Hard Disk went *sizzle*
 

I had some trouble with disappearing hard disks (Drives C and D) and a very long boot time that takes 3-5 minutes to go to the Windows loading screen.

So I bought a new hard disk and imaged both drives onto it. I have another drive, 1.5TB, which I kept in the computer, since it wasn't disappearing from BIOS. All were SATA drives.

Then, the smell of burning rubber permeated the air. The SATA power cable actually caught on fire.
http://upload.jetsam.org/images/zomg1.jpg

Which was connected to the 1.5 TB drive, which now smells like ozone and welded material.
http://upload.jetsam.org/images/zomg2.jpg

Luckily I didn't seal the case. I killed the power, yanked out the offending cable, and replaced it with another one.

Computer won't power up.

It would only power up when I disconnected the power cable from the 1.5TB drive.

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/...-girl-face.jpg

So, I am now quite paranoid about more things catching on fire, and have two questions for you.

1. What causes SATA power cables to burn? Power surge? Faulty cable? Hard disk? Or did I somehow cause a short circuit?

2. The 1.5TB hard disk won't run. Computer won't even power on if it's hooked up. I connected it to a USB enclosure, but it won't turn on when that particular hard disk is connected. Am I screwed here, or is there something I can do to recover the data (mostly porn, pictures, comics, and movies, all replaceable but still).

Thanks.

Normally I'm the one coming to you for tech support Zerg, but I just did a research paper on data recovery! (Hooray) Now that I've explored the options, if you have indeed tried to plug it into an external enclosure and tried connecting it to a different computer, your only other options at data recovery are extremely pricey and mostly reserved for commercial entities. Hopefully someone can give you better news, but I don't think there is any :(

hmmm,you post infor about your power supply?

@DeLorean
Hay, what goes around, comes around right? Glad to receive your input :)

I'm bummed by that prognosis though. I know for sure that a porn and comics stash is not worth what those data recovery services charge. I've been reading up on a possible way to pull this off by swapping hard disk circuit boards. This will, however, invalidate the warranties of both sacrificial and dead hard disks (since the models should be identical for it to work). I'm still weighing the cost of potentially paying for two 1.5TB drives, for a slim chance to recover 600 gigs worth of movies, music, and comics. AFAIK, the only truly irreplaceable data are the various digital pictures I took which aren't backed up elsewhere.

@RYU
I don't have much hardware know-how. The only info I can tell you about my power supply is that it's a 550 watt power supply made by CoolerMaster (called "RealPower Supply").

If it helps any, here's what SpeedFan has to say about internals:

Core 0: 47 C
Core 1: 47 C
HD0: 37 C
HD1: 39 C
GPU: 56 C <-- onoes?
Temp: 56 C <-- onoes?
Core: 56 C <-- onoes?
Ambient: 0 C <-- wutt?

I'm running Intel Core2 6600 @ 2.4GHz on an Intel DP965LT motherboard.

There really is only one way that you can burn out the insulation on a wire like that, and that is with excessive current. I'm guessing there are two potential causes of this:
- The power supply PWM controller network went haywire and overvoltaged the system.
- The hard drive had a short in it.

Considering no other peripherals in your computers got fried, I'm going to wager that the defect was in the HD.

Now might be a good time to take advantage of any warranties.

A warranty won't help him get the data back though, it'll just get him a new hard drive... which is good too. If it were me and I had a little extra cash, I'd buy another identical hard drive and just try swapping out the disk circuit board... it would be fun and educational :P

Well, if the warranty gets a new hard drive of the exact same model, then why bother buying it?

Because I'm pretty sure they won't give him a new hard drive without taking the old one. That's the way it has worked for electronics I've had to seek out warranty options with, anyway. Maybe you're right, I dunno.

No, Seagate explicitly states that RMA = bye bye data.

I guess my concern is, will such damage be accepted. There are no scorch marks or anything, but the circuit board smells well done.

No better way to find out than asking. I mean, I can't figure out an instance where you'd actually want to be slamming that much current through a HD, so it would have to be accidental.

I was looking into picking up a couple of these Seagate 1.5 TB drives until I read the reviews on Amazon, where nearly half of the respondents complain about drive failures. I don't think any of them experienced a situation quite like yours, but it's still not encouraging. This is a shame, because I've been happy with the Seagate 750 GB externals.

We've been doing this same thing in our IT lab, and we decided that going with WD is better even though its quite a bit more expensive.

After considering the responses here and on a thread I posted elsewhere, I tend to conclude the fault lies with the molex-sata power cable, which I got cheaply from a local electronics shop.

Still, I was paranoid about any PSU fluctuations, and had the power supply replaced. Now it comes with its own sata power cables.

I will try my luck with the Seagate warranty, and tell them the half-truth that one day, it suddenly stopped working on Windows. That's probably a common enough occurrence, and I don't feel the need to tell them the power cable burned to a crisp :3:

I am quite disheartened that the Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda drives have all kinds of problems. I have been a Seagate loyalist, and its drives have never failed on me before. I will re-evaluate this stance, going forward. Because of the consensus about the 1.5TB problems, I'll see if I can get a replacement 1TB + 500GB, or 2x 750GB disks instead of a single 1.5TB.

Thanks for your inputs: DeLorean, packrat, RacinReaver, and Secret Squirrel!