Ho. ly. CRAP!

[SteveRichardson]

okay so yesterday (i think) I posted this thread ( https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/218215/ )...Its about how its the second hard drive I have purchased that has failed. It was a Seagate 3.5'' SATA 320gb drive inside a highly rated i-rocks 3.5'' SATA HDD Enclosure and it died yesterday after receiving it from Newegg.com two days ago. btw I paid about $140 for everything total. The drive had really good reviews on the site and so did the enclosure.

Well I just tried my luck to see if it would randomly start working again (the clicky noise of death told me it was broken...just like the other drive I had that broke). I turned it on and it started to make some loud electronic whining sounds and it emitted a pop sound, lost all power, and started smoking. I could smell it immediately so I unplugged it and made sure nothing was burning. Apparently now the enclosure is broken.

What the heck am I doing wrong? Am I just so unlucky that nothing wants to work for me?


Does anyone have any advice? I just want something that will work, is cost-efficient, and won't burn my house down.

Is that too much to ask?

 

[macsrockmysocks]

Get a replacement. Or you can just get another brand. You just happen to have pretty bad luck that should wear off with a working Hard Drive!

 

[mmmcheese]

If it's so new, just get an RMA...sometimes you get a dud...it happens.

 

[Lorelai]

This is probably a silly question, but... Are you plugging them into the same outlet? We once had several lamps "pop" because they were being plugged into a outlet that had a wiring problem.

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

No matter what he does, lorelai, if smoke's come out.. well... bye bye!

 

[Marlon_JBT]

NEVER LET THE MAGIC SMOKE OUT!!

Bad luck can really ruin a good day / hour / minute / week / month / year.

last week my sister's eMachines PC died. Dead motherboard, and eMachines wanted $150 to replace it. So we just decided to build a new PC for her, while she continues to primarily use my old PowerBook.

I got a nice shiny new Intel Motherboard. Plugged everything in.... let's configure the BIOS!

Primary IDE does NOT work.

I tried all i could.

Dead motherboard. This means that this poor girl has had 2 dead motherboards within 48 hours. Extremely depressing!

Got a new motherboard...again, this one works perfectly!

My point is... you can occasionally get a dud... or two. Return it... hopefully your 3rd one will be perfect and last you for years to come.

 

[generik]

I actually suspect it is the enclosure.. woah, I have never ever seen a hard drive smoke in my life before..

Either way just RMA both of them.

PS: Ever considered a better brand of enclosure? I like the aluminium Mcally ones.

 

[mmmcheese]

I have that same drive in this enclosure: (http://www.vantecusa.com/p_nst360su_bl.html) and so far it seems like a pretty sweet setup. It's missing the firewire connection that the G-Drive Q has, but USB2 for compatibility and eSATA for speed make a pretty nice combo. USB2 isn't slow, but I wouldn't want to use it for main drive (except in emergencies). Right now I use it for backing up, so I USB is good enough. One day when I have the need/money, I'll buy the eSATA card for my MBP.


Anyway, if the enclosure you bought is highly rated, I wouldn't think twice about getting it replaced with a second one (as long as it's under warranty)...you probably just got a bad one...it happens.

 

[Makosuke]

Hard drives do, on VERY rare occasions, fail catastrophically and actually burn a bit.

More notably, if something is going to fail catastrophically, it's probably going to be right after you get it--DOAs and just bum parts. That's why "enterprise" hard drives have a longer factory burn-in period than consumer ones--you catch more infant failures that way.

I've bought a lot of Seagate drives, and they're generally reliable, but I recently had a low-end one start losing sectors within a week of installation. It just happens.

That said, your problem is that you've got two brand new parts, so it's kinda tough to tell which one is really the issue. It could just as easily be a very broken enclosure frying the drive as a broken drive, and if the enclosure is actually toast too, it's even more likely it was the problem to begin with and it just took the drive with it--it would take a truly spectacular failure for a drive to break an enclosure's bridge board, while the other way around isn't nearly as unlikely.

The problem, of course, is that it's a little hard to test either without the potential of breaking even more hardware. Worse, if one broke the other and you didn't just get very unlucky with two bum pieces of hardware at the same time, only one is going to be covered under warranty if the company can tell what caused the failure. If they can't, well, get 'em both replaced and be happy.

 

[SteveRichardson]

Alright guys I ordered the same drive over again with a different, slightly more expensive, higher-rated exclosure.

It should be coming in the mail today.

I'll record how it goes.

 

[SteveRichardson]

..and it's workin great so far

 

[mmmcheese]

..and it's workin great so far

"BOOM!"