Power disabled pin 3 issue workarounds with all or some newer drives?

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markm75

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Sep 12, 2008
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I have an older server chassis i use for a media center.. i do not believe it supports newer drives that have the pin 3 issue ive been reading about..

I'm puzzled by this "newer feature" as i havent ran into the issue thus far.. i have quite a few hard drives in the backplane slots.. mostly 4 and 8tb drives from about 2 years ago.

What i have done now is purchased an 8TB elements usb drive that i was going to shuck and put in this media center server (flex raid).. the drive inside appears to be a white label wd80emaz-00m9aa0 according to crystal disk info.

Given that I guess it has this issue.

Its my understanding one direct workaround is the molex to sata connector.

I read about one case of these connectors causing a fire (maybe a fluke or human error unsure).
I did see one other workaround of just snipping off the 3rd pin on the drive itself.

Still unsure how i managed to not run into this.. is this also the case with Any new drive purchased or only certain ones (my older 8tb units are seagates i think).

Has anyone had any experience with this issue and workarounds?

Thanks in advance
 
There is absolutely no sense in that molex-to-sata connector causing fire other than some broken connector or wires getting short with anything else in the case. You can just cut the orange wire (I beileve it was the 3.3V one) on the sata connector or tape over the pin.
It depends on which particular drives/series are ones that implement this crap with the 3.3V pin feature. I think "white" seagates are one example.
 
tedych said:
There is absolutely no sense in that molex-to-sata connector causing fire other than some broken connector or wires getting short with anything else in the case. You can just cut the orange wire (I beileve it was the 3.3V one) on the sata connector or tape over the pin.
It depends on which particular drives/series are ones that implement this crap with the 3.3V pin feature. I think "white" seagates are one example.
Click to expand...

Yeah i figured i'd pull the orange wire out of the original connector if that were the case or maybe pull it out of the molex connector (or cut the orange).. the tape for $6.95 isnt a hard choice either i guess, but snipping or isolating the wire seems easy enough.

The drive that is apparently inside the elements i bought is the wd80emaz-00m9aa0 Which i think has a white label.

I think even a few of the newer retail HGST 10TB have this 3.3 "feature" too.
 
Backplanes are rarely if ever affected, because they don't normally supply 3.3v (drives don't use it, never did). It's only a problem for power supplies with SATA power cables. The cleanest solution in that case is to remove the 3.3v pin from the modular PSU connector (assuming it's a modular type PSU).

Power disable is a "data center" feature that I wouldn't expect to be found in true retail drives. But many of the WD drives ripped from USB cases do have it (not all of them, it's random whether a particular drive has it).
 
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Much rather unplug a 3.3V cable from a connector, fixing it forever as it is no longer part of the spec. It was pretty much dead out the door, nobody ever really used it in standard hardware.

Better than having to tape over every damn drive with a sliver that might come off later, and most modular cables serve 2-4 drives so still less effort.
 
Luke M said:
Backplanes are rarely if ever affected, because they don't normally supply 3.3v (drives don't use it, never did). It's only a problem for power supplies with SATA power cables. The cleanest solution in that case is to remove the 3.3v pin from the modular PSU connector (assuming it's a modular type PSU).
Click to expand...
Some drives have used it actually. I have some older SSDs that are 3.3V only. Some newer SSDs also are 12/3.3V (Intel 750 for example) and can take SATA power via an adapter. 3.3V is still in the SATA spec using pins 1 & 2. Only one of the three 3.3V pins was repurposed.
 
Blue Fox said:
Some drives have used it actually. I have some older SSDs that are 3.3V only. Some newer SSDs also are 12/3.3V (Intel 750 for example) and can take SATA power via an adapter. 3.3V is still in the SATA spec using pins 1 & 2. Only one of the three 3.3V pins was repurposed.
Click to expand...

I looked up the Intel 750, the card version uses 3.3v/12v, but the 2.5" version is 12V only.
 
Blue Fox said:
Mine showed both voltages on the label for the 2.5". Google Images shows the same.
Click to expand...

I see, the label says "3.3v 1ma" - so it requires 3.3v for some reason, but it's not pulling power from it (3.3v 1ma is 0.003W).
 
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