Hi all,
I'm new here and so far I like the information being shared in this forum. I came about this forum while trying to find and answer to my hard drive woes. I hope the gurus here can help.

OK so I bought 2 3TB WD Essentials over the holiday. I took one out of its case and transferred a bunch of stuff to it then plugged it into my Popcorn Hour. All is good. I just moved so it went on a trip with us across country. Now that I'm settled I pulled the hard drive out of the popcorn hour and plugged it into the computer and the hard drive won't spin up. I tried the original WD essential enclosure and it spins up. OK. I put it in another generic enclosure and it won't spin up. I put it in the popcorn hour and it spins up, huh!!. As I said earlier I have a second 3TB WD essential that I took out of the enclosure and attached to the computer and it spins up as normal. I just don't know whats wrong. If anyone has any ideas on this I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
BlueKalel

Is it possible that the Popcorn Hour has reconfigured the drive to Power Up In Standby (PUIS)? If so, then the drive will only spin up after it receives a read or write command, or a special Set Features subcommand.

I would install your drive in your computer and run HDAT2 with the /w switch. If this wakes up the drive, then this would confirm that PUIS is enabled, in which case you could use HDAT2 to disable it.

http://www.hdat2.com
http://www.hdat2.com/files/cookbook_v11.pdf

There is a PM2 jumper which does the same thing, but I expect that it would not be installed.

Jumper Settings for WD SATA and EIDE Hard Drives:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/o ... 001037.pdf

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks fzabkar! Once I put the /W on the command line it spun up. Now when I try to change the PUIS feature set it gives me an error.

I went into Command/Feature sets
Went down to number 11 which is Power-Up in Standby (PUIS) feature set ... enabled

I hit enter to change it
Are you sure to run "power-Up in Standby (PUIS) feature set' <Y/N> ?

I entered Y

I get
Before and an After Hex then a status that shows ERR then an Error line
Error AMNF TONF ABRT SFRR SFRW MC UNC ICRC

Aborted command. Press any key...

If you have any other suggestions I'm all ears.

I appreciate all the help,
BlueKalel

I'm not sure what OS you are using, but I believe that Windows 7 (for example) does not support the full 3 TB if the drive is formatted as NTFS, when connected directly to a motherboard's SATA bus. I don't think it supports GUID either (yet).

The Essentials enclosure has a SATA to USB adapter that does the translation so that the full 3 TB can be recognized.

WD now sells the 3 TB models with a PCI-e board that will allow a Windows-based computer to recognize the full capacity.

So . . . with that info, do you have the proper interface, and are you still getting an error message?

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

"As of 2010, most current operating systems [including Vista and Windows 7] support GPT, although some operating systems (including Mac OS X and Windows) only support booting from GPT partitions on systems with EFI hardware."

Windows and GPT FAQ:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows ... e/gg463525

Q. Can Windows XP x64 read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
A. Windows XP x64 Edition can use GPT disks for data only.

Q. Can the 32-bit version of Windows XP read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
A. No. The 32-bit version will see only the Protective MBR. The EE partition will not be mounted or otherwise exposed to application software.

Q. Can the 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
A. Starting with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, all versions of Windows Server can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on Itanium-based systems.

Q. Can Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
A. Yes, all versions can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems.

The following document confirms that an additional HBA card is not required for booting from a 3TB drive if an EFI BIOS is present.

High Capacity (≥2.2TB) Technology Brief:
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... hBrief.pdf

Having said all the above, I don't see how this would impact on the PUIS feature set. The PUIS flag is in flash memory ...

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

OK so I can't modify the PUIS with hdat2 because of a bug with WD drives but I found a thread that the user Guru had a hack/fix for it.

forum.hddguru.com/wd5000aavs-pm2-puis-activated-unable-revert-t19107.html

I tried the fix and it said it worked but it didn't. I'm wondering if the bin file used needs to be changed.

Can someone point me to where each reg in the script means? I have another drive exactly like it can I copy something from that drive and put it on the bad one to turn off PUIS?

Thanks,
BlueKalel

AIUI, the particular MHDD script in that other thread was only required because that specific WD model had a bug in the ATA Set Features subcommand (86h) that disabled PUIS.

I would be very surprised if your 3TB drive were to be afflicted with a similar bug. Instead I'm wondering whether access to your PUIS setting is locked out by a Device Configuration Overlay (DCO). You should be able to see this in HDAT2's DCO menu.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

OK so I checked the DCO menu and below is the Show Identify option

Data structure revision: 0002h
Integrity checksum: OK [reported 3Dh, should be 3Dh
Integrity signature: OK reported A5h, should be A5h

Multiword DMA modes supported
-> empty

Ultra DMA modes supported
-> Ultra DMA mode 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Max LBA xxxxx

1. Command/Feature set allowed
-> Security Mode feature
-> Host protected Area (HPA)

2. Command/Feature set allowed
-> Native Command Queuing feature
-> Interface Power Management
-> Software settings preservation

3. Command/Feature set allowed
-> empty

4. Command/Feature set allowed
-> empty

I don't see anything about PUIS.

Thanks,
BlueKalel

I was clutching at straws, but I just wanted to be absolutely certain. In fact, since the drive is reporting that PUIS is enabled (via the ATA Identify Device command), then the PUIS feature set would not have been disabled via a DCO.

According to the following document, the DCO "command causes a device to return a 512-byte data structure. The content of this data structure indicates the selectable commands, modes, and feature sets that the device is capable of disabling or modifying through processing of a DEVICE CONFIGURATION SET command".

Working Draft AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Command Set (ATA8-ACS):
http://www.t13.org/documents/UploadedDo ... A8-ACS.pdf

In short, I'm out of ideas.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Well thanks for all your help. Do you know where I can learn about the REGS and what not from the script? I bet WD hasn't fixed the bug yet.

Thanks,
BlueKalel

Just FYI ...

The register values for each ATA command are explained in the ATA/ATAPI Command Set document in my previous post. However, this only covers standard ATA commands. Western Digital makes use of several proprietary Vendor Specific Commands (VSC) which are not publicly documented.

Here is an open source version of WD's wdidle3.exe utility (which also uses VSCs):
http://idle3-tools.sourceforge.net/

The idle3ctl utility first sends a VSC Enable command to the drive. This prepares it to receive further VSCs. These VSCs are tunneled through to the drive encapsulated as SMART log file data, using standard SMART Read/Write Log commands. The drive then executes the VSC that it extracts from the log file.

In the PUIS MHDD script, the first command is an ATA Set Features Spinup command (EFh / 07h).

The second command is a VSC Enable.

The last command is the VSC that rewrites the PUIS flag. The command is contained within OFF.BIN.

You can compare the MHDD registers against those at the idle3ctl page.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.