Question Fried hard drive??

[Anorth123]

Hi all,

So I put a new hard drive in my pc today (Corsair 850tm) I switched all the old cables over to the new cables and plugged them into the psu but the old cord from the old pay that plugs into the hard drives I didn’t switch over and plugged straight into the new psu (I couldn’t find a new cable for them, which I have now found 😭) when I first started it up there was a burning smell and now my pc won’t recognise one of my hard drives that has windows installed on it. Could this mean that it’s fried and that was what the burning smell was or is there a chance my pc just isn’t picking the hard drive up? Thanks

 

[AllanGH]

Uh yeah....if you did a PSU swap, and re-used an old cable from the old PSU, to connect to anything, including a hard drive, to the new PSU...it's very likely that anything that was connected to the old cable is now toasted--not like the burning smell isn't already a good indicator.

While the component connector ends of those cables are standardized, there is really no declared standard for the ordering of the connections at the PSU-side of the cable.

 

[USAFRet]

You let the magic smoke out of the drive. It's dead.

Modular PSU cables can't be swapped among devices. Not even from the same manufacturer.
Only the specific cables it came with.

 

[1LiquidPC]

Yes, you likely fried the components as mentioned above. AllanGH is correct. The cable ends attaching to devices are standardized, but the PSU connection ends are not and can be wired different internally inside the PSU. Mix and matching modular PSU cables is a big mistake.

 

[seanwebster]

Oh boy. Have you seen it it works when powered by your old PSU? No need to swap out the PSU to do so, just plug it in the wall next to the PC, do the paper clip short out trick on the 24pin to keep the PSU running without being plugged into the mobo and connect the SATA power to it and the SATA cable from the mobo and see if it works then. Probably dead, but worth a shot. Very few modular PSU cables can be swapped. I’ve had luck with a bequiet dark rock pro 10 and 11. Both seem to have the same cables, but I wouldn’t toy around with swapping any other cables from any other PSUs.

 

[fzabkar]

If you are lucky, the damage will be confined to a TVS diode. If so, then the fix should cost you nothing.

TVS Diode FAQ:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=86

OTOH, if your drive is a WD, then you will most likely find this:

Catastrophic failures in Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2169