What are power disable hard drives?

The power-disable (PWDIS) feature is now standard on SAS interface hard drives. This feature allows the host to reset the hard drive if necessary. Usually Seagate with part numbers ending in "0G" and Western Digital as "04" will have this feature.

On servers, it hot-plugs straight into the server with no issue. However, with some SATA interface drives in PC environments that have this feature, the drive will not spin up. Power supplies that are from typically pre-2016 have 5 small cables on the power cable, if your power cable only has four cables then this feature would be no issue. Alternatively, a piece of kapton tape can be put onto the 3rd pin on the power connection to subvert power. Newer power supplies do not have an issue with this feature as it's becoming industry standard.