Hard Drive Sata Cable Exploded/Melted

[mackncheesiest]

Didn't quite think this fit into the "troubleshooting" section since the problem's for the most part been solved, and "off-topic" didn't seem right because it is tech-related, but today, one of the boot drives in one of our instant replay systems, er, exploded or something, and I thought other people might find it interesting.

 

Luckily, the system had a pair of boot drives in RAID 1, so cleaning up the inside of the case and removing the drive allowed us to get the system back together before our show (with a few minor complaints about the array being degraded), but man, something really went wrong.

 

I only managed to get a picture of the molex->sata power cable, but it is really messed up. 

 

Other than these pictures, there was a bunch of residue over all the components in the case, but considering that everything still seemed to work properly after removing this power connector and the accompanying drive (which I didn't get to test, but I'm sure must be broken), it looks like we got lucky with the malfunction originating near the hard drive and not near the power supply.

 

From what I hear, all they did was power cycle the machine, and then this happened. It was working, they turned it off, and it didn't turn back on because this happened. So I suppose the moral of the story is to never power cycle anything ever.

[Lolzious]

wow....

[Tickletehpickle]

That's just messed up

[RevyOcelot]

Apparently there have been quite a few incidents where molex to SATA cables have caught on fire.

 

It was likely a dodgy cable which caused some kind of short that melted the cable.

[meritmaster]

O that looks pretty bad. I hope none of your other components were hurt!

[QueenDemetria]

Real moral of the story: Never use dodgy cables or dodgy components in general.

 

I had a fan that caught on fire a few years ago. Never spending $5 on a fan again lol.

[awesomes8wc3]

10/10 High Quality Product

[Paralectic]

Saving hot girls on your HDD results into this.

[Remilia]

Did you try to transfer a digital bear or some shit?

[GoldSrc]

That had to be a really low quality cable, or it had the insulation damaged.

[fallendigital]

wow. You are lucky that it did not caught on fire.

[Kazuki]

Didn't quite think this fit into the "troubleshooting" section since the problem's for the most part been solved, and "off-topic" didn't seem right because it is tech-related, but today, one of the boot drives in one of our instant replay systems, er, exploded or something, and I thought other people might find it interesting.

 

Luckily, the system had a pair of boot drives in RAID 1, so cleaning up the inside of the case and removing the drive allowed us to get the system back together before our show (with a few minor complaints about the array being degraded), but man, something really went wrong.

 

I only managed to get a picture of the molex->sata power cable, but it is really messed up. 

 

Other than these pictures, there was a bunch of residue over all the components in the case, but considering that everything still seemed to work properly after removing this power connector and the accompanying drive (which I didn't get to test, but I'm sure must be broken), it looks like we got lucky with the malfunction originating near the hard drive and not near the power supply.

 

From what I hear, all they did was power cycle the machine, and then this happened. It was working, they turned it off, and it didn't turn back on because this happened. So I suppose the moral of the story is to never power cycle anything ever.

 

I would suspect the drive having some shorts between the data and power wiring or possibly the power cable you used had some contacts shorted and when it fried, the data cable did just as well.

[KE2012]

Wow man, unlucky. I hope nothing was damaged because of this.

[APersonWithABrokenChair]

RIP cable

[Pugs501]

Post it to /r/TechSupportGore

[McMurderMonkey]

Damn. I'll bet you were glad it was in RAID 1!

[mackncheesiest]

O that looks pretty bad. I hope none of your other components were hurt!  

Wow man, unlucky. I hope nothing was damaged because of this.

 

 

Luckily it seems that everything else is doing fine, we managed to get the system up and running again within about 20 minutes.

 

wow. You are lucky that it did not caught on fire.

 

Definitely, it was mounted in a server rack when it happened, so we're just happy that it didn't, you know, ruin the entire room.

 

That had to be a really low quality cable, or it had the insulation damaged.

10/10 High Quality Product

 

I know, right? It's exactly the kind of quality you want to see in multi-thousand dollar machines.

 

I would suspect the drive having some shorts between the data and power wiring or possibly the power cable you used had some contacts shorted and when it fried, the data cable did just as well.

 

Yeah, probably. It's just such a fluke thing. It was on and running, we power cycle it, and it doesn't come back on because this happened.