I bought a WD Gold 12TB hard drive, model WD121KRYZ, roughly six or seven years ago. It was shipped internationally, but the protective box was discarded during transport, leaving the drive only in an anti-static bag. It never worked properly afterward, although I kept it instead of throwing it away.
When connected through a USB dock, the drive spins up and then powers down. I initially suspected the 3.3V power-disable feature, but another HGST drive works with the same dock. I also tried an adapter intended to bypass power disable and tested the drive with hot-plug enabled in the BIOS.
The drive remains powered while the computer is starting, but spins down as soon as Windows loads. If I connect it after Windows has booted, it spins up, produces a rapid, evenly spaced ticking sound, and a specific area of the PCB becomes extremely hot. Windows can identify the drive model when I attempt to safely remove it, but the disk never becomes available for formatting or normal access.
Could this be a damaged PCB, power problem, or some kind of security/SED behavior? Is there any safe way to test or recover the drive?
2 Answers
This does not sound like normal SED behavior. An encrypted or self-encrypting drive would still generally remain powered and present a usable device; it would not normally make a rapid ticking sound while a chip on the PCB becomes dangerously hot. That points much more toward an electrical fault, damaged controller board, or damage caused during shipping. Stop powering it for long periods, since the hot component could fail completely or damage other parts of the drive.
A 12TB enterprise drive needs a stable 12V supply as well as 5V, and some USB docks also interact badly with 3.3V power-disable pins. However, since you already tried a power-disable workaround and the drive is detected only partially while a PCB area overheats, the dock is unlikely to be the whole problem. Connect it directly to SATA with a known-good power supply for one brief test, then disconnect it if the ticking or overheating returns. Formatting will not help unless the operating system can actually enumerate the disk, and repeatedly trying it risks making data recovery harder.
The fact that Windows can read the model but cannot expose the disk does not mean the drive is healthy. It may be getting through initial identification and then failing when the controller tries to initialize the platters or service area.
The drive should be tested with a proper 12V power supply and a direct motherboard SATA connection, not just a USB dock. If it behaves the same way there, the drive is probably faulty rather than being affected by Windows.