ZimaCube Pro not accepting any drives, possible drive board damage, no reply from support

Hello, I’ve tried posting on r/ZimaBoard and emailing support but have received no response on either so I thought I’d try here. I realize it’s a small team with limited support resources but I am starting to get anxious.

This is the sequence of events so far:

  • tried a retail ST8000VN002 in slot 0, system powers on for ~1 second then off again → figured it’s a bad drive, tested in another machine, it’s dead, RMA’d
  • tried an OEM ST8000VN004 in slots 1 and 4, BIOS shows a blank line under AHCI settings for the respective slot (others show not connected), OS does not detect the drive/ata device shows disconnected status on all ports → this drive is 100% healthy and can be detected and formatted without issues on another system
  • tried the replacement ST8000VN002 in slot 0 (may have been a mistake), same situation as the first one

At this point I am concerned about two things:

  • the SATA backplane is very likely bad as it fails to recognize a known good drive
  • slot 0 may have a short that fried the first and now the second ST8000VN002 – I say this because inserting the same drive in a different slot shows a subtly different behavior (several seconds of on before turning off, which may be more consistent with a POST failure, versus the ~1 second on-off in slot 1 which is more likely to be a protection circuit)

I will try to test the second ST8000VN002 when I can but I fear that it will be dead just like the first one, I can’t RMA it again so I am out $200 if so

I work professionally with SuperMicro SuperStorage servers, know pretty well how to populate caddies and ensure they are properly seated, and generally have a lot of experience with mass storage systems. My only other guess here is that the system cannot provide the needed startup current but that seems very unlikely for a mid-range drive with 1.8A draw and only one slot populated.

My choice of ZimaCube Pro over the equivalent TrueNAS Mini XL was based on positive reviews, the industrial design, reports of users getting sent replacement parts if needed, and wanting to support a newer entrant in the field. I also dropped another $200 on Noctua fan upgrades for the system. However right now I’m not sure if I’ve made the right choice.

Hello, we are the zimacube team, and we are sorry to hear that you have encountered such a problem. Regarding the current situation you are facing, we recommend that you do not try it yet. We seem to have received several cases of short circuit problems encountered by the same model of ironwolf hard disk recently. At present, the “short circuit” equipment is testing other brands of hard disks. If there is a further solution, we will inform you.
In addition, our colleagues have found the email you sent today, and will inform you of the latest progress and RMA process through email later.

Thank you for the response. I certainly wish I had heard about the short circuit problem before discovering it the hard way myself, but I am hoping for the best. Looking forward to resolving this and getting the NAS up and running.

Hi @CainZzz, I have still not received any replies to my support emails (the first one was sent on Oct 25th, 5 days before the one you mentioned in your post), I am still waiting on whether the amazon refund for the first drive that appears to have been damaged by connecting to the system will be completed, and I am not sure what to do about the second drive that seems to be dead for the same reason ($400 outstanding total)

I’ve also spent about $200 on Noctua fans and parts that are non-returnable as I’ve opened the packages expecting to install them in the case, but now I don’t know if I should even try to put them in or if the whole system will need to be returned.

Could you please advise?

UPDATE: IceWhale sent me a new backplane which resolved the issue. Sadly two of the drives are dead from connecting to the bad one.

2 Likes

I’m having a very similar issue on my freshly delivered ZC Pro. None of the connected drives, regardless if they’re SATA or NVMe. Power is supplied (although I’m getting the issue described here), but neither the BIOS nor the OS detects any of them.

Mind you I don’t have the issue of it killing drives or anything, just not detecting them. At least I hope none of the drives are dead…

Sent a message to support, hope to hear back from them soon.

Don’t worry, we will contact you as soon as possible.

1 Like

I think that I’m also impacted by the same issue as @fonix232 , waiting also for answer of what we can do further .

Hello, could you provide your email address in private chat? We will let technical support contact you.

Hello. I seem to be having something similar but not identical. It seems that my ZimaCube Pro will not recognize all 6x of my IronWolf Pro 18tb (ST18000NE000) drives when they are all installed at the same time. The symptom I see when all 6 are installed at the same time is that the ZimaCube boots slow and in the BIOS under Advanced / Asmedia AHCI Controller it shows that the SATA Port is either Not Connected or shows as blank.

The most IronWolf Pro 18tb (ST18000NE000) drives I can get to work is 4. However they must be in a very specific configuration. Only SATA Port 0,1 and 4,5 can be used at the same time. If any other ports are filled various drives will no longer show up. I have verified that all of the ports do work by plugging 6x other random hard drives I had lying around and they all show up in BIOS with no issues. This seems to be related to this specific hard drive model. In my uneducated opinion it seems to be power related as when testing with all 6x 18tb drives plugged in the drives make weird sounds when spinning up but do not when only 4x drives plugged into SATA Port 0,1 and 4,5.

The power draw of the ST18000NE000 is 1A on the 5v rail and .72A on the 12v rail. This seems higher than my other drives which only draw a max of .4a on the 5v rail and .55A on the 12v rail. This would make the total draw of all 6 drives on the backplane 6A on the 5v rail and 4.32A on the 12v rail. So far none of my drives have died however with this being an issue I am hesitant to continue to try.