[SOLVED] 3 Dead HDDs in 4 months

Nov 15, 2020
15
0
10
A few months ago I had 2 Seagate EXOS 16 TB drives die on my in the same machine. They both were clicking and beeping when spun up and were not recognized in the BIOS of my machine. I got a replacement drive (same model) and as of this morning it has the same issues. is it possible that I just got bad drives (and should I look somewhere else for a high-capacity drive) or could it be my PSU is shorting them out? I built my rig less than a year ago, so nothing should be dying from age-related wear.

Thanks

Edit: my current rig is:

EVGA Supernova 1000+ PSU
Asus Prime X570-PRO Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X CPU
64GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte Vision RTX 3090

Unfortunately my CPU cooler is covering my M.2 slot so I can't see which brand/model I have, but some 2TB NVME drive for my boot system.
 
Last edited:
Solution
Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition.

My first thought was "power problem". The drives simply are not getting enough power to fully spin up and/or run.

Are you able to test the Seagate drives in another known working computer? Determine if the drives continue to click and beep when hosted by another computer.

Do you have a multi-meter and know how to use it? Or know someone who does?

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-manually-test-a-power-supply-with-a-multimeter-2626158

Not a full test because the PSU is not under load. However, any out of spec voltages would be a likely reason for the problem(s).

===========

Chronological age...

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition.

My first thought was "power problem". The drives simply are not getting enough power to fully spin up and/or run.

Are you able to test the Seagate drives in another known working computer? Determine if the drives continue to click and beep when hosted by another computer.

Do you have a multi-meter and know how to use it? Or know someone who does?

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-manually-test-a-power-supply-with-a-multimeter-2626158

Not a full test because the PSU is not under load. However, any out of spec voltages would be a likely reason for the problem(s).

===========

Chronological age for components is no longer a viable consideration of "wellness".

For the most part failures result from designed in EOL (End of Life) factors and actual usage.

Add in "short-cut designs", cheap as possible components, along with little or no manufacturing QA (Quality Assurance) it can be a wonder that some products last at all.
 
Solution
Although you dont have the original drives i would look at the new ones and see if the dates and serial numbers are close to each other, they could have had a bad batch of drives.

I know back in the day for servers with multiple drives most companies would split orders of drives from multiple companies. Say you need 8 drives, well pick 2 up from amazon, 2 from newegg, 2 from microcenter, and 2 from CDW. That would give you a high chance that all the drives did not come from the same batch.

I would also check to see if your sata cable has 5 wires on it, yellow, black, red, black, orange. Some cables leave out the orange wire and ive seen harddrive have issues without it.
 

Samduhman

Distinguished
Nov 21, 2016
68
7
18,545
Ya, I'd like more details on this. I'm currently researching large hard drives 12GB+ for my massive library of PC games. The Seagate Exos is one of them.

Could it be the motherboard/bios? I seem to recall running into this many years ago. Only way to test is another HD which you've seen with three drives now. It would be nice if you had another one that is not an EXOS or seagate to confirm or an enclosure to USB.

Power supplies can also cause wonky stuff. I would think you would watch the voltages in the bios screen or a tool like hdwaremonitor
 
I would also check to see if your sata cable has 5 wires on it, yellow, black, red, black, orange. Some cables leave out the orange wire and ive seen harddrive have issues without it.
You are most likely to have problems when the orange wire (+3.3V) is present. This is because the new SATA standard defines SATA pin #3 as the Power Disable pin. Cutting the orange cable fixes the no-spin problem in such cases.
 
Nov 15, 2020
15
0
10
Thanks for all the replies so far. I've hooked up the most recent drive to the only other thing I have, which is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu via a USB 3 to Sata connector with an external power brick and it was still ticking.

Unfortunately for the Multi-meter thing, my PSU cables are all black, so I can't reference the colors listed in the article provided. When I do try different combinations of wires though, I'm not getting 3.3/5/12V, so that is certainly something to look at more closely. I happen to have a spare PSU (Gigabyte P850GM) that I could swap out with, is that my best course of action?