RE: [OT] Can a dodgy power socket burn out HDD's?

["Steve Morgan" <smorgo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I managed to smoke a HDD some years ago by using a mounting screw that
was
2mm too long. The screw cut into the PCB and earthed one of the tracks.

Fortunately, I had an identical drive that had suffered a mechanical
failure
and I was able to swap the controller boards. Ever since, I've been very
careful to check the length of the screws before assembly!

Could it be something similar?

Steve Morgan

-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Paul Gale
Sent: 19 July 2007 07:58
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] [OT] Can a dodgy power socket burn out HDD's?

I need some advice in finding an expensive problem:

I'm building a new monster workstation based on dual quad core Xeons and a
RAID 0 array of WD Raptor HDD's. After fully assembling it yesterday on a
couple of reboots I got a strong smell of burning capacitor/IC. Turns out
that I've burnt out 2 of the Raptors and one older SATA HDD :-(

The power supply is an expensive Thermaltake 1000W EPS12V PSU and the
drives
are in Icy Dock SATA RAID caddies.

Wasn't really sure what was causing the problem - except the drives burnt
out in both caddies, so unless there's a batch/common/short in both, I'm
guessing it's unlikely to be them at fault???

Later on, I turned on a PC amp connected to another PC and all my monitors
flicked off - odd I thought. Investigating further traced the problem to a
faulty Belkin surge protector power strip which was arcing in the main
power
switch.

So the big question is - Is it possible for a dodgy mains connection to
adversely affect a PSU and cause it to maybe spike on the +5v/+12V rails
and
burn out components like this?

I'm RMAing the drives and have set up an RMA for the PSU too - but hesitant
whether to power up remaining drives, thinking the problem (may) be solved?

Any thoughts?

Paul.





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