HP Prodesk 400 G9, Z2 G9 and Z Power G9 won't restart with 5/6 TB WD USB attached

[Alcance]

Hi,

I have found the following situation, that I can reproduce on HP Prodesk 400 G9, HP Workstations Z2 G9 and Z Book Power G9:

• If I connect an external 5TB/6TB USB drive to any of the PCs, and reboot the PC, it will not boot (power button led will stay lit, but no internal SSD led activity, no image on screen – not even HP logo – keyboard lights are off).
• However If I shutdown the PC with the same drive attached, and then press the power button it will star as expected, no issue.

Please note that:

• BIOS are updated;
• I have tried all USB ports (front and back) – no difference;
• The 6 TB drives are 3.5” units with external power – the 5 TB are 2.5”;
• The same external 5TB/6TB USB drives connected to HP Prodesk 400 G5, ZBook G3, Z2 G1, Probook 840 G3,G5 works as expected: no issues restarting or shutdown;
• If I attach an external 2TB/4TB USB drive on HP Prodesk 400 G9, HP Workstations Z2 G9 and Z Book Power G9 they work as expected: no issues restarting or shutdown;

I have tested this issue with more than 20 units from the “G9” series, and 12 different 5TB/6TB external usb drives (I work in an IT company).

I have found this odd behavior at first with HP Prodesk 400 G8 units, but with a twist: if I attached  the external 5TB/6TB USB drives to a specific front USB port (but only that specific port!) – the PCs will work as expected on restart – on any other USB port I had the same issue.

I think that this can be an issue caused by the new HP Bios (probably a WOLF related issue).

As expected, I have lost several days testing this issue and right now I have a stack of disks that don’t work with the machines they were ordered for…

Does anyone had a similar issue or a suggestion?

Since this looks as an HP issue, how can I escalate a case with HP?

TIA,

Carlos

Update 1 - I can reproduce this behaviour with different HD/Cases, it is not specific to WD drives;

Update 2 - I have found that the original issue is not exact: with the 5/6 TB external drives connected when the PCs are rebooted from Windows thay stay around 4 minutes without any feedback, then the HP and Wolf logo are shown - and 23 minutes later the windows spinning circle is shown and windows starts.

So Windows starts, but it will take near 27 minutes to boot... without the drives it will take less than 1 minute!

(And almost all 27 minutes are spend before the spinning circle, so the issue is not with Windows boot).

Update 3 (27/Jan/2023): I had opened a case with local HP support. After several tests and send diag info, I have just received a call stating the the case will be closed since there is nothing that could be done to change this behaviour.

[DGroves]

until you test A DIFFERENT BRAND external usb drive enclosure and note the results you have no way of knowing if it's the usb device you now have that's the cause of your issue

[Alcance]

Being very busy last weeks, so only this week I managed to test with diferent USB devices:

Tested with 2 Conceptronics USB enclosures:  3.5" Hard Disk Box CHD3DUSB3 and CHDDOCKUSB3 - each with 2 different HDs: 1 TB Seagate ST1000DM003 (1 TB) and Toshiba N300 6TB.

We had the same results we had with WD external drives: with the enclosures+ 1 TB drive connected no issues and power on and reboot - with the 6 TB drive no issues at power on but on reboot we had the same issue (no image, no boot, only power led on, no mouse light).

I had tested also with other usb drives from other brands, but all under 4 TB - and with this HD size we had no issues with any brand.