Question Is there a safe way to go from Molex to sata or other solution to add more HDDs in a workstation case?

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Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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I know for some reason you're not suppose to use Molex to Sata adapters since they tend to catch fire. As someone that understands electrical I don't quite understand why, but I just know it's a known issue. Molex to sata = lose your data. Heard that many times. I am adding local storage to my workstation to troubleshoot a weird issue I have with VirtualBox for when I want to run VMs locally, so I want to rule out NFS as being the issue. I'm going to add 4 3TB hard drives pulled from a recent server upgrade and do a raid 10.

I put in a SAS HBA and fed them with a break out cable, but now I need power. I don't know what I did with the rest of the modular cables that came with my PSU. It is a Corsair CX600m. There are spare power plugs on the PSU and I do own a molex crimper, so I could make my own cable but the sata part, not so much as those are rather specialized and usually molded. Is there a known safe solution for getting more sata power connectors if I don't have the modular cables anymore? I do have tons of cables for a Fatality 1000 but it clearly states on it that it's only for that model (and that's OCZ so different manufacturer). So probably a bad idea to try that in case the pin out is different and it sends the wrong voltage to the wrong pin on the sata side. Or are these made actually standard so should the pin out be the same?

Normally I would use a case with a sata backplane that handles all of this but this is a bit of a janky setup and the drives are installed internally.

I do have 2 of those OCZ fatality PSUs sitting in a case doing nothing, so very worse case scenario I can just swap the whole PSU... but if there is a way I can avoid that I'll take that option.
 
BoomerD

BoomerD

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Feb 26, 2006
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Easiest way...contact Corsair. Ask them to send/sell you more SATA cables. I have an older HX650 PSU. I contacted them, they sent me more PCIe cables to power the newer graphics cards that now require double PCIe connectors. Got them in the mail in less than 2 weeks...of course, you being in the frozen northland...
 
mindless1

mindless1

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Aug 11, 2001
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I agree on trying to find more SATA for your PSU, BUT... I have never had a problem using molex 4 pin to SATA.

Granted, "some" of them, I made myself. I like to reuse what I can, and it is always cheaper and often faster to a solution to just get something finished. I figured, if I'm throwing away old PATA HDDs anyway, and making at least a token gesture towards the data being irretrievable, might as well harvest parts which included the magnets and the molex 4 pin connector (sawed off the rest of the PATA connector strip).

So, I had the molex conn., and an SATA harness off some old PSU that died. Solder it up and bob's yer uncle. Often I repair PSU but these days, find myself cannibalizing old group regulated and esp. 5V biased PSU for parts instead of repair.

I have also used the cheap ebay/etc (don't recall where I got them) molex to 1 or 2 SATA adapters w/o issue, but with both these and the DIY made ones, I do it in moderation.

I don't try to put too many drives on any one set of harness wires from the PSU. If mechanical HDD instead of SSD, generally I limit it to two drives per harness wire set even though this is technically still below the rating for them which is (IIRC) 6A or more, except that dodgy generic chinese connectors may be a poor clone of a 6A connector and not really capable of that much current. Sadly I see this with many friction fit connectors, especially DC barrel jacks/sockets.

You might see if the issue is poor/intermittent connector contact(s) and/or voltage drop and the latter can be measured at the connector to the drive except for this one last connection but I suppose you could flip the drive over and probe for voltage levels on the PCB instead.

Another option related to my DIY adapters is solder some SATA pigtails onto the PSU leads instead of using the connectors.
 
bba-tcg

bba-tcg

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Apr 8, 2010
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computerguyonline.net
Red Squirrel said:
I know for some reason you're not suppose to use Molex to Sata adapters since they tend to catch fire. As someone that understands electrical I don't quite understand why, but I just know it's a known issue. Molex to sata = lose your data. Heard that many times. I am adding local storage to my workstation to troubleshoot a weird issue I have with VirtualBox for when I want to run VMs locally, so I want to rule out NFS as being the issue. I'm going to add 4 3TB hard drives pulled from a recent server upgrade and do a raid 10.

I put in a SAS HBA and fed them with a break out cable, but now I need power. I don't know what I did with the rest of the modular cables that came with my PSU. It is a Corsair CX600m. There are spare power plugs on the PSU and I do own a molex crimper, so I could make my own cable but the sata part, not so much as those are rather specialized and usually molded. Is there a known safe solution for getting more sata power connectors if I don't have the modular cables anymore? I do have tons of cables for a Fatality 1000 but it clearly states on it that it's only for that model (and that's OCZ so different manufacturer). So probably a bad idea to try that in case the pin out is different and it sends the wrong voltage to the wrong pin on the sata side. Or are these made actually standard so should the pin out be the same?

Normally I would use a case with a sata backplane that handles all of this but this is a bit of a janky setup and the drives are installed internally.

I do have 2 of those OCZ fatality PSUs sitting in a case doing nothing, so very worse case scenario I can just swap the whole PSU... but if there is a way I can avoid that I'll take that option.
Click to expand...
 
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WilliamM2

WilliamM2

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Jun 14, 2012
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The adapters with soft MOLDED ends were known to burn. They short internally from poor construction, an example:
molded.jpg

The one with pins on the sata end have plastic between each connector, and will work just fine, it's a harder plastic:
 

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Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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Ended up finding it on the Canadian site so ordered that, and a bunch of misc stuff like fans/usb sticks so I can get free shipping.

So this should work. I bet I will eventually find the cables here somewhere since I doubt I threw them out... but no idea where I put the extras.
 
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Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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The cables came in and at first I was a bit nervous because they are type 4 but the ones inside are type 3 (I never noticed that designation before otherwise I would have checked when ordering!).

I plugged in a defective hard drive just so I can get access to a test area to test out the pins and the voltage was correct. I can see the 4 hard drives on my system now so time to do a raid! That made me realize, I should cannibalize a dead HDD just so I can make a tester to test each individual pin as the way I did it was a little crude as I couldn't probe each pin individually due to them being too small so it was not a super thorough test.
 
bba-tcg

bba-tcg

Senior member
Apr 8, 2010
605
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computerguyonline.net
Red Squirrel said:
The cables came in and at first I was a bit nervous because they are type 4 but the ones inside are type 3 (I never noticed that designation before otherwise I would have checked when ordering!).

I plugged in a defective hard drive just so I can get access to a test area to test out the pins and the voltage was correct. I can see the 4 hard drives on my system now so time to do a raid! That made me realize, I should cannibalize a dead HDD just so I can make a tester to test each individual pin as the way I did it was a little crude as I couldn't probe each pin individually due to them being too small so it was not a super thorough test.
Click to expand...
The only difference in the type 4 and type 3 is on the atx 24 pin connector. All the peripheral connections match between the two types.

pc-mods.com

Corsair® PSU Type 3 Cables Pinout

Type 3 cables are compatible with the following Corsair® PSUs: AXi (Except AX1600i) HXi HX (GOLD) RM (previous to 2019 version) Limited compatibility: Only compatible with 24pin ATX cable: AX1200 Only compatible with 8pin PCI-E, 4pin Power and 5pin SATA Power cables: CS-M CX-M TX-M...
pc-mods.com pc-mods.com

pc-mods.com

Corsair® PSU Type 4 Cables Pinout

Type 4 cables are compatible with the following Corsair® PSUs: AX1600i (TITANIUM) AX (TITANIUM) HX (PLATINUM) RM (2019) RMi RMx SF Limited compatibility: Only compatible with 8pin PCI-E, 4pin Power and 5pin SATA Power cables: CS-M CX-M TX-M (GOLD & BRONZE) VENGEANCE-M (BRONZE & SILVER)...
pc-mods.com pc-mods.com
 
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