My Hard Drive Caught on FIRE@ !

rcillig · Nov 28, 2016

So last night I was in the other room watching TV and smelt something weird. Kinda like when the bug guy comes and we were getting Christmas stuff out so I thought it might be some residual spay on the boxes. When I walked by my PC room I raw the smoke with in it. My PC was on fire, not big just a 3-4 inch flames but still on fire. The side panel was off so U had easy access to seeing it, the HD was on fire from the bottom side. I blew out the fire pretty easy but still the house stunk and the board had caught fire and had started melting the plastic hr cage/holder from the Haf case.. the little thing the HD snaps into so you can slide it in and out. The HD was pretty old and I just used it for storage, it was a Seagate 320. Anyone else run into something like this before?

I'm so lucky I was awake to catch it or it could of been real bad.

- - - Updated - - -

oh ya best thing ever is the PC was still running while on fire and I shut it down properly before addressing the fire, I find that comical!

custom90gt · Nov 28, 2016

Ummm wow

Any other damage to other components? Glad you were home for that...

Alaric · Nov 28, 2016

Holy...err...smokes! I'm glad you caught that before it went really bad. Can't say as I've had that happen to me. Impressive part failure, though. Hope you had the data backed up on another drive. That's scary.

rcillig · Nov 28, 2016

I didn't have a backup of it, it was mainly torrents and stuff like that.... the more I think if it I feel so lucky to of caught it.

HankB · Nov 28, 2016

I'm glad you caught it. A house fire is a truly gut wrenching experience that no one should have to endure.

That's amazing that a drive could produce enough heat to catch fire. The energy for that has to come from the PSU so you must have a pretty solid PSU. I think that's one situation where I'd prefer that the power rails drooped a bit under heavy load.

I'd also be evaluating placement and condition of smoke alarms.

habbajabba · Dec 1, 2016

Interesting. Now I have more ideas on where to place my temp sensors from my Phobya fan controller. Thanks (lol). BTW, that's some catastrophic failure that could have potentially burned a house down. Scary really. Glad it wasn't worse. My last 320gb drive failed completely after I had my mobo and cpu replaced. Had all my movies on it and I literally had to toss it. Better some videos than my music collection for sure.

Mr.Scott · Dec 1, 2016

Very very rare to have a drive do that.
I can count one one hand how many I've seen even close to that in the last 20 years.

LutaWicasa · Dec 1, 2016

Ya got me beat Scotty...I ain't never seen the likes of that HDD :shock:

Mr.Scott · Dec 1, 2016

LutaWicasa said:
Ya got me beat Scotty...I ain't never seen the likes of that HDD

I've seen 3 to be precise.
The other 2 were not as bad as that.
The other 2 were also late 90's drives. I think 10 gig or less. I want to say Quantum's maybe.

trents · Dec 3, 2016

You must have bought one of these.

Alaric · Dec 4, 2016

trents said:
You must have bought one of these.

Mr.Scott · Dec 4, 2016

I so saw that coming. lol

Theocnoob · Dec 5, 2016

Im glad your house didn't burn down. I have never heard of spontaneous hard drive combustion. I wonder what went wrong?
Good thing you were home!

Tech Tweaker · Dec 10, 2016

I was just thinking, the only drive I've ever heard of failing as catastrophically as that was the Quantum Fireball.

mokrunka · Dec 11, 2016

Tech Tweaker said:
I was just thinking, the only drive I've ever heard of failing as catastrophically as that was the Quantum Fireball.

That's a great name for a drive that bursts into flames!!! Hahahaa

deathman20 · Dec 12, 2016

rcillig said:
oh ya best thing ever is the PC was still running while on fire and I shut it down properly before addressing the fire, I find that comical!

Ha sounds about as good when my PC caught fire but the MB was on fire from a short around the CPU socket. Only thing damaged was about a dime sized hole in the motherboard. Same as you thankfully I was at home when it happened otherwise who knows what would of happened.

Ben333 · Dec 13, 2016

Never seen that happen, not in the 90s... not now. Thankfully.

These new drives don't even get hot. Remember the SCSI drives that could just about burn your hand if they didn't have some level of air actively blowing over them?

If I were you (OP) Id write them a letter, reminding them how happy you are that your whole family didn't die... and take all the free **** they'd cough up

Glad you're safe!!

trents · Dec 13, 2016

It's a good thing it wasn't a "Raptor" or a "Cheetah" hard drive or your whole house would smell like burnt flesh.

P A U L · Dec 13, 2016

how the hell does something like that even happen? what do your electrical connections look like? are you using a surge protector?

deathman20 · Dec 14, 2016

P A U L said:
how the hell does something like that even happen? what do your electrical connections look like? are you using a surge protector?

If it was just the HDD damaged like he said, most likely it was an issue with the board on the HDD. Touched something or something went really faulty.

My Hard Drive Caught on FIRE@ !

Member

Member

New Member

Member

Member

Member

Beamed Me Up!

, Immutable, Administrator

Beamed Me Up!

Senior Member

Attachments

New Member

Beamed Me Up!

Member

Member

Member

High Speed Premium Senior

Folding for Team 32!

Senior Member

Registered

High Speed Premium Senior

Similar threads