Help! I think my new power supply fried my hard drives

[pundemic]

I was having trouble with hard reboots when playing Witcher 3. Narrowed it down to the power supply which was a Corsair HX750 which is only 3 years old. I order an evga 850 P2 from amazon almost a month ago. I installed it 4 days ago and it was DOA. Call amazon, get another one sent as a replacement. It arrives yesterday and I install it. I connect the windows SSD drive and start up and it boots up directly into windows, I run the Witcher 3 and it finally runs, Yay!
I shut it down to reconnect the rest of the hard drives. The SATA cables that came with the new power supply as too short and have only 3 connectors per cable so I used the cable that I previously used to connect 4 hard drives together.

• 
  Windows SSD
  1TB Western Digital Ubuntu install that was daily driver
  1TB Western Digital backup drive
  4TB Western Digital backup drive that was mirrored via bash/rsync
  4 HGST (ordered on May 21st!) EXT4 backup drive that mirrored the 4TB WD drive via bash/rsync

The Blu-ray drive and windows SSD were on a separate cable. I start up the computer and get a smell of electrical burning/ozone. After temporarily freaking out, I am at a windows login. Hmm, maybe I reconnect the drives in a different order and the boot order is messed up. Go into the BIOS and the only drives visible are the SSD and Bluray. All drives that were on the old cable that I previously used are gone. I'm now getting 3.33V, 5V and 12V on the correct wires from the SATA plug that the failed drives are on.

The bluray and ssd are on different controllers so the controllers didn't get zapped. I moved the good cable to linux drive and 4TB backup drive and nothing.

I pulled the 4TB backup drive out and put it into an external case. It doesn't spin up.
At this point, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm open to a data recovery service depending on the price. I know it's expensive. Is something like this an easier (cheaper) recovery than other failure types since it's just the electronics?

It's not a total loss. I was backing up my financial docs, and document scanner folder to spideroak but 120G of music, 500GB of movies served on plexmediaserver. The past 15 years of photos of my life. Ugh.

Let this be a lesson. A backup isn't a backup unless it's external.
I guess I can now play Witcher. So I've got that going for me.
But seriously, does anyone have any suggestion or even a recovery option for one drive? Thanks.

Motherboard is an ASRock Z77.

 

[weberdarren97]

ASRock is meant to be a cheap Asus. However, many of their boards fail prematurely, so I don't recommend them. If you read reviews on Newegg, plenty of people have had premature failure on this board. If there's a short, it can send a ripple of power to the PSU and damage other components as well. Please replace your board.

Also, the SuperNOVA P2 series is Tier 1, one of the best product lines there are. I doubt the power supply alone killed the drives.

As for data recovery, it will be rather expensive (in the thousands).

 

[pundemic]

ASRock is meant to be a cheap Asus. However, many of their boards fail prematurely, so I don't recommend them. If you read reviews on Newegg, plenty of people have had premature failure on this board. If there's a short, it can send a ripple of power to the PSU and damage other components as well. Please replace your board.

Also, the SuperNOVA P2 series is Tier 1, one of the best product lines there are. I doubt the power supply alone killed the drives.

As for data recovery, it will be rather expensive (in the thousands).

I now understand what happened to my hard drives. When I installed the power supply, I used an old cable from my Corsair power supply to connect the drives since the spacing between connectors on the EVGA cable was too short to fit my drives. Unfortunately, the pinouts on the modular sata connector on the hard drive are different for each manufacturer. When I turned the computer on, the 3.3V cable had 12V on it, ground was now 5V, 5V was now 3.3V. You get the idea.

The fact that there are manufacturer specific pinouts on modular power supplies is beyond stupid IMO. A sata plug should be predictable as to what voltage goes where if it can fit in a modular socket.

Datarecovery will run me $275 if it is just the PCB. The next level of effort is $700+.

 

[weberdarren97]

That's actually pretty cheap, who are you going to have it done through?

 

[nikitab]

Yeah... just did the same. Feel like an idiot, but why are the pinouts on power supplies not standard?!?!? Or at least then change the cables so that they don't fit the same.

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah... just did the same. Feel like an idiot, but why are the pinouts on power supplies not standard?!?!? Or at least then change the cables so that they don't fit the same.

Because there is no standard for modular PSU cables.

 

[fzabkar]

If you are lucky, you may be able to fix your own PCBs without paying anything. WD's PCB protection was bad in its older models, but has improved of late. If you can post photos of each PCB, I could help you with your repairs.

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

 

[mdd1963]

Alas, you are most assuredly not the first to fry drives because of use of an old modular cable with a new PSU...

It is particular painful to lose not only one drive, but multiple drives.

It would be nice if warning labels came with all new PSUs warning folks of this danger, but....the increased .0001 cent cost is too much to bear, apparently...

 

[nikitab]

Because there is no standard for modular PSU cables.

So then shouldn't each manufacturer have their own plugs rather than using the standard ones, or adequate protections in place?

It would be nice if warning labels came with all new PSUs warning folks of this danger

I'm actually emailing with EVGA about this. They are basically saying that it's not their problem. I'm genuinely thinking of doing a lawsuit. Cause this is silly - it feels super irresponsible for a company to not properly protect users.

If you can post photos of each PCB, I could help you with your repairs.

Thanks so much! The drives are:

• 750 EVO 250GB SSD
• HGST 3TB
• Seagate BarraCuda 8TB

Pictures are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ANrVAvj8xV4jTPTu7 (I can take the PCBs off and take more details pictures?)

Would appreciate insight and am curious if I can fix them!

 

[USAFRet]

So then shouldn't each manufacturer have their own plugs rather than using the standard ones, or adequate protections in place?

There is no universally accepted/approved pinout standard for modular power supplies.
Even within the same brand.

A couple of manufacturers are starting to standardize across their internal lines, but by no means all.

Protection? It's basically just a wire. If you provide the wrong voltage to the wrong pin...poof.

Lawsuit? You plugged the wrong thing to the wrong cable.

 

[AllanGH]

They are basically saying that it's not their problem. I'm genuinely thinking of doing a lawsuit.

OKAY....so, who are you planning on suing?

• Corsair for making a modular cable that isn't compatible with an EVGA power supply?
• EVGA for making a power supply that isn't compatible with a Corsair modular cable?
• Google for not knocking on your door and telling you that both manufacturers, as well as literally thousands of other sources, tell you not to use modular power supply cables which are not designed for that SPECIFIC brand and model of PSU?

I get it. This is a mistake that hurts, but it is a MISTAKE that YOU made. Best to devote your time and efforts in a productive direction, instead of feeding the angst over it all.