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Hard Drive pcb burnt, and sparks

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Ricx, 30 Mar 2006.

  1. Ricx

    Ricx What's a Dremel?

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    Hey all,

    Just a quick question - has anyone ever had a hard drive pcb spark, pop and then die on a power up? This happened to me a while ago, and I put it down to a dodgy drive -rma'd it and carried on. After recently doing a rebuild on my machine - it's happened again!

    My gut reaction says power supply - nothing is modded in the box, all the connections seem fine. Either way there's no way I'm powering that box back up with that supply.

    Has anyone had any experiences like this? How did you solve them ? Thanks!
     
  2. hitman012

    hitman012 Minimodder

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    Interesting - what make/model is the supply? I suppose that it's possible there was a batch fault with the drives if they were the same brand.
     
  3. Ricx

    Ricx What's a Dremel?

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    The power supply is an Antec True 380SP 380W standard power supply, the drives are (were) 160GB Seagate Barracudas (Model # ST3160023A).

    Also probably worth mentioning is that the drives worked consistantly in USB enclosures, and in other machines. Also on some occasions it would sound like the drive wasn't spinning up properly - it would spin up, click, and spin down. This would repeat a few times, then would spin up properly and boot. (Sometimes though this required a hard restart) Naturally I assumed the disk was just on it's way out, backed up and carried on. I think the disks can be ruled out - in all other circumstances they worked fine.
     
  4. Shepps

    Shepps Slacking off since 1986..

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    I had a similar thing happen to 3 maxtor drives a while back. Plugged them in, turned on the power and poof bye bye hard drives! Not sure what caused it, but i think it was probally either the psu not having enough juice or a short of some kind. Im just glad they were new drives with no data on! Not powered that system up since and i don't intend to until i can get a new case / psu.

    At least i got bigger drives from maxtor (200 -> 300gb, 120 -> 160gb) which was pretty impressive. It almost made it worth me blowing them up..
     

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