Hi.

I have Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H motherboard and I purchased a WD HC310 (0B35948 HUS726T4TALN6L4) HDD.

If I initialize disk in GPT or MBR, I cannot get through POST in AHCI mode. IDE and RAID mode let the POST pass, but not the AHCI mode.

What can I do to fix this?

Solved (but needs some clarification)

DON'T TRY THAT IF YOU HAVE ANY CRITICAL DATA ON THE HDD! ALWAYS MAKE A COPY OF THE DATA!

After initialization (and any further creation of volumes, copying files etc), but BEFORE the reboot, open a hex editor, in the editor - disk and delete (fill with "00") from offset 0x1000 to 0x1060. Save, reboot.

After reboot this data is recreated, but it doesn't make the POST of Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H freeze.

DON'T TRY THAT IF YOU HAVE ANY CRITICAL DATA ON THE HDD! ALWAYS MAKE A COPY OF THE DATA!

P.S. Can anyone, please, explain, what is this at offset 0x1000-0x1060? How could it freeze POST in "BEFORE" state? What happens after I delete it and reboot? Why is it recreated differently (and doesn't freeze POST)?

An Examination of The Microsoft Windows 7 and 8 GPT 'Protective' MBR and EFI Partitions:
https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/GPT.htm

Your drive appears to be a 4Kn model. I wonder if that is responsible for the strange BIOS behaviour.

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/data-center-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc300-series/product-manual-ultrastar-dc-hc310-sata-oem-spec.pdf

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Frank ,
You mean 4k native and no emulation for 512 sector size .

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Yes, it's 4K native. Note that the offset of EFI PART is 0x1000 whereas it would be 0x200 for a 512e drive.

The OP has edited the EFI PART structure so that instead of pointing to LBA 2 as the starting LBA of the array of GUID Partition entries, it now points to LBA 0x3A3817D6. The capacity of the drive is 976,754,646 physical sectors, which is 0x3A3817D6 in hexadecimal, so the BIOS is being told that the partitioning info is in the first sector beyond the limits of the drive. Obviously there is nothing to be found at LBA 0x3A3817D6, so BIOS doesn't attempt to boot the drive. I can't see how this helps the OP, though. One would still need to partition and format the drive, and I would expect that an invalid EFI PART structure would prevent this.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

1. Init HDD as GPT.
2. Create 4 TB full-size NTFS partition (see "BEFORE" on the screenshot), copy some data (few folders and files).
3. Fill 0x1000-0x1060 with zeroes.
4. Reboot
5. Everything is OK (see "AFTER" on the screenshot), data is intact.

Windows 10 1909.

The only question is: will it be OK for long, or will it someday/somehow corrupt the data?

The Gigabyte techsupport is working on this issue for about 4 months now. Turns out, they don't have any 4Kn HDD in Taiwan to test, so they ordered it abroad and gave the estimations about a month from now (so, August 2020, perhaps maybe possibly).

Anyway, on the other forum a user suggested this solution:

1. Enable the "Intel Rapid Start Technology" and set "Rapid Start store search type" to "PCIE AHCI/NVME Controller".
2. Save and reboot.

That worked! So I went further:

3. Reboot, open BIOS setup again.
4. Disable the "Intel Rapid Start Technology"
5. Save and reboot.

Again, POST is passed, system boots OK!

So I think the issue is solved, but 2 questions remain for Gigabyte (which they don't answer in ESupport):
1. Why does the "Rapid Start store search type" option set to "Intel AHCI/RAID Controller" does not let the POST pass with a 4Kn HDD?
2. Why is the "Rapid Start store search type" option even read if the "Intel Rapid Start Technology" is disabled?

Fixed with T2 BIOS from Gigabyte techsupport:

https://dropmefiles.com/DBOiF
https://www4.zippyshare.com/v/NdOaSaGS/file.html
https://gofile.io/d/0TWG0E