Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

[Dr_Shred]

I have just purchased and assembled a new computer based around a brand new ASRock Fatal1ty H170 Performace/Hyper motherboard.

The problem I have is that my two brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives are not able to be used!

The drive can be seen in the UEFI BIOS screen. The drive model is identified correctly, however there is no Serial Number (which I would expect) and the size is set to "0".

After booting into Windows 7 64-bit Professional the drive is not visible.

After starting Disk Manager and performing a "Drive Rescan" the device is visible, but is "Uninitialized" (which is expected).

The problem is that any attempt to initialize the drive results in failure. It does not appear possible to write to the device in any way.

I could accept one WD drive being DOA, but I would hope that two being DOA would be highly unlikely. However that means there is a problem with the m/board support for a standard 2.0TB drive.

Any suggestions?

[profJim]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

Welcome to the forum.

Try testing each of the hard drives in a different system to see if the problem is the same.

It's possible that the problem is with the data and/or power cables or that there is a faulty connection at one or more cable ends.

You should also check that there isn't a problem with the motherboard or hard drive connectors.

[Dr_Shred]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

All cables (power and data) have been verified by successfully running other devices, so that is not an issue.

No other system is available to test the drives so they have been RMA'd back to the supplier.

The final solution will be to use the RMA'd drives with a better quality motherboard than an ASRock unit.

[SandsOfTime]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

Which psu is used? If you are using an older one, then maybe it's not compatible with the very low power consumption of the skylake platform in idle mode.

[Dr_Shred]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

Which psu is used?

Brand new build. PSU is Silverstone Strider Gold 850W fully modular. More than adequate for the task.

[Dr_Shred]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board (Solved)

The solution:

Buy a Gigabyte H170-D3HP
Build and install
Drives visible immediately

All problems gone.

[profJim]

Re: Western Digital Caviar Blue 2.0TB drives fail on H170 Performance/Hyper m/board

Glad to hear that your new Gigabyte motherboard solved the problem.

Thanks for the update.