Aurora R12, added 6TB drive, issues appear

Question

Hi, I just bought an Alienware Aurora R12 and I'm having a curious issue. The system came with 1TB NVMe and 2TB hard drive, everything works great like this. I upgraded the hard drive to 6TB (one I took out of my old Gaming PC, the actual drive is probably a year or so old) The drive is a Toshiba HDWE160. One of these https://www.toshiba-storage.com/products/toshiba-internal-hard-drives-x300/  The issue I get is when I either shutdown the PC from Windows, or go into bios, make a change, save and reset, the PC won't start back up again. The system appears to shutdown, the lights on the front go off for a second then the ring light comes back on, I also notice the Alien head briefly shows as red/amber. When I try and turn on the system at this point, the Alien head lights up and the fans start but nothing else happens, no keyboard or screen. I have to hold the power button to turn off,  then unplug the system until the ring light goes out, then plug back in and turn on, then it works as normal! I just tried tonight putting the original 2TB disk back in and the system works normally! So I'm assuming theres some compatibility issue with my 6TB drive, anyone any ideas, or have seen this behaviour before? Also, I've run all the updates in both Windows 10 and through the Alienware updater.  Thanks  A.

Ayster · Accepted Answer

Hi All, Little update to this thread. I've had a bit of a nightmare trying to get the drive working, I imaged it, diskpart cleaned it, reformatted as exfat, this allowed the pc to start, but I couldn't load my files in from the image, as if I restored it, the drive went back to ntfs and if I tried to manually copy the files from the image, I would run out of disk space! I initially used Acronis True Image Western Digital edition (I'd bought a WD My book to back up onto) , however I then tried macrium reflect 8 to make and restore the image, and now the computer seems to boot fine, even with the disk formatted as NTFS! Not sure what fixed it, but thanks for the suggestions.

Vanadiel · Answer

First time I hear of this. I am assuming the drive is formatted in GPT and has no operating system on it or been used as a bootable drive before?

Vanadiel · Answer

That is odd. Technically speaking it should work, but officially it has only been validated for storage capacity up to 2 GB.

R12 Storage

I guess you could try making 3 x 2TB storage partitions, and see what would happen. I doubt it would make a difference, but it is worth a try.

Ayster · Answer

Hi, Yes its GPT no OS and not been bootable, just used as a data disk like it is in the Aurora. Thanks. A

Ayster · Answer

Thanks, thats pretty bad if you can't put more than a 2TB HDD in the system! I dont want to repartition as I have data on there.

Ayster · Answer

Has anybody here put in a disk bigger than 2tb in an R12. I saw a video on Youtube where someone put a 4tb drive into an R11, not sure if they are different than the R12? I'd try buying a new disk if I thought it might work. thanks.

Vanadiel · Answer

Another thing you can try is connect everything, including the new HDD, and run a pre boot diagnostic. PSA  At least you will know if it sees the HD and it passes all tests, or not.

Ayster · Answer

Thanks, yeah I ran the diags already, and everything passes, I didn't do the extended ones though so may try those.

r72019 · Answer

It may be due to having it set to RAID instead of AHCI in BIOS, you might want to check that.  Could be a drive issue.  Unlikely an issue with the drive size.

r72019 · Answer

Also, try disabling windows fast startup.

speedstep · Answer

use diskpart to clean the drive then format as EXFAT and the issues will go away i use up to 12tb drives this way and its fine.

Ayster · Answer

@r72019 wrote: Also, try disabling windows fast startup.  hmm, thanks I'll try that. Might at least solve the issue shutting down windows.

Ayster · Answer

Have tried both RAID and AHCI and still has the issue.

Ayster · Answer

@speedstep wrote:

use diskpart to clean the drive then format as EXFAT and the issues will go away i use up to 12tb drives this way and its fine.

Thanks, think this will be a last resort as I have data I want to keep on the drive. Could buy a new disk though and set it up as above..

A51-06 · Answer

Try connecting only one HDD and only the 6Tb inside the system and remove the 2Tb. Then try booting.

Alienware Desktops

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