new build? It would be very weird for that not to affect the SSD, but ... who knows?

If you really want to put some time into this, you could order replacement controller PCBs off eBay and see if they work?

Honestly, if there's nothing crucial on the drives, I'd write them off, and of course RMA the brand-new one. HDDs don't last forever.

 

[Rtorbs]

Well, just make sure you buy from somewhere with a sensible return policy. I'm leaning towards the drives (for some reason, can't say I have any theories on why, sadly) being dead. This is very, very weird (I've had plenty of HDDs die on me, but none as mysteriously as this!), but sounds like the only sensible answer to this mystery. Perhaps there was a power spike when you first powered up the new build? It would be very weird for that not to affect the SSD, but ... who knows?

If you really want to put some time into this, you could order replacement controller PCBs off eBay and see if they work?

Honestly, if there's nothing crucial on the drives, I'd write them off, and of course RMA the brand-new one. HDDs don't last forever.

Thanks for your time on this.

Power spike whilst possible is unlikely as I only connected a single drive initially on the new rig, figured id check first.....then when that didn't display i went through the others.

I suppose i could have done something to them whilst removing from the old rig but as you said would likely have impacted the SSD too.

The reds are arriving tomorrow anyway, if they work ill scrap the others and return the blue like you said.

As for getting the PCBs lol, you've seen how well I've done just plugging some drives in mate, not a chance !!

Just more perplexed at the whole situ more than anything, i fkin hate giving up when i don't actually know what happened but that's where I'm at right now lol

 

[Rtorbs]

Final update,

The WD reds arrived and work absolutely fine!

Still don't know wtf happened but heyho, I've lost a few TB of media but I've finally been able to put the media centre together and sort it out.

Ill no doubt stick about as fancy doing an ncase m1 gaming build to replace my current build in a few months

Cheers for the help guys

 

[rfarmer]

Final update,

The WD reds arrived and work absolutely fine!

Still don't know wtf happened but heyho, I've lost a few TB of media but I've finally been able to put the media centre together and sort it out.

Ill no doubt stick about as fancy doing an ncase m1 gaming build to replace my current build in a few months

Cheers for the help guys

Glad to hear you got it sorted, I know you went through a lot to try and figure it out.

 

[Rtorbs]

Glad to hear you got it sorted, I know you went through a lot to try and figure it out.

Cheers pal, was defo far more frustrating than it should have been and certainly more than I anticipated ha