Do you have a modular power supply? If so are you perhaps trying to power the drive with a cable that came from a different power supply? The pin outs on such cables can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, it might be possible a mismatched cable is causing a short or something and the power supply isn't turning on to protect itself.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Hard drives do not consume much power, lower than 20 watts.
If the machine won't power up at all, it's almost certainly something in the power system.
Since it works in a USB dock, the drive itself is probably fine. I'd check different spots on the SATA power cable, or a different cable altogether. Different spots to plug in the cable on the PSU.
I'd bet it's a bad SATA power cable.
I'll give those a try, along with adding up my voltage totals.
This would probably be faster and easier on everyone if I had photos and make/models. :)
It's highly unlikely this is due to your power supply, unless you have a 600W GPU and even then it should at least start.
It does start after you've uncoupled the hard drive? If not, you may have snagged another power cable somewhere. Have you double checked that you turned your PSU back on after installing the hard drive?
If all else fails, you'll just have to remove every additional component, try to get into the BIOS, turn off, install another component and keep going until something breaks.
But if it doesn't start even without your old hard drive, I'll bet you've either forgotten to turn your PSU back on or maybe the little finicky cable for the power switch isn't in properly.
If it does start without your old hard drive, you can pretty much write off that hard drive. Most likely it's causing a power surge or something and it's actually dangerous putting it in your PC.
Yes, it starts and runs normally if I unplug the hard drive. If I plug any of my conventional hard drives back in, it goes right back to not starting at all. This is true of all three of my hard drives, which were all functioning normally in my prior computer, and they all work normally when they're in a powered USB enclosure.
In that case it just sounds like your on board SATA controller is not working. If you're dead set on using these drives, you could look at a PCIe to SATA board. I have one in my server which has 10 SATA ports.
Would a bad SATA controller stop the entire computer from powering on at all if a SATA drive was installed?
Typically no since the southbridge isn’t entirely necessary. But if something is shorted that shouldn’t be shorted it could make the entire system freak out.
Have you checked the cables/ports on both ends? What about the HDD plugged into power but not data?
It sounds like your motherboard is not getting past POST. That means your PC takes issue with booting if a disk doesn't spin up. Normally, you'd only get CPU, RAM and VIDEO tests in POST before it goes into boot. Do you have the startup check lights on your motherboard? If it doesn't POST it will highlight where the problem is.
If it won't boot it'll be an issue with the boot disk, like if there are remnants of an OS on one of those disks. If it won't turn on at all, it doesn't even POST meaning your pc doesn't agree with your hardware configuration.
Yeah, I've got the startup lights, and they're visible through the case, but it's not even doing that. It's dead-dead; pushing the power button does absolutely nothing at all until I unplug the drive. I had issues with the first PCI-e drive (I returned it under warranty), and it would fail before BiOS, but I was getting a red light on the board. This is just... Nothing at all.
Did you already pinpoint if the issue is with all HDDs or just one? Like, connect one and try, disconnect, try the next? From your OP it seems like it's just one HDD causing the issue.
If that's the case, maybe boot into Windows and, after booting, put the broken HDD into one of your USB enclosures. Then run chkdsk on it. Maybe try CrystalDiskInfo too.
If your pc straight up shuts down the moment you connect the drive, chuck it before you do any more damage to your system.
I've tried each HD individually, and the system fails to turn on--not just fails to boot, but doesn't even power up/turn on--with every single one.
I'll try to remember to run chkdsk on them all this evening.
Your power supply has ratings for the different rails. Can the 12V rail handle everything you have on it? Might be time to make a spreadsheet of the known power draws on each rail.
Hmmm. I'll have to check that. I've def. got the manual for the motherboard and graphics card, not sure if I saved instructions for everything else.