Doing computer upgrades for a friend. New (out of the box) hard drive catches fire

[PBS Poll-435]

I take it back to a store which will not be named.

"Yeah. That sometimes happens. Here is your store credit."

[krispos42]

1. "That sometimes happens"

Yikes!

[meegbear]

5. Yikes! indeed

[hobbit709]

2. I've had motherboards smoke but never a hard drive.

[gratuitous]

3. And someday

A computer component that "sometimes" catches fire will kill someone and burn down their house, and the poor manufacturer will complain that while it's unfortunate what happened to that poor victim, nevertheless, they're the target of a frivolous lawsuit.

[struggle4progress]

4. I'd double-check the psu on general principle: I did five builds last year and read lots of reviews;

the thing that surprised me most was how many psu problems people had

Websearch for hdd fires doesn't turn up a lot for me; the few hdd fires I find, people attribute to various things -- bad sata cable, incorrect cabling, bad chip in hdd, inappropriate hotswapping, but what caught my eye (for external hdd fires) was a claim that a badly out-of-spec power adaptor had caused an external hdd fire

So, although it's not the only possibility, I'd want to check the psu

[Initech]

7. I had crazy video card problems. swapped the card and the psu, been running problem free ever since.

[DainBramaged]

6. ......................oops

[pscot]

8. Awesome

the way they keep adding new features.

[Skittles]

9. name the f***ing store, PBS

go on

[struggle4progress]

10. I'd rather know the brand of hard drive

[Skittles]

11. OK I will settle for that

[PBS Poll-435]

15. Western Digital at Fry's

PCB had a short.


Not just smoldering, an actual flame.

I am guessing the voltage regulator.

[NoPasaran]

12. It happens sometimes. People just explode... natural causes.

[Kali]

21. ...

:thumbsup:



you don't want to look in there

[HappyMe]

13. Well, better the hard drive

than you or your friend.

[EOTE]

14. Just where did you get a flammable hard drive?

Considering it's 90% aluminum and PCB, just what exactly caught fire?

[PBS Poll-435]

16. Just glad that I mounted it in the lowest bay to be close to the SATA ports

Otherwise it would have been a much worse situation.

Thankfully the new hard drive of a different brand was installed and the computer was able to POST.






And the cow was returned to its rightful owner...

[EOTE]

17. Seriously though, what caught fire?

I'm trying to imagine how it's possible for a conventional, platter-based hard drive to catch fire. What exactly was on fire?

[PBS Poll-435]

18. The PCB on the bottom side and spread to the SATA power connector

The SATA cable to the motherboard was fine.

[EOTE]

19. I've never seen that in my life.

Hell, even with the shitty bread boards I get from Radio Shack to make my portable amps, I've never had one catch fire. I was almost under the impression they were fire proof considering my sometimes shitty attempts at trimming analog circuits. Where there's a will there's a way, I guess.

[PBS Poll-435]

20. I could have lit a cig off of it.

I immediately unpluged the power cord. Blew it out. And took it out of the friggin' computer.
Glad that it didn't fry the board or the CD & DVDRW drives.

I just can't believe that when I took it back to the store that they said "it happens".