Replacing a PC PSU - don't repeat my mistake!

[Ian]

My workhorse desktop PC has been out of action for several months because it suddenly refused to power up one day, without warning. I spent a huge amount of time substituting compononents in order to try and discover what was causing the problem. This included changing the power supply unit (PSU).

Unfortunately, I made a major mistake - easy to do, too. I switched from an EV3A brand PSU to a Corsair brand unit. Both are modular PSUs, so most of the cabling emerging from the PSU connects using sockets at the PSU end. The SATA power cables are exactly the same physical fit with both PSUs, but it looks like the pin-outs are different. I simply re-connected the EV3A unit's SATA power cables to the Corsair PSU's SATA power sockets. That could have been a very bad move...

The PSU change didnt solve the problem. I've since replaced the EV3A SATA power cables with the Corsair ones after noticing differences in the plug. I'm now able to power up the PC to BIOS, but no SATA drives are detected. For all I know as I write this, the EV3A SATA power cables could have killed all my hard drives

I have an external bare SATA drive dock that I can use to test the drives on my laptop, so I will be doing that later today - cross your fingers for me!

The moral of the story is - if you're replacing your PSU and it's the modular type, replace ALL the cables with the ones that came with the new PSU.

Ian

[BDennis]

Hope your drives are OK. You'd think cables with the same physical connectors would have the same pinouts. I'd probably have made the same error!

I haven't fiddled with PCs since I switched over to Macs, very hard to do anything with Apple gear!

Bill

[Ian]

Alas, as I had feared, there is damage to some of the HDs (I had one 1TB and two 2TB drives plus a 500GB SSD system drive fitted). One of the 2TB drives is dead, the second spins up but reports that the drive is unformatted - hopefully that is recoverable and the 1TB drive appears to be OK. The SSD is dead. Ah well, a hard lesson learned.

I don't think the data on the dead drives is gone, it's just the circuit boards on the drives have been fried. I might look at whether it's possible to repair the drives.

Ian

[jima]

On the chance that the drive controllers are toast but the chamber is OK what make and model of the 2TB drives? I have a small selection rotated out of my one of my NAS's and if compatible you would be welcome to a controller or two to try.

[wornish]

Ouch! Hope you have your data backed up somewhere.

[Ian]

Well at least I have a nice new 1TB M.2 NVME drive on order to replace the SSD.

jima Thanks for offering. The two drives that are completely unresponsive are a 500GB Crucial MX500 2.5 SSD and a 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200. The one that spins up but shows up as unallocated is a really old 1TB WD WD10EADS-00LB5B1 - it's reporting it has almost 2TB unallocated but it's a 1TB drive...

Most of the data is backed up - I use various cloud and local backup systems, including a NAS, but the NAS had been out of commission for a few months because I forgot to bring its PSU to France, I got it couriered and then of course the courier lost it

The main problem is not knowing for sure what has been lost for good.

Ian

[jima]

Sorry to say I've had a good hunt but I can't find anything which is compatible with a Tosh or WD drive.

[Ian]

No problem jima, I'm fairly confident that nothing major has been lost for ever.

[blackfox]

oh dear and words to that effect , thought you had been quiet for to long of late OOPS

[Ian]

I haven't used my PC for a good six months. My laptop has been doing overtime instead. In recent weeks I've logged in daily and done the routine tasks but not posted that many photos. We've had a lot of visitors staying and I've been to the UK to help my daughter move house, etc

[Phill D]

This sounds like a complete disaster Ian. Hope you can salvage things without too much cost.

[moggi1964]

Sorry but this deserves a 'Bugger!' .

I want to at least thank you for sharing the experience, Ian because I can promise you I would have done the same thing.

[Ian]

I certainly don't want anyone else to fall into this trap.

[MikeOxon]

Sorry to read about your problems, Ian and thank you for the warning. I've never used a modular PSU and had not realised that they have proprietary pin-outs. Someone always seems to find a way of circumventing standardisation! It makes me wonder if they also make them with shorter lifetimes so that you will have to keep going back to the same supplier for plenty of replacements!

Often, if a PSU fails, it's down to a capacitor and I have rescued a failed Fujitsu by replacing the dud capacitor, with the help of a Youtube video.

Mike

[Ian]

Even worse, I'm pretty sure there was nothing wrong with the original PSU but it was an obvious component to switch out in order to eliminate it as part of the fault problem solving.

[blackfox]

So glad I use a mac

[Ian]

Well, that's a bit like me saying so glad I have an electric car because petrol cars always catch fire 😂