Question Multiple failed hard drives, power supply?

[ddrager]

I had a working HDD that failed as soon as I moved it to a new system. I then got a replacement that I plugged in and it also failed (never spun up, same issue as original one). Is it possible that the power supply is burning out the drives, or was this just bad luck?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Specs and what make and model PSU?

 

[Mtop]

Check both ends of power cable, move to a different power connector

 

[ddrager]

It's a 1000W power supply, not sure of the brand right now.

The cable looked fine, but I did end up moving to a new power connector just in case the cable was bad. The 2nd replacement hard drive worked fine.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

1000w means nothing if the quality is pathetic.

 

[ddrager]

1000w means nothing if the quality is pathetic.

If undervolting or something, would it have the capability to wreck a hard drive? I'm just not sure how to test this, besides just replacing the PSU.

 

[Solandri]

If undervolting or something, would it have the capability to wreck a hard drive? I'm just not sure how to test this, besides just replacing the PSU.

Use a volt meter to measure the voltage coming out of the individual HDD power pins. It's not unheard of for a manufacturer to occasionally swap two wires, sending 12V to the 5V or 3.3V line. The people making these are human, and make mistakes.

https://superuser.com/questions/98274/why-are-there-so-many-pins-on-a-sata-power-connector

Another common reason for this is people replacing a PSU with modular cables, with another PSU with modular cables, and "saving" the old cables for use with the new PSU. Never do that - throw the old modular cables away with the old PSU. There is no standard for modular cables, so which voltage goes to which pin in the modular plug is completely arbitrary and often unique to that manufacturer or even that model PSU. If you use modular cables from a different PSU, you could be sending 12V on the 5V or 3.3V line which will instantly fry the drive's electronics.*

*(There's actually a diode built into the drive board power circuitry which acts as a fuse and burns out before the electronics are harmed in case this happens. But it's only worth messing with if you have data on the drive which must be recovered. You can bypass the diode to get the drive functional long enough to recover the data. But getting the drive working normally again requires surface mount soldering equipment to replace the diode.)