File under: I have never seen that before!

GH85Carrera · GH85Carrera's Garage

I made my long commute down the hall in my socks to "commute to work" to my home office and woke up the main computer. I usually just put it in sleep mode each evening since it wakes up fast and does not have to go through a full boot.

I opened up email and was replying to the first one when I smelled the hated burning electrical smell. I have two computers, and many other electronic goodies in here. I turned off the ceiling fan to see if I could locate the smell. Using a flashlight to look for smoke I quickly saw my main computer was the source.

I made Windows unhappy by just turning off the power at the power supply. It was off instantly and I unplugged it and opened the case.

This is what I finally found.

The orange wire is roasted, the connectors are trashed but that was it.

It is just one of the drives in the system and was just a data drive so not the boot drives. I had no idea there was enough power in the hard drive power cord to fry like that. I had not been inside the computer is several days and it had been running for several days with no issues.

Wow, just wow.

Now I need to see if I have a chance at soldering the connectors on the drive. The power cable is toast, but who cares. I have lots of them. The drive has nothing vital, but yet it has files I want.

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

just swap the pcb with that of another drive of same make and model.

stomachmonkey · 09-08-2017, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by svandamme

just swap the pcb with that of another drive of same make and model.

Yup, why I always try to standardize and keep drives with trashed mechanicals.

GH85Carrera · GH85Carrera's Garage

That drive was built August 22nd 2011. It is 6 years old. Not easy to find drives identical to it anymore. It is a Western Digital Blue 1TB drive.

john70t · 01:22 PM

ugh..doesn't the PSU/motherboard run those things at like 3-12V or something?
https://www.lifewire.com/power-supply-voltage-tolerances-2624583

Did the source voltage spike or power supply unit fail?

A new PSU might prevent the same thing happening again after a whole lot of transfer time and work.

unclebilly · unclebilly's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

That drive was built August 22nd 2011. It is 6 years old. Not easy to find drives identical to it anymore. It is a Western Digital Blue 1TB drive.

There is this thing called ebay (it's new). I bet you will find your drive on there...

unclebilly · unclebilly's Garage

Yup, just as I thought... 137 of them.

GH85Carrera · GH85Carrera's Garage

There are indeed lots of them on Ebay, but they are not few and far between when you look for the exact model I have. I did find a place in Canada that rebuilds the controller board. It cost $49.95 but shipping to Canada and back will add more costs.

In the end I would have a lot of money in in a 6 year old hard drive. I will see if I can solder it and make it work since that is free.

Western Digital WD Caviar Blue 1TB WD10EALX 2060-771640-003 W/ Firmware Xfer | eBay

I don't think it is worth 60 or 70 bucks to get it fixed. I will dig around on Ebay and see if I can find a exact model specific working drive for a reasonable price, but the odds are not great.

I have a WD10 EALX that has the 32 MB cache. I can't imagine the controller card from one of the later models would work on it.