Trying to add WD Black 5TB Hard Disk Drive to Dell XPS 8900 W7-64

[ttmayb]

New Dell XPS8900 4GHz 24GB 2TB SATA drive w/256 SSD and Win 7 64bit. Trying to add WD Black 5TB Hard Disk Drive SATA 6 Gb/s 128MB Cache.

BIOS/Disk Manager do not recognize it. Upgraded BIOS, swapped SATA cables, changed SATA mobo slots, changed SATA cable, and still no success. Mobo SATA connections have different colors (white, black, blue) and are not laid out per Dell XPS8900 online manual specs. In the device manager I see the SAMSUNG drivers for the C: 256GB SSD and D: 2TB DATAPARTITION, but nothing for the WD.

Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Maybe BIOS is non-EFI or non-UEFI? If that's the case, you are stuck with 2TB limit. Also, maybe your bios is set into "Legacy" mode? That would make UEFI bios into "compatible" mode which basically makes bios non-uefi until you turn that back to UEFI

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, ttmayb!

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles with the WD Black 5 TB drive. 🙁 Great job with the troubleshooting so far! Now, I'd recommend you to test the HDD on another computer and see if it will get properly recognized there. This way we can, hopefully, find the source of the issue.
If it still doesn't get detected there, I'd strongly recommend you to get in touch with our customer support and let them know about this. You should be able to send an RMA request and get a replacement from us. Here are a couple of useful links from our website:

Warranty Policy - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=CkDVqm
WD Support Contacts - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=RJ6Vwe

Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ttmayb]

Thanks to all that responded.

SuperSoph_WD;

I have spent 3 days manipulating hardware in two XPS computers to find out that the WD5TB disk is probably sick.

To recapitulate the problem, a new WD5GB was installed in a Dell XPS 8900 that only has SATA drive D: 2TB and C: 256GB SSD. Two more SATA drives can be added.

I installed the WD5 in the 8900; cold started the system and noted that neither the BIOS nor the Disk Manager could see it. I changed cables and mobo slots a number of times and no change.

To continue defining the problem, I opened another computer, Dell XPS 600, with 3 working SATA drives (C – Win7, D, and E all containing hundreds of TBs of data – backed up) and removed D and E. I installed the WD5 using the same SATA cable and location as one of the removed drives. Cold started the system and on boot up I saw a flash message that NO SATA drives found. I F2ed and entered into the BIOS. Under DRIVES in th eBIOS menu, the C drive was listed in SATA 0 and the WD5 listed in SATA 2. I exited the BIOS and received the message NO BOOT DEVICE AVAILABLE. I hit F2 and continued to the DRIVES menu. Turned off SATA 2 connected to WD5, exited the BIOS menu, and the system started to boot again. I again received an error message about SATA drives not being found and I was given an F1 option to continue or F2 to enter SETUP. I F1ed this time and Windows booted up normally.

I repeated the testing on the XPS 600 several times with the same results. When WD5 is logically enabled, the system does not boot to Win7.

Validating that the WD5 is sick, I installed the E drive, taken out of the XPS 600, into the XPS 8900 using the same cable that connected the WD5. Cold started the 8900 and everything worked fine. Windows explorer showed the transferred E drive and all the files.

So unless there is something I missed, it appears that the WD5 is sick and needs to be replaced.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, ttmayb!

This seems truly unfortunate, indeed! 🙁 It's possible that the WD Black 5 TB was damaged before you got it! You should definitely get in touch with our customer support using the links I provided you with above and raise your RMA request.
Here are some more details regarding packing the product and shipping it.
Packing instructions - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=RT1Oih
RMA Shipping address - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=6CAKmw

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ttmayb]

Tried to install the disk again in the 8900 in place of a working SATA hard drive. Sys booted, drive not recognized. So it is DOA. Agree that it could have been damaged in shipping, or even manufacturing. Just disappointed that I lost a week on this job.

THANKS for the help.

Solution is to return drive.