Question NAS drives in Windows desktop won't initialize

taylorhuston

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I bought two 6tb Seagate Ironwolf drives. My short term plan was to put them into my desktop in RAID 1 as redundant storage. Long term plan is to eventually put them into a Synology NAS, hence why I paid extra for NAS drives. I can't get Windows to properly initialize either one. I am currently trying one disk at a time:
  1. They don't show up in the BIOS.
  2. They do show up in Device Manager, without an error.
  3. They do show up in Disk Management, but when I try and initialize it with GP they either give me an error of "A device which does not exist was specified" or "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error".
  4. If I get the I/O related error the disks do show up in SeaTools for Windows. In there, when they show up, they pass the S.M.A.R.T test, the 'Short Drive Self Test and 'Fix All - Fast' options. They used to fail the 'Fix All - Long' option almost immediately, but as I am writing this the test actually seems to be running this time, though it looks like it's going to take a while (been at 1% for about 10 minutes).
  5. One of the drives made some pretty loud mechanical, almost grindy, noises when I first started this but I can no longer reproduce that problem.
SeaTools does have a bootable option that I think goes more in-depth, I haven't tried that yet.
I have tried plugging in another drive (500gb Samsung SSD) into the same SATA port on the motherboard with the same SATA cable, it recognizes fine. I've also tried other SATA ports and cables for good measure.

This is on Windows 10, latest updates, x470 motherboard with latest BIOS. I know older Windows had problems with drives over 2tb in size, but I don't think that's the issue here. Am I missing some step because they're technically NAS drives? Do I need special high capacity SATA cables or something?

Normally I would assume bad hardware, I got a lemon, it happens, but Ironwolfs are pretty highly recommended so it seems unlikely that I would get two bad units at once.
 
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taylorhuston

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What specific motherboard?
Often, one or more SATA ports are disabled when using something in an M.2 port.
And seeing as you have 2 of those..

But again, I've plugged a 500gb SSD into that same SATA port without issue.
 

USAFRet

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taylorhuston

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The next time the drives show up in SeaTools or Disk Management, try getting a SMART report from CrystalDiskInfo.
It's still running the Fix All Long test in SeaTools. but Crystal Disk Info sees the drive, but cannot pull a health status or temperature reading from it.

I can check the other drive when this one is done, I think this is the one that had the loud grindy sounds the first time I fired it up.
 

taylorhuston

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SeaTools will pass a drive even if it has 20,000 reallocated sectors. It tells you nothing about the real state of the drive.

If you must use the manufacturer's tool, then the SeaChest Utilities are far better, although more complex to use (aimed at "expert users").

https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/software/seachest/
It still seems really unlikely that I would get two DOA drives at once though.