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Molex Splitter Kills Two Drives?

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Xyl3ne

Senior member
I know some molex splitters are kind of dodgy but I've never had this happen before.. I've used this splitter several times on plenty of machines and it figures it decided to kill something in my main box. Two HDDs -- dead. Now I've never had a drive fail like this before. Both just sit idle. No smell of burnt electronics, either. No spin up, nothing. I tried to run Western Digital Diagnostics on it but it just doesn't detect any drives. One drive will actually let the machine boot up if it's connected but the other makes it just stall at "detecting IDE drives". Has this happened to any of you before?
 
did you try the drives in another computer? Could it be an IDE channel that got fried (don't see how . . . )

it'd be easier to replace a motherboard than to deal with the loss of that much data.
 
I don't know how it could kill a hd, it's just a simple wire system. Visual inspection should tell you if the splitter is ok or not. Is your psu good? Maybe it was a voltage problem.
 
Nah, the drives are dead. I already got a new HDD and I'm running on the machine now. The splitter seems fine. Nothing looks physically wrong with it. I connected a fan to it and it worked. I'm too afraid to hook up anything else. My PSU is fine. Like I said, I went and bought another HDD and it seems fine.
 
Unless it was miswired, I'd be highly skeptical that a power Y could kill a drive. More likely a coincidence and the blame was placed improperly.

.bh.
 
Both drives are different ages and they both worked perfectly fine until I put the splitter into the equation. Once I powered the machine on with the splitter (I know how to hook up a splitter, I've been building and repairing machines for longer than I can remember) the drives no longer did anything. I tried them on another power supply in a different computer and still the same result.
 
I would blame it on a static shot if it happened as you say. A good splitter cant do that. Its faintly possible that a defective connection cycled power rapidly (as it connected/disconnected) but even that shouldnt kill a drive unles it was marginal to begin with.

 
Having splitters kill harddrives is not uncommon. My recomendation is only using splitters for very low power consuming things, such as fans.
 
Originally posted by: dguy6789
Having splitters kill harddrives is not uncommon. My recomendation is only using splitters for very low power consuming things, such as fans.
Click to expand...



I'm not arguing, but through what action would a splitter kill a harddrive? I'm a little suspicious, but if you all say it happens, I guess I believe you :^).
 
I also doubt it was the splitter, as I have been using one forever and splitters are sometimes necessary to run certain things.
 
its more likely that PSU rail couldn't handle the extra load of a 2nd hard drive added to it and voltages went wack
 
There are plenty of low quality splitters out there. If there is a break in the wire inside, it can cause some bad things to happen.
 
Connected backwards?

Although hard drive connectors are keyed, I've seen some connectors of such poor quality, that connecting them backwards would be possible with a bit of brute force.

Another possibility is that both ground wires (black ones) were disconnected - although I wouldn't expect damage, if this happened I suppose it might be possible if the IDE cable was connected correctly and the drive tried to get it's ground supply thought the IDE interface.
 
Originally posted by: necine
I had a splitter kill a WD 80 gig I had about 2 years ago. I haven't touched one since.
Click to expand...

I had a faulty splitter kill a 250gb SATA drive. Was shorting out and the drive kept powering down and if I tapped the splitter it would spin up. Instead of replacing the splitter immediately I kept tapping it then zap. Dead drive. Since then I bought a PSU with 10 built in connectors. No more splitters for me!
 
.................Molex in
......................|
......................|__________
...................../................/
..................../................/
.................../................/
.....Molex Out......Molex Out

It really looks like a Y but the forum won't let me format it very well
 
Splitters are not something to be avoided. Just don't use them on anything that takes serious power. It is ok to use them on fans.
 
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