PC Hardware → [rant] HDD is not valid

I decided to add an SSD to a SFF Dell Optiplex 755 and replace the original 160GB HD with a 2TB WD Red, and now I have to hit F1 every time on boot. !@#$%^&*()+_!

Strange, I'm running a 64 GB SSD and 500 GB WD RE3 in my Optiplex 330 at work and have never seen that pop up with it. There's a few 755s at one of my departments, but no SSDs in them.

Do you have SMART reporting enabled in the BIOS? What BIOS version are you running?

Dell likes to put recovery partitions, and even a partition for it's diagnostics on the hdd, if those are not on the hdd correctly you'll likely see that message. Next time build it yourself, and save yourself the annoyances of package systems.

You could also try calling Dell, but I'm sure we all know how well that might turn out.

This is a small form factor PC that has 3 bays total (1x 5.25", 1x 3.5" floppy, and 1x 3.5" HDD) and 4 (!!) power connectors total (1x mobo, 2x SATA, 1x floppy). It actually works fine with just the SSD in the floppy bay, but 120 Gig is a little short of what I need.

BIOS is the latest (A22), SMART reporting is enabled.

Yeah, I definitely don't have the Dell recovery partition -- but I still have the HDD that was in there -- maybe I can try to recover it from there.

Looking at Dell's driver download, there are quite a few BIOSes are available there but they don't have any change list for them. Also, I don't see anything there that would allow me to re-create their HDD setup.

I got it used for a 'can't refuse' price.

It's not so much the recovery partition, but their bios likely is looking for a special set of partitions which hold it's diagnostics.

Did you buy that splitter? Is there room to cram the old hdd in? Maybe you can do that, and just set the booting drive.

Since it's a SFF machine, putting the old HD back while the new one and the SSD is still there is likely to be either very difficult, or nigh impossible without creating my own mounting hardware.

I think creating/copying the needed partitions is probably the best option to resolve this.

»/r0/do ··· rd01.gif

This is from a newer Dell machine I worked on with a gpt partition for uefi, but I'm actually scared to resize their os drive to add a data partiton as it's not at the end of the drive, they stuck more proprietary crap after the os partition so it would change their order. Note not all the partitions shows up in windows either, and this was taken from a nix live cd.

Have you tried F2 to enter setup and save the new drive configuration?

Yes, and it makes no difference whatsoever.

I actually went through the settings with a fine tooth comb to see if there's something I could set -- but no luck. The closest option is turning off keyboard errors.

Have you checked with Dell to see if the motherboard supports a 2TB drive?
I have a feeling it won't. The largest drive I've seen in this line of SFF from Dell is 1.5TB, and that was machine I upgraded for a friend.

You can blame Dell's BIOS for this message. Partitions/drive layout and whatnots have nothing to do with this message.

This is not a new behaviour (lots of vendor-lock-in products have done this sort of thing over the years, specifically checking RAM SPD data and HDD vendor strings and comparing them to a specific set of what's considered "acceptable", else bitches) though sounds like it's your first encounter with it) for some systems.

There's a workaround mentioned here pertaining to "Keyboard Error Reporting" (I know, sounds unrelated, but give it a try):

»superuser.com/questions/ ··· when-reb

Also, it may be that the BIOS checks and tries to analyse very specific SMART attributes and if they do not exist the end result is aforementioned warning. I've seen this happen on enterprise-grade hardware too (HP/Compaq ProLiant systems with Intel SSDs claiming to support SCT but in actuality do not -- issue is a combination of a bad assumption on HP's part in their BIOS, as well as a firmware bug/mistake on Intel's part). Nobody except Dell would know the true reason for it.

OK, so there's a Dell kb article on it. Thermal issues in this case make perfect sense because there's very little cooling in that particular case.

I just turned off keyboard error reporting, and the error still gets reported as before, but now it will not stop the boot process.

That KB sounds like a bunch of intentionally vague nonsense.

Chances are this is the exact same BIOS design bug that HP/Compaq has/had in their BIOSes:

The BIOSes issue the necessary ATA CDBs to the disk to get all SMART attribute data. They they incorrectly assume that the SMART attributes returned contain attribute 194 (Temperature). Many SSDs (particularly Intel) do not include a thermistor on their PCBs, thus there is no SMART attribute 194. This causes the BIOS to spit out a bunch of hullabaloo warnings about "temperature failure" (in the case of the HP/Compaq systems) because the BIOS lacked proper handling code for disks without that attribute. I can point you to the thread on the Intel forums discussing this at length if you want to read it, where HP and Intel had to have private behind-closed-doors meetings to "figure out what to do about this" (while I continually brought up the fact that the BIOS developer made horrible/atrocious assumptions and that the check in question should be completely removed -- i.e. it wasn't Intel's fault). I have no idea what was done about it, but from what I can tell, HP did something because Intel never issued a firmware upgrade that, say, faked attribute 194 (and if they had, I would have flamed them over that!).

If this is what's happening to you with your Dell system, the result is a vague/ambiguous nastygram that tells you absolutely nothing useful. Way to go Dell (or whoever they outsource their BIOS development to).

Only Dell engineers -- more specifically, those who develop the BIOS -- would know if this is the case. The likelihood of getting through Tier 1 or even Tier 2 Support to talk to one of these people is practically nil.

The reason the KB probably says Western Digital and Samsung only, is because they're two brands which are known to not vendor-encode attribute 194, i.e. the 6-byte data attribute can be read and interpreted (effectively) as a 64-bit unsigned decimal number that represents the temperature of the drive in Celsius. Some other brands might encode this attribute data (thus when read in the same fashion, results in a number like 19485209282), thus would probably throw the same error.

Your choices:

1. Continually harass Dell Technical Support until you reach an engineer at a high enough level that understands the predicament and can talk to the appropriate folks that develop the BIOS to remove the code,

2. Don't buy this particular model of Dell system, or consider buying another brand/vendors products, or build your own,

3. Remove the SSD and comply with Dell's requirements,

4. Do nothing.

This is what I was thinking of as well. There's a SMART toggle in the BIOS, I wonder if turning it off would affect it.

I turned off smart reporting, and that didn't make any difference.

I don't know if this was put in because of attribute 194 or thermal issues, but this particular case definitely has poor cooling and I'm fairly certain certain HDs would fry themselves. (the 2TB Red is at 30 - 31C, BTW) I need to look up the the HD that was in there, but based on its thickness and weight, I think it's a single platter drive.

Just for kicks, I'm thinking about putting in a 2TB RE4 and a 2TB Black to see if the BIOS likes that combination better than the current one...

In any case, since the need to hit F1 is now gone, I'm a happy camper.

Have you tried a WD or Samsung drive?

Actually, one of the drive is *already* a WD.

If you carefully read the Dell kb and al the posts here ( yeah, right ) and you meant: "Have you tried two WDs or two Samsung drives?" the answer is "No", but I already drew up some plans in my previous post.

However, from a practical point of view, such configuration would be nearly useless for me, so I may or may not try it. Removing/swapping drives in that SFF case is rather cumbersome.