Hard Drive Sparked Up

[GTXFerrari]

Hello everyone, im pretty new to these forums and fairly new to pc building just built my first pc in august. I have a Samsung 840 pro 512GB all configured with my os and most used applications. I bought an internal hdd about a month ago and i went through 4 western digital drives from various retailers that just did not work. They would not show up in device manager or in my bios. The last 2 hard drives i have gotten have been a little more of a problem though. When i connected the sata power and fired up my pc these drives literally sparked up almost looking like they caught fire! (i have a 900D so i had a pretty good view of it) Then after i unplug my pc quickly i can smell a nasty burnt smell. On the 1st of the 2 that did this there was no external evidence but i was too scared to try it again so i immediately sent it back for rma at newegg since this drive was only received that day. The replacement for that one that i received was a little more visual tho, i again attached sata power and data to the back up the drive then i went to power it up and it did the same thing again... this time i decided to try a different sata power cord (the one connected to my dvd drive) again when i fire up my pc the hd as well decides to literally fire up, this time i could see clear visual evidence that this thing caught on fire the pcb has a black spot now. So basically i don't know where to go from here and do not know how to trouble shoot this. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Jus in case here are my system specs
Intel i5 4670k 4.4 stable
Asus ROG Hero LGA 1150
2 GTX 780 reference (mild overclock)
corsair 1600 4x2 ddr3 memory
corsair ax 760 
samsung 840 pro 512gb
corsair h100i

ive run stress test for 24+ hours (prime, heaven, memtest) and my system is stable no crashing or no error in memtest. 


here is a picture of the hard drive sorry its kinda blurry i took it with my phone

 

 

 

 

 

[Mooshi]

Wow, that was one of the models I was considering. Guess you justified going all SSD for me.

[Unhelpful]

[Unhelpful]

Wow, that was one of the models I was considering. Guess you justified going all SSD for me.

Uh.. That is a solid hard drive. Like.. A really solid hard drive. This is the most strange HDD related issue i have ever seen.

Just realized what you said could have been sarcasm. I'm tired. 10:28 for me. Haven't slept....

[flibberdipper]

Could something have been touching the PCB, or there was some kind of metal on the PCB?

[GTXFerrari]

Wow, that was one of the models I was considering. Guess you justified going all SSD for me.

 

 

good idea, i love my 840 pro and i would probably not trade it for anything. I jus got this drive to store most of my steam games on and broken games like bf4 so i dont have to keep re-downloading it just to find out it doesn't work lol

[GTXFerrari]

 

 

 

this was my thought! im jus glad it was below my ssd and not above

[GTXFerrari]

Uh.. That is a solid hard drive. Like.. A really solid hard drive. This is the most strange HDD related issue i have ever seen.

Just realized what you said could have been sarcasm. I'm tired. 10:28 for me. Haven't slept....

 

yes as ive heard, this is like my 5th WD drive (been through greens black and blues) and im really starting to lose faith and i hope the problem is something else, i have 4, 4tb wd reds in raid 5 running smoothly on my nas with no hiccups what so ever, and no i am not trolling or being sarcastic thus why i included the picture 

[GTXFerrari]

Could something have been touching the PCB, or there was some kind of metal on the PCB?

 

 

hmm im pretty sure it was not touching anything, i put them in the 900D drive cages in the little screws but it could be possible, i think the cage is like a plastic tho not metal

[Mooshi]

@GTXFerrari You could try giving one of Seagate's Constellation enterprise drives a try! One of which sports a whopping 128mb of cache! Or, you could always Raid 0 that 840 Pro of yours. Either way, that is some freaky bad luck with WD.

[flibberdipper]

Kinda hafta say that WD doesn't like you. Get a Seagate Barracuda of sime flavor.

[Advent]

I've used Western Digital drives for probably a decade professionally. They are usually an extremely stable, well built product.

Given the fact that you have had so many issues with multiple drives, I don't think it is a drive issue. It could be PSU/cable related. I've seen that happen quite a few times with a bad rail on a PSU or a bad SATA/Molex connector/cable that caused drives to either malfunction or go up in smoke.

 

I would check out those 2 possibilities before putting any more drives in your machine. Also if you haven't already, RMA those drives to the OEM (Western Digital).

[GTXFerrari]

@GTXFerrari You could try giving one of Seagate's Constellation enterprise drives a try! One of which sports a whopping 128mb of cache! Or, you could always Raid 0 that 840 Pro of yours. Either way, that is some freaky bad luck with WD.

 

yea i was thinking about giving another brand a try before i start having to rma other parts, lol i wish i could afford another ssd right now when i do get another one i either want to do another 512 to have around 1tb or mayb jus sell the one i have now and get a 1tb evo always good to have choices 

[GTXFerrari]

Kinda hafta say that WD doesn't like you. Get a Seagate Barracuda of sime flavor.

 

im thinkin the same thing man, or toshiba has a pretty cheap 1tb drive but i think a segate drive is a little more popular choice 

[GTXFerrari]

I've used Western Digital drives for probably a decade professionally. They are usually an extremely stable, well built product.

Given the fact that you have had so many issues with multiple drives, I don't think it is a drive issue. It could be PSU/cable related. I've seen that happen quite a few times with a bad rail on a PSU or a bad SATA/Molex connector/cable that caused drives to either malfunction or go up in smoke.

 

I would check out those 2 possibilities before putting any more drives in your machine. Also if you haven't already, RMA those drives to the OEM (Western Digital).

 

 

yah my reds are working butter smooth and the fact that ive gone through so many at this point leads me to believe that another part has to be the source of the problem mainly the psu. I have tried different connectors on the 2nd one that sparked up as well but still ended up with the same result. Is there a way to test the psu or do i have to buy another one and test that with a new drive?

[Apach3]

interesting. i've had mostly Western Digital drives and they've all lasted me at least five years. the one i have currently is at least 3 to 4 years old.

 

this looks like something that has happened to me, though not specifically with a PC power supply and a hard drive; after plugging in the device and starting it up, it would simply explode. i discovered, much to my dismay, that it was reverse polarity, where the + and - parts of the circuit were switched.

 

where did you plug in your SATA connection to the power supply? if you plugged in your power supply to a port not within the "Peripheral & SATA" brackets on the power supply, that may be your problem. it could also be due to the cable itself not being routed properly, and in that case i would suggest you talk to Corsair about changing out all of your SATA power cables. in either case, i have no reason to believe Advent's comment about a bad rail to be true, as the AX760 is a single-rail power supply and would therefore not fault the unit itself.

[Advent]

i have no reason to believe Advent's comment about a bad rail to be true, as the AX760 is a single-rail power supply and would therefore not fault the unit itself.

Yeah I forgot it was a single rail PSU. But your comment about reverse polarity seems possible.

[flibberdipper]

Yeah I forgot it was a single rail PSU. But your comment about reverse polarity seems possible.

Happened to me with an old 150 watt Dell power supply. Two of the wires were switched in the power supply and it fried the power supply and the floppy when I finally installed one in my friend's old computer.

[Advent]

Happened to me with an old 150 watt Dell power supply. Two of the wires were switched in the power supply and it fried the power supply and the floppy when I finally installed one in my friend's old computer.

My friend who recently sleeved his own supply killed his whole setup just about because he reversed polarity on the 20+4 pin connector. I told him "make sure you label your shit before you do it. Double check it before you sleeve it and before you plug it in".  poor....poor machine... she was.... so young T___T

[GTXFerrari]

interesting. i've had mostly Western Digital drives and they've all lasted me at least five years. the one i have currently is at least 3 to 4 years old.

 

this looks like something that has happened to me, though not specifically with a PC power supply and a hard drive; after plugging in the device and starting it up, it would simply explode. i discovered, much to my dismay, that it was reverse polarity, where the + and - parts of the circuit were switched.

 

where did you plug in your SATA connection to the power supply? if you plugged in your power supply to a port not within the "Peripheral & SATA" brackets on the power supply, that may be your problem. it could also be due to the cable itself not being routed properly, and in that case i would suggest you talk to Corsair about changing out all of your SATA power cables. in either case, i have no reason to believe Advent's comment about a bad rail to be true, as the AX760 is a single-rail power supply and would therefore not fault the unit itself.

 

i think you fixed it bro! dam im such an idiot i think i had it in the cpu slot in the bottom row towards the back, reason i think you fixed it cause now my ssd isnt making this crazy coil whine (it wasnt the psu i spent a while trying to narrow down where the noise was coming from) and i switched it to the top row on the psu were it says Peripheral & SATA. I also think that fixed it cause i jus reinstalled my os and ran the benchmark in magician and i was getting some crazy low scores on a clean install like 60 write or somewhere around there i was about to rma that as well... Well fingers crossed going to order a new hdd when newegg refunds my paypal today, hopefully this time around everything runs smoothly i will update this thread once i attempt the install. Thx for the help

 

 

btw i think a steam sale just went live got a notification, time for me to empty my wallet lol

[Advent]

i think you fixed it bro! dam im such an idiot i think i had it in the cpu slot in the bottom row towards the back, reason i think you fixed it cause now my ssd isnt making this crazy coil whine (it wasnt the psu i spent a while trying to narrow down where the noise was coming from) and i switched it to the top row on the psu were it says Peripheral & SATA. I also think that fixed it cause i jus reinstalled my os and ran the benchmark in magician and i was getting some crazy low scores on a clean install like 60 write or somewhere around there i was about to rma that as well... Well fingers crossed going to order a new hdd when newegg refunds my paypal today, hopefully this time around everything runs smoothly i will update this thread once i attempt the install. Thx for the help

 

 

btw i think a steam sale just went live got a notification, time for me to empty my wallet lol

Have you RMA'd the dead/damaged drives or gotten them exchanged via Newegg yet?

[Apach3]

i think you fixed it bro! dam im such an idiot i think i had it in the cpu slot in the bottom row towards the back, reason i think you fixed it cause now my ssd isnt making this crazy coil whine (it wasnt the psu i spent a while trying to narrow down where the noise was coming from) and i switched it to the top row on the psu were it says Peripheral & SATA. I also think that fixed it cause i jus reinstalled my os and ran the benchmark in magician and i was getting some crazy low scores on a clean install like 60 write or somewhere around there i was about to rma that as well... Well fingers crossed going to order a new hdd when newegg refunds my paypal today, hopefully this time around everything runs smoothly i will update this thread once i attempt the install. Thx for the help

 

 

btw i think a steam sale just went live got a notification, time for me to empty my wallet lol

 

you are most welcome, good sir, and i'm both glad to hear i was of help and relieved to see you solved another problem as well. yes, the same has happened to me before, so i've been down that road before (in my defense, the modular power supplies i used were cheap and not properly labeled).

[CAKEwasTRUE]

this has been WD for me lately

 

 

SeagateFTW

[GTXFerrari]

Have you RMA'd the dead/damaged drives or gotten them exchanged via Newegg yet?

 

yah i had to struggle with newegg cause they wanted me to go through western digital, im guessing because there so stumped with holidays right now they dont want to deal with it but they took it and i just got an email yesterday that they recieved and accepted the rma and now there gonna refund my account and im gonna grab a new one with that money. Probably another blue but idk there are tons of options

[Unhelpful]

yes as ive heard, this is like my 5th WD drive (been through greens black and blues) and im really starting to lose faith and i hope the problem is something else, i have 4, 4tb wd reds in raid 5 running smoothly on my nas with no hiccups what so ever, and no i am not trolling or being sarcastic thus why i included the picture 

When I said the sarcastic thing that was to mooshi not you.