Rubin Shrestha
Zend certified PHP/Magento developer
Rubin Shrestha
Blog

New WD 6TB drives shows as 0MB in BIOS

by |Published

I have a Shuttle XPC SX58J3 which came with a WD 1TB HDD. I bought it in about 2010.

I’m trying to replace the HDD with a 250GB SSD (for the OS and applications) plus a WD 6TB HDD (for the home directories).

I’ve successfully removed the 1TB drive, put it in a USB SATA caddy and verified that I can access the data from another machine. I’ve also successfully mounted the SSD and the new HDD in the internal drive caddy which had three spaces (one for the DVD drive, one for the SSD and one for the HDD).

I then booted up the machine and, after some time, I got an error about “3rd master hard disk error”. I see the following:

Auto-Detecting ......Hard Disk:WDC WD60EFZX-68B3FN0
Auto-Detecting ......Hard Disk:CT250MX500SSD1  M3CR043
Auto-Detecting ......CDROM:HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CH10LS20  1.00

3rd Master Hard Disk Error

In the BIOS configuration, I can see the WDC drive in Serial ATA 1 Channel and the Crucial SSD in Serial ATA 3 Channel.

But when I drill down into the details for the WDC drive it says:

Device    :Hard Disk
Vendor    :WDC WD60EFZX-68B3FN0
Size      :0MB
LBA Mode  :Not Supported
Block Mode:Not Supporrted
S.M.A.R.T.:Not Supported

Then in the Boot settings, it shows only the Crucial SSD.

I tried switching the SATA mode to AHCI. When I do this, I see the BIOS trying to detect disks with the message:

Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 0..Hard Disk:
Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1..Hard Disk:
Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 3..CDROM:

AHCI Port0 Device Error

With AHCI enabled, in the BIOS configuration, it shows no disks the IDE settings. But in the Boot settings, it shows both disks.

I’ve tried using a new cable for the WD 6TB drive and also plugging that new cable into a different socket. The only thing that changed was the reported port that the WD drive was connected to. It still says it’s 0MB.

My plan would be to install Debian Linux on the SSD and make it mount the 6TB HDD as /home. I’ve tried just continuing with the Debian installer and it offers only the SSD when it gets to the partitioning step. I guess this is expected. I also tried running fdisk -l in the installer and I can see that it only finds the SSD and the USB drive that contains the installer.

Any suggestions why this drive is showing as 0MB and is not visible to the Debian installer?

You may also like