.....my hard drive caught fire

P

Providence

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 23, 2006
Messages
193
...actually caught fire.

Trying to install Vista Ultimate 64. Everything was going okay for a while until Vista said, "No drives detected."

That's BS because I had FOUR SATA drives ready for use. Sure enough, I boot into the BIOS and none of them show.

Okay. So I thought maybe the disk wasn't spinning. It was using SATA power so without thinking (Can this REALLY cause this?? Thought there would be a safeguard) I plug in the molex connection WITHOUT upluggin the SATA power connection.

I boot up and notice smoke. I've got a watercooled system so at first I thought it was related to that since it looked like it came from the processor so I blew on the processor and then a huge flash of fire and smoke comes out of one of my drive bays. Pretty sure it was the one that had both power connections.


At this point, I'm scared of continuing.

Ultra X3 power supply (1Kw)
Had three sata power cables plugged into the drive...so much ambient noise and vibrations it was hard to tell if the disks were spinning but I don't think they were.

8800GTS and QX9650 watercooled very well. Leak tested for 24 hours, no leaks at all.

Any guesses as to why the BIOS didn't see the drives? I took that drive right out of my old rig so it WAS working yesterday...althought probably not anymore...before I fry another $100 anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT

Yeah, it was the drive. Took the bay out of the Antec 900 and there is a HUGE black hole where something just blew under the drive. The drive below it is singed black.
 
Dude, I think I speak for many, we needs pics, asap.

I would take everything out of the case and inspect for obvious damage,

then see it another computer recognizes your other drives, this time though, only use the sata cable. lol

Your not going to live this one down.
 
Providence said:
I boot up and notice smoke. I've got a watercooled system so at first I thought it was related to that since it looked like it came from the processor so I blew on the processor and then a huge flash of fire and smoke comes out of one of my drive bays.
Click to expand...

BTW just in case you weren't already taking this point home with you:

FIRE LIKES OXYGEN

But yes, we need pics.
 
I would like to see pics also, but I find this believable. You plugged twice as much power into something as it's supposed to get.
 
Providence said:
I plug in the molex connection WITHOUT upluggin the SATA power connection.
Click to expand...

This might have killed the drive - though I never though that you could set your drive on fire by doing this.

Molex connectors on SATA drives are for compatibility only; you can't plug them both in. You would think that drive manufacturers would have a safeguard in place to prevent damage (aside from a sticker telling you not to plug them both in), but I guess it doesn't make sense for the manufacturer to spend extra for a feature that has little reason to exist (SATA adapters anyone?).
 
Nenu said:
lol please explain how that is possible.
Click to expand...

SATA power connector and the molex connector simultaneously?

I don't think anyone has actually tried doing this for fun, and this is the first post I've seen about someone actually doing it.
 
First,

Yes, you supplied too much power to the drive. Smart!

Second,

Pics or it didn't happen. :cool:

Third,

Name/type of drive?

Fourth,

I dare you to RMA it. :p
 
MrMike said:
SATA power connector and the molex connector simultaneously?

I don't think anyone has actually tried doing this for fun, and this is the first post I've seen about someone actually doing it.
Click to expand...

The voltages dont add, they will be connected in parallel so there is nothing to drive more current into the device.
It will therefore consume the same power as if one power connector is attached.
 
Nenu said:
The voltages dont add, they will be connected in parallel so there is nothing to drive more current into the device.
It will therefore consume the same power as if one power connector is attached.
Click to expand...

Unless there are resistors involved. In which case by supplying two sources of power, he could have effectively halved the resistance and doubled the current going into a component on the drive board.
 
ryan_975 said:
Unless there are resistors involved. In which case by supplying two sources of power, he could have effectively halved the resistance and doubled the current going into a component on the drive board.
Click to expand...

The resistance of the device being powered will be a constant.
The only thing that can make more current flow is higher voltage.
The voltages will be applied in parallel otherwise there will be an almighty bang when power up.
 
Nenu said:
The resistance of the device being powered will be a constant.
The only thing that can make more current flow is higher voltage.
The voltages will be applied in parallel otherwise there will be an almighty bang when power up.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean the resistance of the device, I meant between the source and the device. I don't know how hard drives are designed, so I don't know if that would even be an accurate assement.

Code: 
SATA Power --> Filtering circuit with resistors--\
                                                   > hard drive components
Mole Power --> Filtering circuit with resistors--/
 
Every hard drive I've used that had both a sata and molex power connector said use one or the other or bad things would happen. Catching on fire must be the bad thing that happens.
 
Nenu said:
The voltages dont add, they will be connected in parallel so there is nothing to drive more current into the device.
It will therefore consume the same power as if one power connector is attached.
Click to expand...

Ah I see. I did not assume they would be connected in parallel, but that is more logical. I suppose having a poor design and no fail safe would be a bad idea, but all the instructions do state never to plug both in.

ryan_975 said:
I didn't mean the resistance of the device, I meant between the source and the device. I don't know how hard drives are designed, so I don't know if that would even be an accurate assement.
Click to expand...

Right, we don't really know for sure what the design is unless someone here works for a hard drive manufacturer as an electrical engineer. There's just a lot of discussion of possibilities.
 
ryan_975 said:
I didn't mean the resistance of the device, I meant between the source and the device. I don't know how hard drives are designed, so I don't know if that would even be an accurate assement.

Code: 
SATA Power --> Filtering circuit with resistors--\
                                                   > hard drive components
Mole Power --> Filtering circuit with resistors--/
Click to expand...

Sorry but thats the wrong way to think about it.
Why would the manufacturers add the voltages together before or after they have been filtered?
It could only lead to catastrophic failure.
Its more likely that they will either be directly connected in parallel before any filtering (not so likely) or after the filtering.
Alternatively when power is detected on one connector the other will be electrically isolated.


For example, Power is proportional to the voltage squared.
Lets say the 2 power connectors do add their voltages together as you suggest.

A 1ohm load with a single 5V connection will use 25W power.
A 1ohm load with 2x5V connection added together to give 10V will use 100W power, thats 4 times as much!!

If it was like you said, there would be a lot of exploded hard drives!

ps I'm an Electrical/Electronic engineer.
 
Nenu said:
Sorry but thats the wrong way to think about it.
Why would the manufacturers add the voltages together before or after they have been filtered?
It could only lead to catastrophic failure.
Its likely that they will either be directly connected in parallel before any filtering (not so likely) or after the filtering.
Alternatively when power is detected on one connector the other will be electrically isolated.


For example, Power is proportional to the voltage squared.
Lets say the 2 power connectors do add their voltages together as you suggest.

A 1ohm load with a single 5V connection will use 25W power.
A 1ohm load with 2x5V connection added together to give 10V will use 100W power, thats 4 times as much!!

If it was like you said, there would be a lot of exploded hard drives!

ps I'm an Electrical/Electronic engineer.
Click to expand...

I didn't say the votages would add, I said the current could be doubled due to the effectively lowered resistance. And hello, we DO have a catastrophic failure here. If the drives were properly designed, we wouldn't have warning labels and pamphlets saying not to connect both Molex and Sata power source at the same time. WD probably cheaped out in the design making the assumption that everyone installing these drives would RTFM.
 
ryan_975 said:
I didn't say the votages would add, I said the current would double due to the effectively lowered resistance. And hello, we DO have a catastrophic failure here.
Click to expand...

The resistance of the device remains constant, this is the only resistance that matters unless you have a severe problem with your PSU.
If the voltage remains the same, the current drawn will remain the same.
 
Nenu said:
The resistance of the device remains constant, this is the only resistance that matters unless you have a severe problem with your PSU.
If the voltage remains the same, the current drawn will remain the same.
Click to expand...

Unless you're device is designed with two power branches that aren't meant to both be powered at once and have different components. Like I said before, I don't know how these drives are designed, but apparently they're not designed well since this one caught fire after plugging in a second source for power. And I've read about a lot of other drives that died shortly after plugging in the second power connector (and one that was running at 75c until the second power connector was removed).
 
ryan_975 said:
Unless you're device is designed with two power branches that aren't meant to both be powered at once and have different components. Like I said before, I don't know how these drives are designed, but apparently they're not designed well since this one caught fire after plugging in a second source for power. And I've read about a lot of other drives that died shortly after plugging in the second power connector (and one that was running at 75c until the second power connector was removed).
Click to expand...

I have no experience (nor heard before) of burnt hard drives due to connecting both power connectors to it.
I wont discount your experience though so I'll keep my eyes open for more info on this.
 
Nenu said:
I have no experience (nor heard before) of burnt hard drives due to connecting both power connectors to it.
I wont discount your experience though so I'll keep my eyes open for more info on this.
Click to expand...

It's not my experience, just what I've read over the years and the info from the OP in this thread. I'm simply making BROAD assumptions and WILD guesses at this point. I have a WD drive here, but I'm not going to potentially destroy a perfectly working drive just to satisfy my own curiosity.
 
Ugh.

I've been having nothing but trouble with this. This is my first, and possibly for a while, last attempt at building a computer. I almost wish I didn't get state-of-the-art stuff for it.

Made another topic here (Power Supplies) because the next day I had sparks flying out of my PSU when I connected a fourth hard drive to the machine. I think, but I'm not sure, it's on the same rail as where the drive I blew up was. I had three drives on three (SEPERATE) SATA power connectors and a fourth HD on a molex rail of its own. It was plugged into the PSU and the machine was on for at least 15 minutes, but less than a minute after connecting the SATA cable sparks started flying out of the PSU.

Unlike last time, I didn't just wait around since I'm fairly traumatized at this point, but I'm 99% sure the sparks came from the PSU, just outside of the grill where the fan is on the ultra X3. No crazy fires, no smoke, I didn't wait that long...saw a few sparks and just hit the switch on the back and unplugged it.

But since I'm VERY eager to get my main rig going, I fired it up again today. I thought maybe I blew the rail that molex connection was on, and maybe so...it's been stable for about five hours now.

Sort of. Power wise, it's okay. Easy tune 5 shows my system temp @ 34C, and my CPU @ 15C. At least the water cooling is working! The plan was to OC that QX9650 to 4.0GHz but I'm waiting till it's stable before I really game with it...

One thing that's really pissing me off about Vista is website navigation. Certain sites, like GameFAQs.com, load fine. However hotmail takes like 5 minutes to load, winrar (trying to download it to reinstall my software) won't download at all, downloads maybe 3% and stops..all of my FTP downloads are crappy or not working, and I can't navigate alcohol 120's website to download their software so I can burn my Windows Server 2008 DVD.

Overall, as you can guess, I'm fairly upset. Sorry for no pics, but the drive smelled like smoke and rather as a trophy I thought of it as a waste of $150 and tossed it. I cleaned the drive below it to wipe the shrapnel off and got off about 99% of it, some of it stained but the drive is otherwise functional.

At this point I'm not sure about a few things.

1) Whether to RMA the PSU, or if I even can
2) If I should format my rig and start over, since website navigation is impossible on half the sites I frequent.
3) If I can leave this computer alone and trust it not to ignite in some other ungodly way.

*sigh*
 
ryan_975 said:
It's not my experience, just what I've read over the years and the info from the OP in this thread
Click to expand...

Some interesting results regarding this issue here in this thread.... makes me wonder, and I am almost willing to sacrifice a drive at this point simply to see if this is all coincidence....almost;)
 
Oh sorry, thought I posted that...Ultra X3 1 kW PSU.

I'm going to take a spare drive and install Vista and see what happens. The Internet is crap across my entire place, on three computers and two laptops. From none of them can I get alcohol 120, access download.com and actually download something...maybe it's my ISP. Did the unplug-the-cable-modem trick and same thing happened. It's so strange...only like 30% of the websites I actually use load...

At any rate, this computer is still stable. I'll likely leave it off when I'm gone since I'm still not sure what'll happen if I walk away...


EDIT

SCORE! I called my ISP as a last resort and actually it's their fault...they've got something messed up so I can only see half the sites I'm supposed to see..so I've got access to half the Internet, it seems.

As for the PSU...hm....I'm going to take a nap. If my apartment doesn't burn down before I wake up maybe I'll just use this PSU and start load testing the water cooling/OCing my QX9650. I'll just avoid the rail I shorted.

I guess >_>
 
I did this once and my HDD never caught on fire, except the blasted thing would not work!
 
What kind of hdd?

I had a psu kill a hard drive (a maxtor 200gb, no less) and maxtor (now seagate) have been nothing but helpful. Sent in the dead 200gb, end up with a brand new retail 300gb overnighted.
 
It was already plugged into the PSU when I booted. I just plugged it into the mobo while I was in Windows. It had already been plugged into the PSU and active for at least 15 minutes before it blew.

It was a WD raptor 73! A good drive, or was...
 
I have both Sata and IDE drives in my PC, now whilst shifting IDE drives about about 6-8 months ago, I mistakenly plugged in a molex connector to one of my Sata drives, I only realised my mistake when I went into MY COMPUTER and realised that one of the IDE drives wasnt showing, I then looked inside my pc and realised that it wasnt showing because it never had a molex power connector going into it, the molex was going into my C: drive sata HDD instead :|

All in all it was less than 5 minutes of sata power connector and molex power connector hooked upto one single drive, as soon as I realised I shit myself and turned the pc off as fast as I could, but to this day ( touch wood ) the drive runs perfect and no damage that I can see was done to it, no bad sectors, no smoke, no fire no nothing so maybe I was lucky but I sure as fuck wont rush to move IDE harddrives again without double checking that I have the drive hooked up properly.
 
Bbq said:
What kind of hdd?

I had a psu kill a hard drive (a maxtor 200gb, no less) and maxtor (now seagate) have been nothing but helpful. Sent in the dead 200gb, end up with a brand new retail 300gb overnighted.
Click to expand...

It was a WDC 160GB SATA HDD, I RMA'd it back to newegg.com and they sent me back a new one.
 
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