Things I learned the hard way tonight...

As the title states...

Things I learned the hard way tonight.

Here's the story....

I had 2 PSU's on my table, and all the modular cables for both scattered around.

I was wiring a new PC up and needed another cable with SATA power on it... So... I was pretty sure the cables I had left were for the PSU that I WAS NOT using in the build... BUT... They plugged right into the PSU I WAS using... So I said "SWEEET!" and went on with my business.

Weeeeeellllllll....

I finally get everything assembled and hit the power button... Nothing.

"Hmmmmmm......"​

Hit the power button a few more times....

"Hmmmmmmm...... PSU must be bad?? Maybe?? Something??"​

Proceed to swap PSU for the other that was laying on the bench.... Hit power button.... NOTHING AGAIN!

"WTFOVERTHISISGETTINGOLDFAST!!!"​

Sit back for a few and think....

"Hmmmmmm.... I wonder if that cable could be the problem?"​

Pull cable... Hit power button... Everything comes to life!

"Sweet... Now I just gotta figure out where to find another SATA Power Cable!"​

Find SATA power... Get everything wired back up... Hit power button... Boots Fine... Except!... Now the Patriot Pyro SE 240GB Solid State and the Western Digital Black 2TB aren't showing up as bootable options in the BIOS?

"Ohhhhh Noooooooooooooo....."​

Yep! Killed both drives in my haste to get the thing wired up! Oddly enough... The Vertex 3 MaxIOPS that was attached to the same wire lives!?

Soooooo.... Here's what I've learned.

1) Just because the cable fits the Modular PSU... Doesn't mean it's right and you're liable to fry your stuff!

2) DON'T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!!! All of my digital life was on that WD 2TB drive... Everything important to me anyway.

3) Wifey REALLLLLY hates hearing the words... "Honey... I just killed the wedding pictures."

Hopefully my story will prevent future mistakes for others. :/

sorry to hear about that mate. maybe data recovery specialists can recover something from the plates

3) Wifey REALLLLLY hates hearing the words... "Honey... I just killed the wedding pictures."

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that would make her angry at you, for the next few years

Convicted1 said:

"Honey... I just killed the wedding pictures."

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For something as important as wedding pictures i would try to track down another pcb for your drive in question & swap it in...........The platters should be fine.

+1 for the pcb swap, have done it a few times myself.

OK... I'll order a new WD Black from Newegg... Hopefully there hasn't been a revision that would affect the controller PCB.

This is your (Harddrives) brain on reverse polarity...





Replacing the PCB from a newly manufactured WD Black 2TB did not work... There are 2 chips different on the new PCB though... Otherwise the PCB is the same revision and everything.

One of the chips that is different is the Cache... The other appears to be the actual controller... The one thats melted in the pic above.

Contact a company like http://www.OnePCBsolution.com . It's possible your original HD's firmware chip is still OK (one of those two 8-pin chips near C103 and C101, and the firmware is probably in one of the three 8-pin chips on the board. OnePCBsolution.com will transplant it to a replacement board, for an extra charge.

I'd check those big diodes (D3, D4, D7, and probably some others I can't identify, maybe including D1) for shorts because they're supposed to conduct if any voltage goes too high or too low (reverse polarity). Also check any fuses near them because the fuse supposed to blow if the diode connected to it shorts.

The burned-out Smooth chip is common and can be replaced by itself, but there are several versions. The easiest and safest way to desolder it is with Chip Quik, which costs $1 per inch and is probably sold only by the foot. There are YouTube videos demonstrating its use. But I have a feeling OnePCBsolution.com will be cheaper, even if you have them transplant the original firmware.

Another tragedy caused by unnecessary modular cables.

Convicted1 said:

Replacing the PCB from a newly manufactured WD Black 2TB did not work... There are 2 chips different on the new PCB though... Otherwise the PCB is the same revision and everything.

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PM inbound.....

You should consider running 3 2TB HDDs in a RAID 5 for storage, that way if one dies, you can swap it for a new one and rebuild the raid.

I do that, and I have just short of 4 gigs storage space.

Hmm?! I wonder how did that happen? Cant truly follow. Used wrong cable and it did fit the reverse order? I dunno how thats possible because they only should fit in one way.

And whats PSU? A good PSU should shut down i guess at wrong polarity. Its rare to see stuff in such a roasty condition.

Besides: I suggest to use 1 Seasonic PSU and 1 Corsair PSU. The cables from the Seasonic is always the ones as stiff as a baseball bat, its hard to mix up those cables. And generally always put the (unused) cables back inside the manufacturers bag, there is always the name written on it, so there wont be mistakens.

larrymoencurly said:

Contact a company like http://www.OnePCBsolution.com

Another tragedy caused by unnecessary modular cables.

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I dont see the problem as long as people dont mix up stuff. But even, i find it weird that the cables are able to be attached in reverse polarity. Apparently there is many different standarts which is not good.

Convicted1 said:

1) Just because the cable fits the Modular PSU... Doesn't mean it's right and you're liable to fry your stuff!

2) DON'T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!!! All of my digital life was on that WD 2TB drive... Everything important to me anyway.
:/

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NAS is the solutions to basket sharing. Not so long ago i got me a NAS and now all the important stuff are backed up there. Those are separate systems and its close to impossible to have a problem at both at once. However, its still recommended to have at least 1 system offline (and all wires plugged off) all the time because the power at the wall is another security risk (in term of lightning), which can be avoided doing so.

I dunno what you mean by "fit", the cables should have a bracket and at the PSU is always a hole for the bracket, so its unlikely to miss that hole. Thats why i dont understand.

Ivy said:

Hmm?! I wonder how did that happen? Cant truly follow. Used wrong cable and it did fit the reverse order? I dunno how thats possible because they only should fit in one way.

And whats PSU? A good PSU should shut down i guess at wrong polarity. Its rare to see stuff in such a roasty condition.

Besides: I suggest to use 1 Seasonic PSU and 1 Corsair PSU. The cables from the Seasonic is always the ones as stiff as a baseball bat, its hard to mix up those cables. And generally always put the (unused) cables back inside the manufacturers bag, there is always the name written on it, so there wont be mistakens.


I dont see the problem as long as people dont mix up stuff. But even, i find it weird that the cables are able to be attached in reverse polarity. Apparently there is many different standarts which is not good.

NAS is the solutions to basket sharing. Not so long ago i got me a NAS and now all the important stuff are backed up there. Those are separate systems and its close to impossible to have a problem at both at once. However, its still recommended to have at least 1 system offline (and all wires plugged off) all the time because the power at the wall is another security risk (in term of lightning), which can be avoided doing so.

I dunno what you mean by "fit", the cables should have a bracket and at the PSU is always a hole for the bracket, so its unlikely to miss that hole. Thats why i dont understand.

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Read the OP. Our fella here has a lot of modular PSUs and he mixed the cables. He made the mistake of connecting the SATA power cable from another manufacturer to another PSU. How did this happen?

The connectors are not proprietary. They're Molex Mini-Fit Jr. Kinda common connectors for electronics. Found almost everywhere. There's no modular cable standard. The manufacturers of the power supplies just design their own pinout for their own cables that will work with their own power supply. Remember this connectors are fairly common. If Manufacturer A uses pins 1 and 3 for GND, 4 and 2 for 12V, 5 for 5V and 6 for 3.3V, using the Molex Mini-Fit Jr. "model A", for example, and Manufacturer B uses pins 4 and 2 for 12V, 1 and 5 for GND, 6 for 5V and 3 for 3.3V with the same "model A" connector, the cable will fit into the connector. It will physically fit, but the voltages are nowhere near the same. Thus, things blow and let the magic smoke phenomenon happen.

IMHO, commercial NAS solutions are usually overpriced. You can build a better system by yourself with a PERC 5/i or an IBM M1015. These cards are often found very cheap on eBay, and they're server grade components. Fine, you need better cooling, but this is one of the things we're used to do here as overclockers, aren't we?

Some good PSU OVP / OCP systems might not kick in if the short is found on a hard drive. They consume way less power than, say, a CPU, and the system might not detect that.

EDIT: That SMOOTH chip is not the hard drive's brain. That's the spindle motor controller IIRC. Maybe the fact that your new drive has a different spindle controller might have something to do with you not being able to read the data out of your WDC Black. Don't give up, though! Try to source a board with the same spindle controller!

Odds are that the IC wanted 3.3v and got 12v. It wasn't a short enough circuit to trip SCP nor enough amps to trip OCP. Even if it had, the IC died essentially instantly.
Few are the PSU 12v rails that could react in time to save it, possibly none really, as there is plenty of juice stored in the output filter caps to kill an IC that wants 3.3v
A raid would have died just as dead, except now there would be more dead drives.

The real solution is backing up to a disk that isn't powered by the same PSU. Or optical disks. Or a USB drive, or something.

Ideally don't fry the HDD in the first place, but backups are always a good idea for important data.

But how to prevent such mistakens? Obviously, just by accidentaly using the wrong cable it can kill any hardware parts because they all use some own cable pin design it seems.

I just try to use 2 well known manufacturer who got unique cables which can not be mistaken for another one. Best stuff is just to store the cables always inside the original box from the PSU, so its easy to know what PSU to use for. Inside system, obsiously, all cables are for the PSU inside (it should never leave that case, and if so, always stored inside the original box).

But i think it would be sufficient just to store it inside the cable bag, because the manufacturer is writen there and the cable design should not change at the same manufacturer.

That's really the only way to be sure. Well that or to use non-modular units.
Antec uses a fairly distinctive connector, you won't confuse theirs for PC Power and Cooling or Corsairs. Enermax uses similar connectors however.

It comes down to organization, really.

txus.palacios said:

IMHO, commercial NAS solutions are usually overpriced. You can build a better system by yourself with a PERC 5/i or an IBM M1015. These cards are often found very cheap on eBay, and they're server grade components. Fine, you need better cooling, but this is one of the things we're used to do here as overclockers, aren't we?

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I know that a custom NAS is cheaper but it need lot of knowledge on how to build, its not the stuff everyone can build. Apart from that, the main cost of a 2 slot NAS is the HDD and not the system. HDD was 500$, thats almost twice the system cost. In term i use 4 HDD for 200$ each, its 800 $ and the cost for the system is still not higher than that.

The true purpose of building a custom NAS is that there will be more power for less the price (prehaps 20% lower price). But as i said already, it need knowledge and its usualy much bigger. Of course, i dont need to tell those stuff to a Archlinux user, they know how to fix stuff and build, but most users would get completly lost using such a system and such a custom NAS. Its for experts. That stuff is simply not user friendly and thats the weak spot.

I dont say that im unable to build it, prehaps i can get it to work but i had so much of issues to deal with (old PCs died, building huge systems the first time ever), and building everything new that i simply didnt had the nerves even to create a custom NAS. I was happy i had a quick and easy solution, but in future im almost sure i will try to build some sort of custom NAS with a Archlinux, but that will be challenging for someone using it the first time.

I mean, the basics of a NAS isnt difficult. Every Windows PC attached to a network can basically be used as a NAS (network attached storage) by simply using that machine to backup data from A to B and reverse order. But to have a very good solution running with full server functionality is another story, its another difficulty and i dont even know what to use in order to get all the functionalitys a usual NAS got. They got special firmware attached management software (which is continuously advancing, can be updated), apparently its the main reason that they are that expensive. Without doubt there should be comparable programs with same functionality on Linux, but its just a good pool of knowledge required, i got exactly none what that matter is concerned. At the beginning can be lot of work.

Final rule, the best hardware is useless when software is inferior... so it comes always down to the software and thats the weak spot, i got no knowledge what to use and how to use.

This is indeed a valuable lesson for me! As a "newbie" I wouldn't have thought twivce about interchanging the cables. After all, aren't the plugs supposed to be universal for their purpose?

The motherboard/hdd/gpu/etc. ends yes. The ATX spec doesn't say anything at all about modular cables. It'd be kind of nice if if did from this standpoint.

Bobnova said:

The motherboard/hdd/gpu/etc. ends yes. The ATX spec doesn't say anything at all about modular cables. It'd be kind of nice if if did from this standpoint.

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this is true, maybe the overclockers forums should put out an open letter to Intel on the subject ;P

it seems absolutely silly for the cables to not be interchangeable.

larrymoencurly said:

Another tragedy caused by unnecessary modular cables.

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Ivy said:

I dont see the problem as long as people dont mix up stuff. But even, i find it weird that the cables are able to be attached in reverse polarity.

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Sometimes even when it's supposed to be impossible:



Ultra-X V-series power supply (Wintech) manual instructing user to attach motherboard power connector backwards. Worse, the connector was undersized, and I had an old motherboard with a socket just oversized enough to allow that.

You don't need a modular power supply to force a connector in the wrong way.