New system killing hard drives!

[Mooglee]

Built a new system...the PS is a Thermaltake ToughPower 1200w. I plugged in a SATA power cable with 4 sata plugs. The terminal plug goes into a Samsung EVO 500 gb SSD. That works fine. But I put in 2 1TB hard drives...one was new, one was from my old PC. On powerup, the samsung fired right up, but neither of the other drives was recognized. I thought nothing of it.

Until the one drive (new one) caught fire...

Damage was minimal, some light toasting on the case interior, but the other drive is now fried. Doesn't boot up or recognize in a (working) external enclosure.

Got another enclosure from family, with a 1 Tb drive in it. USB works fine, recognized immediately. I took the drive out, installed it in the new system, and now it doesn't work.

It's like my machine literally destroys all hard drives.

Can't think why it matters, but it's an i7 6700, 16 Gb ram, Asus Z-170E mobo, 660 GTX vid.

 

[Aeacus]

Is your PSU part number TP-1200M?
link: http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001780

If so, then this PSU is Tier three.
PSU Tier list: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html

My guess here is that your PSU sends too much power to the HDDs and thus frying them.
You should take out digital voltmeter and check the voltage in every connector to see if there is any overcurrent.

Anoter option is to try with different PSU. If the 2nd PSU doesn't fry your HDDs then you know that it was your 1st PSU.

For your build 1200W PSU is overkill. You'll do just fine with 600W PSU.
I suggest Tier two PSU, preferably Tier one. E.g. Seasonic S12II-620 (tier two).
specs: https://seasonic.com/product/s12ii-620/

 

[Mooglee]

Is your PSU part number TP-1200M?
link: http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001780

Mine is similar, but an older model. It was running in my system for years, using the same cable, connected to the same drive. Plus, if it were supplying too much voltage, why is the SSD working fine?

 

[Aeacus]

Mine is similar, but an older model. It was running in my system for years, using the same cable, connected to the same drive. Plus, if it were supplying too much voltage, why is the SSD working fine?

Are your storage devices all connected on a single power cable that comes from PSU or not?

E.g PSU -> SSD -> HDD1 -> HDD2
or one cable: PSU -> SSD. another cable: PSU -> HHD1 -> HDD2.

 

[Mooglee]

Mine is similar, but an older model. It was running in my system for years, using the same cable, connected to the same drive. Plus, if it were supplying too much voltage, why is the SSD working fine?

Are your storage devices all connected on a single power cable that comes from PSU or not?

E.g PSU -> SSD -> HDD1 -> HDD2
or one cable: PSU -> SSD. another cable: PSU -> HHD1 -> HDD2.

Yes that is correct. The SSD is the terminal connection on a 4 sata power cable.

 

[Aeacus]

Since you had all storage devices connected to the single power cable while SSD was at the end of it, mount new HDDs on a separate power cable from SSD. This shouldn't cause any more HDD failures anymore.

 

[aaron_124]

Since you had all storage devices connected to the single power cable while SSD was at the end of it, mount new HDDs on a separate power cable from SSD. This shouldn't cause any more HDD failures anymore.

I was wondering if this fixed the problem I have a similar issue with my corsair hx750 psu my old modxstream 500w it made no difference if they were all on the same cable. do ssd and hdd have different power requirements

 

[Aeacus]

I was wondering if this fixed the problem I have a similar issue with my corsair hx750 psu my old modxstream 500w it made no difference if they were all on the same cable. do ssd and hdd have different power requirements

Yes, they have different power requirements.

In general, HDD uses up to twice the power that is used by SSD.
Regular 2.5" SSD (depending on it's size) can use from 2W to 10W of power.
While regular 3.5" HDD (also depending on it's size) can use from 4W to 20W of power.

I'll take 2 most common storage devices as an example.
For HDD example, i use Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB (WD10EZEX),
specs: https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771436.pdf
And for SSD example, i use Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (MZ-75E250B/AM),
specs: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-75E250B/AM-specs

HDD: read/write - 6.8W; idle - 6.1W; standby/sleep - 1.2W.
SSD: max (read/write) - 3.6W; average (idle) - 3.1W.