Pavilion 790 series Gaming PC - WD Black drive compatibility issues - will not recognize the drives

[Cyberstylings]

I recently purchased a Pavilion 790 series Gaming PC  64GB - it came with a 2TB SSD (C) drive and a Seagate Barracuda 5400 6TB hard drive (D). I am not a big fan of Seagate, so I intended to swap the senond drive to a WD Black 6TB/256MB cache/7200 drive. 
I purchased a new WD Black 6TB/256MB cache/7200 drive, installed it in the system (replacing the seagate) when the system powered up the WD drive would not even spin up so obviously the system never recognized its existance. I tried the drive in a different computer as an external drive and it spun up and the system saw it. 
I have other WD blacks (all of them functioning in an external array or as an internal drive) so I tried some of them in the new pavilion system and this is what I found. 

WD Black 4TB/256MB cache/7200 - NO spinup

 WD Black 4TB/128MB cache/7200 - NO spinup

WD Black 4TB/64MB cache/7200 - spun up and works fine

I put the seagate back in and it spun up and worked. 

The operating current differernce between the working drive and the non working is at best only 200mA. 

Does anyone know why this brand new top of the line HP computer will not work with these WD black drives. 

I tried to contact HP but they could not give me a list of compatible drives or even attempt ti figure out why this configuration will not work. The only repsonse I got was "you cant do that it will void your warranty" Which I found a bit riduculous.. how do you sell a computer listed as a "gaming computer" and not expect some compu-nerd to have his hands in it day one. lol. 

Note: I had the vendor that I purchased this unit from (authorized dealer) test the same set up with one of their off the shelf system of the same model and they had the same issue so apparently it is a system issue and not speficfic to my machine. 

Any ideas on this? 

[Grzwacz]

Greetings,

Welcome to the forum.

I am not a HP employee.

The only difference I detect in the WD drives you tested is the cache. The HDD having the 64 MB cache spins up so the HP BIOS sees the drive.

Changing a HDD should not void the HP warranty.

Don't know what else to tell you other than sticking with the HP supplied Seagate HDD.

I Don't think HP provides any BIOS settings to modify this behavior.

Regards

[Cyberstylings]

Yes, the difference in HDD Cache seems to be the issue, but that in itself is confusing, why would a system of this calibre not recognize these drives mearly based on the cache size. 

I do not know enough about the HP BIOS to guess whether there is a "compatible drive table" embedded. But one would think if that was the case a BIOS update should resolve that. And it would not be an unacceptable request for a system of this calibre to support drives of that calibre. 

If it is not the BIOS then what pray tell could it be? 

How do I get this seen by someone who can make that determination?  

[Grzwacz]

Hi Cyberstylings,

You have contacted HP Support.

Maybe a different forum member has some ideas.

Your PC's BIOS should see the WD HDDs.

You could try pulling the CR 2032 MB battery to reset CMOS. Then install the WD HDD and reinstall the MB battery.

Regards

Regards

[wb2001]

@Cyberstylings,

Be sure you format the drive as GPT, and set up the partitions.

[Cyberstylings]

Please read the first post. This drive will not even spin up to be formatted or partitioned. 

I have spent 12+ hours on the phone with HP, WD, and my computer vendor. 

I sent the WD 7200/256MB Cache drive to my vendor and they tested it in 3 different computers of the same series Pavillion 790. They saw the same problem. The Drive will not boot or even spin up in the Pavillion 790 computer. 

This seems to be an inherant problem with this series of HP machines. 

The only response I get from HP is "this will void your warranty"

Again:

 WD Black 7200 6TB/256MB Cache - no spin up

WD Black 7200 4TB/256MB Cache - no spin up

WD Black 7200 4TB/128MB Cache - no spin up

WD Black 7200 4TB/64MB Cache -  Spun up and system recognized drive

[wb2001]

@Cyberstylings,

I thought you had the drive acknowledged as an external. Format it there. Then retest on the system.

[Cyberstylings]

I will try that when the drive is returned from my vendor. 

But just to mention in the previous comment I mented a list of drives that I tried to use. 

All of those were already initalized and had data on them and the system would not spin them up, they came fomr an existing functioning external HDD enclosure, yet they would not spin up.
As I had to get this PC up and running, I  am currently runing my second drive as a WD Black 7200 4TB /64MB that is 2 years old.. (the only one of the 6 drives tested that the system would actually recognize). 

. 

[Cyberstylings]

yeah same issue. 

HP has been "ZERO" help on this. 

I have proven the issue to be with the pavilion 790 series desktop computers. 

All they want to do is send me a box, to return the computer for repair. 

and to tell me that installing a new hard drive will void the warranty. 

Now I am stuck with a 3  year old hard drive as my main data drive, because finding a new 4TB/64mb cache WD black is not so easy anymore.