Not booting up when 16TB drive attached

[ctruter]

I recently acquired an HP Compaq 6200 to use as a local media/home automation server.

It is the model using the i3 2100 CPU (sourced an i7 2600 CPU, still to arrive), added 32GB of ram, and an expansion card that allows the machine to boot up using an M.2 (256GB connected to a SATA port) drive into Windows 10 (11 not supported).

All of that works fine, but as soon as I add a 16TB drive, it displays the 16TB drive on the bootup screen correctly, but the machine is stuck indefinitely at the HP bootup/logo screen.

Only when I leave the 16TB plugged out and start the machine up, wait for Windows to startup, and then plug it in, it works perfectly, able the use the 16TB drive without any issues after that (obviously a bit annoying having to open up the machine every time a restart is required).

I updated the bios to the latest 2.33 (2019) version, I noticed that 2.24 included this update:
- Added fix to prevent external USB HDDs larger than 2.2TB from causing boot errors during boot into Windows.

But this doesn't have any effect, any ideas?

[BeemerBiker]

I assume you have AHCI enabled in bios.

Make sure you have a post delay of at least 5 seconds to allow the drive to spin up.

Try pressing F9 after powering on and select the 256gb boot drive.  Does the system still hang up?

Do you have any empty slots to add a secondary SATA controller or a USB3 adapter?  I have used vanltec ugt-st622 to add sata and esata.

=============

I have done the same thing several years ago but using several 2tb drives.  The multimedia app I used was FabPlayer from DVDFAB.  I recommend their player.  Their ripper is useful only if you have an Nvidia board with CUDA.

I ended up getting larger disk drive and using synology as their NAS supports android tablets

[ctruter]

Thank you for the prompt response, yes AHCI is enabled.

Unfortunately not as simple as an incorrect boot device, nor setting post delays.

When the 16TB is plugged in on startup it's impossible to select boot devices or even enter the BIOS.

I've got a number of other drives as well using the SATA interface - plus other expansion cards (even tried disconnecting all drives and only connecting the 16TB one), whenever the 16TB drive is connected it is simply stuck at the HP logo.

[BeemerBiker]

Put the 16gb on the blue connector as it is likely sata3 and the  others are sata2

According to doc there is only one sata3 connector

Just a guess that the blue is the 6.0 speed.

[edit]

All the blue are sata III or 6.0 ghz (MT and SFF)

Consider running an SATA cable from the black port out to a back bracket eSata low profile adapter and put your 16tb into an external case that supports eSata.   Many USB3 enclosures support eSata.

[ctruter]

Unfortunately not "port" related, initially this drive was contained within a USB enclosure, and exhibited the exact same behavior, currently connected to an expansion card, like stated I tried it as the main sata0 device as well, and the drive only works once the machine is fully started up in windows.

[BeemerBiker]

Looks like you covered everything.

Check for firmware upgrade on disk drive.

[ctruter]

Thanks, that one thing I didn't try yet

[ctruter]

None of the other options mentioned worked, seems like other HP models of later years exhibit the same behavior, so this is most likely a BIOS related issue, will perhaps get a new machine later on and dump this one

[BeemerBiker]

I just re-read this post and realized that the drive was designed for an external enclosure.  That is the problem.  I can not find the original discussion that I read some time ago but I found this

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/266218/old-external-hdd-drive-not-recognized-properly-in-n...

and it referred to this

https://goughlui.com/2013/10/02/experiment-usb-to-sata-bridge-chips-and-2tb-drives/

The problem is (as I understand it) is the drive had 4k sectors and expects the enclosure hardware to do the transformation to the 512.

I am guessing the BIOS on your system is unable to handle the 4k sector size as the firmware on the drive does not do the translation to 512 byte sectors.  This problem also occurs in NVME  SSD and a chip on the NVME emulates 512 byte sectors to allow 4k byte MVME to boot.

If I find the original article that described your problem exactly I will post it here.   I remember reading the that large drives taken out of USB enclosures do not always work.  It may have been a MacOS article.

I did not find the original article I read but I found the key words to search for using google

"shucked external hard drive problems"

video about problem is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFnkEWBNL40