Hot Swap Bay with Two HDDs on a Single Molex: Enough Power?

[y0gurt]

Hey guys, I'm having a curious problem.

Out of ease, I recently added two 5TB WD Black HDDs in my Hot Swap bay. After doing so, I noticed that the Windows load time had been increased significantly from a few seconds to almost a minute and a half. If I remove one of the HDDs from the bay the load time drops almost to where it was... So I'm sitting here wondering what's going on.

The Hot Swap bay is running off of a single molex as seen here:

Front side for reference:

I'm wondering if I should just stop being lazy and pull them out of the Hot Swap bay and give them each their own SATA power cable instead... Or if this would make any difference at all.

Is there any danger to doing what I'm currently doing? I'm worried the HDDs aren't getting enough power or something... Anybody know?

My PSU is a EVGA SuperNOVA 1200 P2.

 

[y0gurt]

Should note that I'm booting from a 500gb SSD and that the boot order in the bios has these large HDDs in last place... The order of the SATA cables is also correct. They're in AHCI mode. Motherboard is an ASROCK Z97 OC Formula. Bios is up-to-date.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Load time from the Windows splash screen, or load time from power-on (including BIOS initialization and scanning out all the SATA devices)?

That should be enough power, so unless there's something wrong with the backplane, it's more likely that there's something wrong w/ one of the drives.

 

[y0gurt]

It hangs around the Windows Splash Screen for a while before continuing on.

Your suggestion prompted me to time it and see if it was isolated to one of the drives. It was. The average time from powering on and entering the Windows desktop was about 38 seconds with neither of the drives, 1 minute 35 seconds with the top drive, and 40 seconds with the bottom drive. Lo and behold, the top drive was to blame. I swapped the bottom drive into the top drive's position to see if it was maybe a SATA cabling issue, but it was the same as it was on the bottom...

I dunno why it's doing this... Currently running a check for bad sectors on it, but I had no issues when I formatted it yesterday.

The only thing that is on there right now is a backup image of the C drive using Windows 7's backup utility. I turned off the backup schedule and everything since then, but the same results... Takes about one minute longer to progress past the Windows Splash Screen.

Very odd... Since I do not know the problem, I'm not sure I can RMA it? I'll see what the disk check says when it finishes...

Edit- Would the backup imaging saved on there be causing it? No, right?

 

[Elixer]

Get CrystalDiskInfo (free), and check the SMART status.

 

[y0gurt]

Get CrystalDiskInfo (free), and check the SMART status.

I did, it says it's good (though these two are running hot in that Swap Bay). I also ran a disk check on the drive... It finally finished... Revealed nothing...

I'm stumped... I'm gonna quick format the disk right now and see if it has any effect since the scan didn't reveal any bad sectors. The only thing that is on there is the backup image of the C:\ drive... I'm wondering if getting rid of that will do anything.

😕

 

[y0gurt]

The quick format didn't have any effect on the boot time... No idea what to do. Everything seems ok aside from the HDD causing Windows to boot slowly. I dunno if this is benign or an early sign of a more serious issue. I probably wouldn't care if the drive wasn't so expensive.

Weird.

 

[PliotronX]

Are they in a RAID array? If so, what is managing the array?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The quick format didn't have any effect on the boot time... No idea what to do. Everything seems ok aside from the HDD causing Windows to boot slowly. I dunno if this is benign or an early sign of a more serious issue. I probably wouldn't care if the drive wasn't so expensive.

Weird.

It is weird.

Weird behavior from a spinning/platter HDD usually means failure will happen sooner rather than later.* Regardless of what SMART says.**

I would exchange it NOW (make up whatever excuse you need to). You're entitled to an HDD that works correctly, not just one that sort of works.

Quick Format doesn't really catch problems. You'll want to do a multi-pass zero-all-data to individually force a test of each sector. That will take a while.

* Make sure you have the latest firmware installed though.
** A benchmark utility might be interesting diagnostic - at work, we usually flag a drive as "likely to fail - replace" once latency start creeping up - the HDD controller is spending too much time covering up some underlying fault. The additional latency causes performance issues in large arrays.

 

[y0gurt]

Are they in a RAID array? If so, what is managing the array?

No, they are not.

Quick Format doesn't really catch problems. You'll want to do a multi-pass zero-all-data to individually force a test of each sector. That will take a while.

I know, I know... I formatted it the long way a few days ago. I did the quick format yesterday because I had just spent 9 hours checking the disk for bad sectors which revealed none.

I would exchange it NOW (make up whatever excuse you need to). You're entitled to an HDD that works correctly, not just one that sort of works.

I suppose I will do that today... Only thing stopping me is not knowing why it's doing this. Haha, I want to know!

Thank you for your help, Dave... I'm just gonna send it back.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Quick Format doesn't really catch problems. You'll want to do a multi-pass zero-all-data to individually force a test of each sector. That will take a while.

True. Since the drive is already formatted a couple of times, there (hopefully) isn't anything important on it. But pushing a borderline drive like that can induce failure, so be prepared.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Load time from the Windows splash screen, or load time from power-on (including BIOS initialization and scanning out all the SATA devices)?

That should be enough power, so unless there's something wrong with the backplane, it's more likely that there's something wrong w/ one of the drives.

Just off the top of my head, he could investigate the choice of SATA controller ports and the post-time drive enumeration process. And run WD Diag against each one of those drives, as well.

[Whoops! Sorry. I forgot to read one of OP's later posts here. He's apparently done the testing.]

 

[PliotronX]

No, they are not.


I know, I know... I formatted it the long way a few days ago. I did the quick format yesterday because I had just spent 9 hours checking the disk for bad sectors which revealed none.


I suppose I will do that today... Only thing stopping me is not knowing why it's doing this. Haha, I want to know!

Thank you for your help, Dave... I'm just gonna send it back.

I would eliminate the little backplane board even though the molex plug is capable of delivering many times more power than drives are capable of pulling down. Have you tried wiring the problem drive independently somewhere else in the case (even if laying somewhere temporarily)?

 

[y0gurt]

I would eliminate the little backplane board even though the molex plug is capable of delivering many times more power than drives are capable of pulling down. Have you tried wiring the problem drive independently somewhere else in the case (even if laying somewhere temporarily)?

I just did for SnG but no difference. There's something wacky with this thing.

I sent in for the RMA, I'll ship 'er off tomorrow.

Thank you for your help!

 

[PliotronX]

I just did for SnG but no difference. There's something wacky with this thing.

I sent in for the RMA, I'll ship 'er off tomorrow.

Thank you for your help!

Rodger dodger! Glad it's not the computer 🙂 I am curious if the replacement does the trick.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, that sounds like a drive that has "problems", even if they can't be positively diagnosed.

And if you get a different replacement (check serial number), and it STILL acts that way, then it's got to be a software driver problem, or maybe a bad motherboard port / controller or something?

One last thing you could try, is deleting the "Disk" item from Device Manager that corresponds with that drive, and then "Scan for HW Changes", and let it re-install the Disk Device. (Clearing the upper / lower filters in the process.)

I have a (now late) friend, who had an issue once with his 1TB Seagate HDD acting REALLY SLOWLY on HDTune. We're talking like 2MB/sec read speed. Turned out, he had both AVG and Norton installed somehow, and they were conflicting. That's why (I think) I asked about installed AV software, and un-installing it.

 

[y0gurt]

Yeah, that sounds like a drive that has "problems", even if they can't be positively diagnosed.

And if you get a different replacement (check serial number), and it STILL acts that way, then it's got to be a software driver problem, or maybe a bad motherboard port / controller or something?

One last thing you could try, is deleting the "Disk" item from Device Manager that corresponds with that drive, and then "Scan for HW Changes", and let it re-install the Disk Device. (Clearing the upper / lower filters in the process.)

I have a (now late) friend, who had an issue once with his 1TB Seagate HDD acting REALLY SLOWLY on HDTune. We're talking like 2MB/sec read speed. Turned out, he had both AVG and Norton installed somehow, and they were conflicting. That's why (I think) I asked about installed AV software, and un-installing it.

Argh, sorry to hear about your friend.

I wrote down the serial number before I shipped it back (hehehe)! I will be sure to report back when the replacement arrives... (hopefully a different one!) I will give your Device Manager trick a go if I am still having issues. Hopefully it does not come to that!

 

[y0gurt]

Just checking in to say that the RMA drive arrived today and the problem has gone away... Was just a bad drive.

 

[PliotronX]

Just checking in to say that the RMA drive arrived today and the problem has gone away... Was just a bad drive.

Nice! I hate it when smart status shows nothing yet all signs point to it as the culprit.