I just got a Toshiba MG08ACA16TE 16TB drive. Plugged it into my desktop (ATX PSU, no backplane) and it won’t spin up. Instead, it makes a weird repetitive beeping/chirping sound and stalls the BIOS screen for a while before the system continues. Definitely not normal head-seek clicks it sounds deliberate, like a status alarm.
I suspected the infamous PWDIS issue (Power Disable on SATA pin 3). I tried taping over pins 1–3 with Kapton, but the drive is still doing the same thing. No spin, just the beep, and no /dev/disk/by-id/ entry in Linux.
Am I going crazy here or is it DOA? Genuinely cannot tell. Bought it to replace one of my failing WD Red’s in my home server raidz2.
I was in fact not going crazy. I bought a replacement and it came up in Linux. However, in what appears to be the worst luck ever the second one is also failing SMART 
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Edit: It is now making chainsaw noises, lovely.
did you do something to upset your deliveryman?
/s
Out of curiosity, what do your smart statistics show? I’ve noticed that between different revisions of MG08’s there are completely different SMART stat categories.
I will make sure to hug my deliveryman. Seems to be a dodgy Amazon seller that is selling their returns as new. Running a long SMART test seemed to be the final blow before it started making unholy sounds.
Edit: just noticed the power on hours are 0, perhaps I am just VERY unlucky but there are other reviews of similar issues which I didn’t notice before.
if it is a sketchy amazon seller, it’s possible they reset the drive’s statistics.
My revision A01 MG08’s stats look different:
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Yeah my SMART data just looks suspiciously clean for a drive with this many reallocated sectors. Plus two drives in a row from the same Amazon seller sold as new. A real new MG08 should not be clanking itself to death on the first spin-up. Unless I am just extremely unlucky something seems off.
Ordered another one from a different Amazon seller. If I am unlucky again I will make sure I never go outside in a thunderstorm ever in my life.
buying drives one at a time always makes me nervous because the packing quality can be so inconsistent.
Yeah I’m only buying individually currently because it’s to replace a failed drive from my existing array.
You mentioned having these drives yourself, do they normally make slightly unusual noises compared to non-helium drives? I don’t quite know how to describe it but kinda like this (third drive just arrived): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiJeDymKLs
I’ve got a bunch of them in both SAS and SATA.
From that video I recognize 3 distinct sounds, the “normal” harddrive noise that sounds like soft rumbling/grinding, the higher pitched chirps and then what sounds like clicking.
Mine make the first noise all the time, the chirping noise when the spindle spinsup, but they don’t make the clicking noise.
