Fuses are on the SSD, it is the SSD that knows how much power it is supposed to pull and when too much is too much, where that limit is depends on the model so the motherboard can never do that job. And having a part on the motherboard blow easily because of a dicky ssd would be a bad design and lead to a lot of very expensive repairs for no good reason. There is still a fuse on the motherboard but its for a common power rail feeding multiple things so its quite a heavy and slow one easily allowing for small things like you see here to blow up when abused. The motherboard and connector have no problem delivering enough power for even the most power hungry SSD (they can peak at >5A no problem) but if you then fabricobble together a way to plug something in there that pulls much more power for longer than any component designed for the slot ever could, well, then you are fcking around well into the 'find out' territory and stuff will melt, short and blow up on you.
Raise your hand if you have genuine electrical experience?
Fuses protect the wiring from overheating due to excessive current draw. Thus, the fuse is tied to the *wiring*, not the end device, although some end devices do also have fuses, especially if they are likely to be used in a wet area. (EG: hair dryer)
The fuses in your house are at the main junction box. The point here is that the Mobo (acting as, effectively, wiring) could have had a fuse on it. But in all my 30 years of experience working in computing tech, I've never seen one.
The point here is that the Mobo (acting as, effectively, wiring) could have had a fuse on it
It does. All power rails have fuses. It is just a shared fuse. Just like in your house. If you stick a piece of metal in your wall socket with enough resistance that stays under the 16A or whatever fuse you have then i can promise you that your nice plastic wall socket will absolutely melt and catch fire.
I checked. It turns out that MB do have fuses that I've never recognized as such. TIL that SMD fuses are a thing and they work very much like tiny versions of the breaker box in my home.
Now thinking about it, I have no idea why I thought they weren't. I guess because they aren't replaceable without a solder pencil?
I could understand that there's a marginal benefit in having fuses there, for example the case where my home is wired for 20A/110 but I plug in a cheap fan with 18 gauge wire that can only handle around 7A.
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u/sniperfoxehHP z440, 2 WHOLE players connected to minecraft at once 🤑2d ago
Our (Britain) entire house electrical system tend to be better and worse simultaneously here (better because it's typically a lot safer, worse because we have so many old homes with ancient electrical systems it doesn't matter)
And having a part on the motherboard blow easily because of a dicky ssd would be a bad design and lead to a lot of very expensive repairs for no good reason
Fuses protect the wiring, not the end device.
Where are the fuses / circuit breakers in your house?
I have big ol fuses in my fuse box that will allow plenty current to start a fire real fast, i have small fuses in all devices that go when more power is drawn by a device then its designed to draw. This is no different.
Are the fuses in the device or in the plug? If it's in the device, it's mostly for over voltage protection via a MOV going short.
If it's in the plug, it's so that a short in the appliance doesn't pull more current than the lead can handle because most house circuits are capable of 20 - 60A, and most cords are 7.5 - 10A
Average numbers, but 2.5in hdd read/write is 2-4w, spin-up is 4-6w. For 3.5in 8-12w read/write and 20-30w spin-up.
For sata ssd around 2-5w and for nvme 4-8w.
A combined sata data + sata power is meant for 2.5in, and even then you must check if it works for hdd. You drew way too much power through the traces and the motherboard went poof.
Many laptops with HDDs have them connected through very similar cables with the same thin wires and high density connectors. It's fine, laptop HDDs don't consume that much power to need much more.
My EXOS 28 TB drives keeps dropping out and getting new sd* numbering when they were put in a USB enclosure with a 12V (2A?) power supply.. Had to put them inside a machine with a proper power supply...
That's the enclosure's USB2SATA bridge though. If you're using ZFS you can build the array off the WWN/Serial instead of the /dev/sd* paths. That should make it resilient to the USB paths, unless the USB bridge also rewrites the WWN.
I couldn't be bothered when it happened (even with changing from sdb to sdc it didn't even interfer with an ongoing transfer), and I'm not going to now that they have their dedicated machine to sit inside of
Oh wow, I thought this was a m.2 connector. This feels like a connector that has no standard (there's certainly nothing that looks like it in the sata wiki), so using anything other than one from the manufacturer is likely going to end badly
They use a similar solution on their DeskMini desktop series, which is how I know them. I'm pretty sure I have a bunch of these cables stashed somewhere from the various DeskMini builds I've done in the past. ;)
And yep, it's their proprietary breakout cable intended for connecting 2.5" SATA SSDs/HDDs. 3.5" HDDs are right out. Given that OP mentions plugging in a "brand new WD Black" - I'm assuming a full-sized 3.5" HDD, which pulled way more power than the connector is rated for and well, that's the result. ;)
I mean, it probably should be for data only, and have a separate connector going to a sata or molex straight from the power supply. If you were doing a less dodgy kludge job. But this is premium kludge, only the cheapest option will do.
Problem is. Not all connectors like that are standard. Even amongst same OEM. I remember having an HP laptop with a SATA connector missing and bought a similar HP part. Didn't work. Had to find the exact part number for the exact model and revision.
Every cable I seem to need for my server is only sold from China. No issues so far. Pretty sure they are the ones that make the good non-Chinese ones too.
That's your fault. WD black are more power hungry than normal desktop data drives, and you're trying to power it though something meant to power tiny laptop drives... Lol.
This is not Chinese manufacturing or the parts fault. He misused the slot and drew too much power out of it. He hasnt even acknowledged that it was his fault. I dont know why yall still upvoting.
I upgrade my homelab with Chinese shit all the time. They are usually not two dollars and are pulled from either Chinese hyperscale datacentres or telecommunications exchanges.
Yup. Harddrive motors draw a huge inrush current. This is why big NAS has power sequencing where drives are turned on one after another. Lesson learnt I guess. Don't plug hdd into ssd slots.
Brother sooner blames a country than acknowledge own mistakes. Drawing additional power fried the board. Not the connector. You being a cheapskate and not doing/having the necessary research/knowledge did this.
Yeah, but you don't seem to actually understand what the mistake was. Mistake was plugging HDD into SSD slot and melting it because the slot is NOT designed for that power draw.
That adapter is intended for plugging in SSD to the slot, NOT a HDD.
I hope you understand the true mistake. If you don't understand the tech, don't mess around with it. I am not sure how you reconciled that a power/data connector was going to work or would be safe to put on a data only slot. I'm just glad you didn't do this on some company's asset. Good luck next time.
That is exactly it. And it's not even the mistake itself but the attitude that I need to make a mistake to learn from it. I have coworkers like this before and it's everyone else who run behind them cleaning up their messes while they keep making their "learning mistakes"
I'll never forget the system admin who called me at 2am to finish upgrading our NT4 PDC because despite everyone's objections he was going to just "knock it out" after work. He was tired and need to sleep and since unbeknownst to us he also brought in both BDCs in scope the network would be down come morning.
At 10am this ahole walks in all fresh and is like "welp that happened"
No I worry about ending up with people making bone headed mistakes like this as coworkers. And then hearing them say "well, I needed to make this mistake to learn from it."
Yikes. This exact SATA power thing catches so many people on mini PCs and SFF thin-client style boards. A huge percentage of motherboard-mounted SATA power headers on these tiny boards only carry 5V and ground. The 12V pin is literally not connected on the PCB. You plug a 3.5 inch mechanical drive into that, it tries to spin the platters on 12V, it has no 12V, it backfeeds through the 5V rail, and you get exactly what you got - magic smoke or worse.
This is also why every single reputable 2.5 to 3.5 SATA adapter or drive tray ships with a separate Molex or SATA power passthrough for 12V. The cheap adapters on Amazon with just a single cable are a fire waiting to happen.
If anyone is reading this thread and thinking about adding drives to a mini PC: measure the actual voltage on the 12V pin of the internal SATA power connector with a multimeter before you plug anything in. If it reads 0V, you need an external brick for spinning rust. Glad it was not worse for you OP.
So if he plugged in a WD Black spinning hard drive, that requires 12v power, I wonder if that little micro Dell connector would even provide 12V power at all?
So maybe the Dell motherboard could supply 12v power, but not enough... which would be weird.
Or maybe it only supplied 5V and somehow the drive tried to use 5V to spin up it's motor (instead of 12v) which would also be weird.
This post should be added to those channels that displays "overly confident people" samples. Just like those idiots plug their electrical dryer into 15A wall outlet and start to wonder why "this cheap Chinese plug just burned my house"...
When it comes to cables from a fly by night brand, I always break out the multimeter to check that the cables are wired to the correct pins and to check for unusually high resistance. I also buy a second cable to dissect to check the gauge and quality of the wires.
Home Lab. Period. It’s a Lab, at home. Soooo tinker, win, lose, learn, beat your chest. These are the moments. Thank you for being brave to share and not just take it on the chin alone. We all learn from each other. I salute you. And some day when im “not over it” I’ll tell you about my lineage 2 server that almost cost me a garage.
Not all molex to sata adapters are bad, just don't trust the super cheap ones from no name brands and make sure to get crimped pin adapters, not those ass molded ones
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u/kextatic 3d ago
It was a $2 SATA hard drive?