Help Plz: what is frying my HDDs?

[Ruiner]

A quick question first: can a bad SCSI cable or controller card fry a HDD attached to it? Failing that, can a bad mobo fry that HDD?

Some background:
Last week I get a refurb 9800pro from Newegg. It won't post, so I take it out and put my 4600 back in. It posts fine, but the SCSI card won't find my drive. Upon inspection, there is a fried chip on the HDD pcb.

I get my system up and running with an old IDE drive and ghost, and send the 9800 back for a brand new one (not refub).
The system works fine. I also order a new SCSI HDD, thinking a short from the bad 9800 killed it.

The new 9800 arrives, I install it and it works fine.

The new HDD arrives, and I hook it up, but the card cant find it. That same chip on the PCB gets really hot, so I try to turn it off before it cooks.

I try to run the drive with just power, even in another PC (no SCSI cable hooked up), and the chip heats up again....it must be toast.

Now, my Lite-on CDR is dead. The light flashes, but the mobo won't see it on post and the door won't open.

I put the old IDE back in, and it posts and runs fine.

WTF is doing this??? The psu is a month old fortron 400w. The voltage rails look fine in bios.
Can it be the mobo? Could the bad 9800 have shorted the mobo and/or PSU?
I can't keep throwing components at this.

[Ocelaris]

What are your voltages? Are you upping the AGP voltage any? That I think is tied into the PCI voltage... What kind of cooling do you have on the HDs? Definetly get some air movin across them, AND don't have the drives blocked in if you can help it.

I would send those drives back to the manufacturers, SCSI drives usually have a 5 year warranty for a reason, they're made with much better components than regular IDEs (excluding the new raptors... sorta)

What PCI slot do you have your HBA in? Is it 1 or 4 ? Check your manual for IRQ sharing. Spare wires swiping across it?

Swap your cables for sure if you can... I would say bad terminator, cable or HBA is my guess... what components do you have? I think people say that the BIOS is a bad measurement for voltage, voltmeter is the best way to go if you can find one, and know where to look on your mobo.

[Ocelaris]

Oh I see you have your stuff listed... you sure water didn't drop on something? Actually... really does sound like a PSU problem... I know when I'm having problems with my PSU CDRoms and HDs take the beating first... It could be a mobo if the voltage regulators are screwed up... pop that stuff in another mobo if you can... definetly a power issue from the sound of it, stuff not powering up and all. never heard of burning up a HD though... can you swap PSU? Definetly stick the "dead" drive back in to test it if you figure out what the problem is... things I have condemned as dead, when I figrue out the problem, I somehow forgot about my "dead" piece, and I have more than once found them to be alive and kicking, and just a red herring.

[tweakerxp]

Whoa you've had a spell of bad luck there :eek: Sounds to me like a problem with your PSU, even though it's a Fortron. I would test the voltages with a multimeter and see if the voltages you see in you BIOS differ from the multimeter.

[Ruiner]

I'll try the multi meter test on the psu but if the mobo is bad will that affect multimeter readings of the psu?

[Ruiner]

Another point: the fortron has overload protection on each rail, I doubt the mobo does.