Power Supply Fried Hard Drives or Coincidence?

Alistair · Jul 4, 2007, 07:30 AM

Last night I upgraded my power supply in preparation on receiving my X2900 XT. I powered it on and immediately hard cracking noises and smelled something strange. I chalked it up to the new power supply being kicked on for the first time. I get to windows things are running fine. After a while I go to play some music and iTunes says it can't find my music folder. I look at sure enough my secondary hard drive does not appear.

I then try a combination of things hoping I just hooked it up incorrectly. Nothing I changed got the drive working and it wouldn't even spin up or be detected byt he BIOS. So about 2 hours after the first drive failed I reboot the system, giving up hope. I hear the same cracking noise and then look over quickly to see white smoke coming from my only remaining hard drive. Upon taking it out of the case I discover that the same chip fried on both of them. Both were literally the same chip model SMOOTH something or another, which I learned was the motor control chip or something like that.

I figured my DVD drive would be next, but it just wouldn't fry no matter what I did so I was confused. Its an old drive so I wasn't overly worried about if it had fried.

I figured what the hell and went to Best Buy and picked up a cheap Western Digital Drive and a more expensive Western Digital drive. I figured if one would fry I'd prefer to have it be the cheap one then try to return it if it did fry, not risking the bigger one. It boots fine, installs Vista, and stays up and running for several hours without a problem.

I've measured the voltages from the cables and as far as I can tell everything is proper for the power supply. I'm just wondering if perhaps both drives frying was a strange coincidence, bad luck, or a bad power supply?

I should note that both fried hard drives were Maxtor's purchased at the same time.

Lowfat · Jul 4, 2007, 08:48 AM

2 hard drive trying @ the same time? Something is definitely fishy. What kind of PSU is it? I really wouldn't take the chances.

**kris23** · Jul 4, 2007, 08:49 AM

what is the exact specifications of the PSU, name, power specifications and so on. this kind of stuff really only happens with low quaility junk, that or a defective one....

also, you sure you want the 2900XT currently? they suck and it seems that it was some odd design flaw sucking performance away, more than any driver that was bringing it down.....

Alistair · Jul 4, 2007, 09:53 AM

ENERMAX INFINITI EIN650AWT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply 100 - 240 V CE, FCC, cUL, TUV - Retail

Yes I want an X2900, I prefer ATI's control panel over nVidia's by a long shot and initial DirectX 10 benchmarks look very promising for it.

**kris23** · Jul 4, 2007, 10:02 AM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256017 try that one instead,

Alistair · Jul 4, 2007, 10:27 AM

I'm not looking for advice on what hardware to buy, I'm just trying to figure out if its just coincidence that the drives failed or not. They fried within about 2 hours of each other and nothing else in the system fried as I would have expected to happen.

The only difference I see right now compared to when the drives fried is I don't have the Power Supplies fan plugged into my motherboard where perhaps it was trying to read temperature information for its post-shutdown system cool feature.

procupine14 · Jul 4, 2007, 12:49 PM

well lets see were those two drives the only things on that particular wire?
or were there other things plugged in there?

Thats odd. Perhaps maybe a power surge or both of your hdds had the same factory defect and it was just a coincedence.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jul 4, 2007, 02:42 PM

An Infinity PSU should be able to handle the load fine.... they're beefy enough.

I'd like to say coincidence but that's just too coincidental for me... it is possible but unlikely, I'll leave it at that

Dyre Straits · Jul 4, 2007, 02:55 PM

I, too, was wondering if both of those HDs were on the same wire from the PSU?

It's a strange occurence for sure!

The fact that you immediately heard some strange noise and smelled something 'strange' just raises all kinds of red flags for me. I think I would not trust that particular PSU any longer. Take it out and see if there's any of that strange smell coming from within it. If so, I'd get an exchange immediately. Just have the store take a whiff of the smell and there should be no problem.

Now, when you get the new one, before you actually plug everything into it, just turn it on to test it to make sure you don't get a repeat performance. (Lightning DOES sometimes strike twice in the same place.

)

Good luck!

Alistair · Jul 4, 2007, 09:54 PM

Both of the fried hard drives were indeed on the same cable when the first one went. The were both Maxtor drives purchased within a week of each other as well. Finally they were right smack one on top of the other inside my case.

Anyways I haven't had any sort of smell since the drives blew (quite sure it was the smell of fried circuitry, been years since I smelled that though) and I've had a Western Digital running in there since last night, with shut downs once in a while to try to duplicate the scenario that caused the second one to fry, but with no success.