On Tue, May 7, 2024 at 6:04 AM Michael <confabul...@kintzios.com> wrote: > > On Tuesday, 7 May 2024 08:50:26 BST Dale wrote: > > > > I'm aware of what it is and the cable part. I was curious what it looks > > like to BIOS and the OS when one is connected and that pin has the drive > > disabled. From what I've read in some places, the drive doesn't power > > up at all. > > I don't have a drive like this, but as I understand it when the drive receives > voltage on pin 3 it powers down. This requires a MoBo and firmware which > supports such a function - probably unlikely to be found on consumer kit.
I have had these drives. If the drive is connected to many ATX power supplies via a standard cable, the drive simply will not be detected by the computer. With some power supplies it will work fine. It all depends on whether the power supply follows the original SATA spec, or was designed to be compatible with enterprise drives which use the revised spec, which isn't backwards compatible (I don't know who the genius was who had that idea). In order to actually toggle the reset line you need SOMETHING able to switch the line in-between the drive and the PSU. That might be a motherboard (especially with the newer trend towards running all the power through the motherboard), or some other accessory card. Unless the HBA provides the power it won't be there. However, you don't need any fancy hardware for the drive to just work - that is only needed to send the hardware reset to the drive. All you need is to not have that pin powered. That just means the right power supply, the right cable, the right adapter, or some improvised solution (tape over the pin is a common one). In any case, if the pin is the problem, the drive simply won't be detected. Your SATA issues are due to something else. It might be a bad drive, an incompatibility (maybe the drive isn't in the smartmontools database yet), or maybe an issue with the HBA (for USB HBAs in particular you often need to pass command line parameters as there apparently isn't a standard way to pass these commands over USB). I doubt the power line is your problem. As far as shucked drives go - that is typically indicated by the label/model. If it isn't branded in any way it may have been shucked. That shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't have the power issue - the drive might simply be bad. -- Rich
