[SOLVED] SATA cable fried, not sure if it damaged other parts

Mar 14, 2020
2
0
10
Images (of harddrives, the SATA cable and the laptop): View: https://imgur.com/gallery/doRcnmd



So i had this old dead laptop lying around, and i thought i would plug the HDD into my other laptop to extract some files since it was an ssd + hdd hybrid.

Both drives use SATA, although the old one did not fit well into the other laptop.

I made the mistake to think that it was not that big a deal, so i managed to place the computer in an awkward position and boot it up anyway just to see if it worked.

It booted up fine and i got to the desktop when i adjusted the laptop’s position a bit.

Immediately SATA cable started smoking, and the computer shut down.

When i looked, the SATA cable was indeed fried, but when i tried to start the computer up again without the HDD (it also had an SSD with windows installed) nothing happens, only the power light turns on.



I suspect maybe the SATA cable came loose while the pc was on, but shouldn’t the pc be able to operate without those components (HDD and the cable), or have i managed to destroy some other parts?

I have currently no idea what to do.

Thanks in advance!
 
This is why I never 'rig' things like this--something touches something else and poof!

You shorted out your motherboard, probably because the hard drive metal contacted with something else and conducted electricity to something else. Your motherboard is probably toast and you'll be lucky if the drive isn't.

So now you've got two dead laptops. 🤢
 
This is the component side:

91710931-6.gif
 
That's a JTAG connector. It is only used for debugging during the prototyping stage.

In any case the oxidisation is unrelated to any damage.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=649
It looks like a lot more than oxidation to me with the black mark across the various pads as well as the marked difference in color from the adjacent pads.