PSA: be wary of cheap molex adapters! (fire damage inside)

m3ta1head

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So I turned on my PC (specs in sig) this afternoon and walked away to make a cup of coffee. Came back a couple of minutes later to the strong smell of an electrical fire - to my complete shock the 4pin molex to SATA power adapter connected to one of my data drives was completely lit up. Also to my surprise, the PSU did not automatically shut down as it should have after detecting a short circuit. I pulled the power and blew the fire out, and here's the damage:

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The culprit was obviously that molex adapter - luckily I caught it within a minute or so of it going up in flames so I was able to minimize collateral damage...still, at the very least it looks like the controller board on that hard drive is toast. The SSD directly above the drive also burned a bit but it looks to have survived the ordeal. The odd thing is that that hard drive has been connected up with that molex adapter for nearly 5 years now (I built this system at the end of 2011) - very odd that it failed after so much time. You guys reckon it's worth trying to plug in the hard drive to see if it still works, or should I look into swapping the controller board out?
 
Well it was the SATA side of the adapter that burned up. It was a known issue a few years ago and I'm guessing you had one of them but didn't know about it.

The drive might still work though if you clean up the contacts so the connector will plug in and make contact. I would only do this for data recovery though.
 
Well it was the SATA side of the adapter that burned up. It was a known issue a few years ago and I'm guessing you had one of them but didn't know about it.

The drive might still work though if you clean up the contacts so the connector will plug in and make contact. I would only do this for data recovery though.

Yep, after some googling this seems like it's a fairly common issue with cheap molex SATA adapters. Lesson learned.

How would I go about replacing the controller board on the drive? It looks like this company offers replacements, but the service is quite steep at $50: Samsung 1TB HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 P/N: HD103SJ Donor PCB: BF41-00278A Circuit Board + Firmware Transfer
 
Yep, after some googling this seems like it's a fairly common issue with cheap molex SATA adapters. Lesson learned.

How would I go about replacing the controller board on the drive? It looks like this company offers replacements, but the service is quite steep at $50: Samsung 1TB HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 P/N: HD103SJ Donor PCB: BF41-00278A Circuit Board + Firmware Transfer
You have a back up, right? Then buy a new drive and call it a day. I won't touch any type of repair like that after a short and/or a fire. I would be even leery of the power supply now. But I play safe over sorry.
 
It's an old drive. Don't waste money repairing it unless you have non-backed up data still on the drive and no other way to get it off. Chances are, like I said, the drive will probably still work. The fire started because resistance heated up the cheap plastic until it started a fire. I just wouldn't trust it any further than the amount of time it takes to pull all the data off and onto a new drive, again assuming no backups. Then go buy a cheap 2TB hdd to replace it. Drives are cheap these days.
 
I once opened a spare external drive.. one of those 500gb ones that don't require external power, to put the drive in my ps3. The entire backside of the drive was black and burnt and was clearly on fire for some time at some point in its life.

Because the drive had always worked, I just used it in the ps3 anyways. That was 3 years ago. I would just clean up those contacts and keep on using it.

Edit: by backside, I mean the board side. Entire board was black and burned.
 
I can't imagine anyone storing critical information on a PS3. So should that drive would have failed, no big deal. However, the OP might have important files on that drive. Strongly, strongly advise against using it in production. Drives do not last forever even if they aren't burned.
 
From the board view we can see, the only damage is on those pins and even that just seems to be part of the plastic plug. The most the rest of the board has is smoke damage.

I'm a risk taker, though. I've lost huge drives in the past, without backups, and I somehow managed to wake up the next morning. I was worries I might die, after all the worry everyone else had.
 
I really avoid using adapters in my builds whenever possible. Just more that can go wrong and the cheap connectors commonly present in there adapters don't help either.
 
The connector on the drive is now compromised. The chances of it having a solid connection is slim now. Loose connections cause higher resistance which generates heat that can potentially generate a fire, again. Burning down a house being cheap isn't worth it.

Additionally, not everyone stores deposible data on drives. Family pictures, court documents, irs records, etc... Can be important to some.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I was able to clean up the connector to the point where it looks just like new - there was simply charred plastic on it, nothing a bit of alcohol couldn't easily remove. I threw the drive in an external enclosure and it fired right up without issue. I've still ordered a replacement drive and will be retiring this one, but so far it seems to be functioning perfectly. I'm just glad that I still have my data and there wasn't any more extensive damage to the rest of the computer.
 
Looks like the +12V lead managed to touch that adjacent ground. If you don't see brown spots/warping/charring on the SSD circuit board, right where the connector is soldered ontot he board, then the cause was the adapter and the SSD connector is simply stained with burnt plastic.
I guess a lot of your +12 current went right to ground, and the resistance of the contact points on power plug->SSD gold pins and in the adapter caused the huge temperatures.
Your PSU didn't shut down because it failed to notice a short (resistance was still high) and failed to notice an overload condition on the +12 wire.
I wouldn't use the SSD on anything less than a disposable computer and only to get the data. You simply can't be sure how much the connector suffered and how much resistance it puts up after the incident. It may be shiny, but the solder further on may be a shell of its former self :D
 
Your lucky you were there at that exact time.....I had the side cover off a computer a few years back....to do some Cleaning(Dust).
I had just walked back into the room with the blower when I heard a loud Pop...I looked up just in time to see a Firery Capacitor
Fly out from my ABIT MB onto the Rug. We never know when our computers will go up in smoke.
 
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