[SKreme]

I think I just blew out two power supplies in the last hour. At least I am assuming it is the PS since the machine doesn't even power on now. I must be doing something stupid but I don't know what it is. Here's the background. I have built a number of computers but have always used IDE/PATA drives and not SATA. I had a SATA drive sitting around and I decided I wanted a clean install so I took the blank drive, and plugged it into my motherboard. As I mentioned, I have never done this before... I figured it was similar to any other drive, plug it into the mobo, plug it into the power supply, turn it on, format the drive, install the OS. I plugged it in and turned it on. It was on for about a second before it turned off. Repeated attempts to get it to turn on only resulted in a split second of power before shutting off. Now it doesn't even get that split second. I thought maybe something was wrong with the powersupply so I decided to use another computer which I knew had a working powersupply. Plugged it into that one, tried booting up and now that one won't turn on either. This time there was a slight burning smell. Always a positive sign... So I am not trying any more powersupplies until I figure this out... What did I do wrong?

[ISDP]

Did you plug in the sata power source and the 4-Pin Molex Connector? That could blow the hard drives. Also try removing the battery computer from the motherboard, if that doesn't yield any results take the motherboard and set it up right outside the case and see if it boots then. If so theres a grounding problem then just reset it.

[Triple6]

You could simply have a seriously bad drive thats causing a short and taking out the power supply.

[SKreme]

@ISDP- There are two cables plugged into the HDD. I plugged one cable into the motherboard and the other one went into a SATA to 4-pin molex converter which then went back to the power supply. Just to clarify, this was done on two completely different computers with different motherboards and power supplies. Could it really be a grounding problem on both of them?

@Triple6- How would I test this? Or would I just call Seagate?

So it sounds like I didn't do anything wrong, just that the drive is messed up or I have bad grounding. Is there any way to determine for sure what the problem is? Also, how do I know for sure that my power supplies are dead. When I turn the computer on, nothing happens. Does this mean that they are goners? Also, these were both pretty old computers. Is it possible that they weren't able to handle a new SATA drive even though they both have SATA ports on the mobo.

[Triple6]

Are any of the wires loose on the molex to SATA power cable?

No good way to test it, you can look at the bottom of the drive at the circuit board to check for any obvious burn marks.

I'd either try returning the drive or calling Seagate.

[SKreme]

@triple6- Thanks for the reply. I just tried turning both computers on and they both power on fine now (although they wouldn't turn on at all last night). So luckily, it sounds like it didn't blow out my power supplies. I took a look at the molex to SATA and it looks fine to me. The only other thing I can think of is that I plugged the other cable into the wrong slot in the motherboard (there are two places for SATA cables) but I don't see why that would completely shut down my computer. I guess i'm not going to mess around with this anymore and just call seagate like you suggested. I am not interested in messing up any of the components in my PCs and can't figure out why plugging a SATA drive into my motherboard would temporarily disable a computer so that it won't even power on. Weird.

[SKreme]

I just put the SATA drive in an external enclosure and my other PC recognizes it... So it doesn't seem that there is anything wrong with the drive itself or either of the PCs it was plugged into. Does that mean the problem was with the cable or how I was plugging it in?

[Triple6]

You can plug in just the SATA or Power cable and see if the PC's turn on, of course the drive won't work but it may give you an idea which connection is giving you the issue.

[SKreme]

Now I am completely at a loss as to what happened. I formatted the drive when it was in the external enclosure. Then I tried plugging it back in to one of my PCs, one cable at a time as you suggested. And it doesn't shut down! I don't have any RAM in the machine I am testing it in so I can't actually try to install the OS yet but whereas before as soon as I plugged it in, it shut down my PCs, now it runs without shutting anything down. I wonder what could have caused it to shut down the PCs in the first place.

[Triple6]

Not sure, thats puzzling.

[ISDP]

My bet now is that the cables were loose or plug in wrong like Triple6 said. When will you receive your ram?

[SKreme]

Triple6 was right. I think the SATA drive's power cable was not plugged in correctly. I later found out that the place where the cable connects to the HDD had broken and most likely the cable was not plugged into the drive all the way or was on upside down. That's my best guess based on the information you provided and the broken piece. I now have Vista and Ubuntu dual booting on it. Thanks so much for your help!

(My main problem now is that the keyboard/mouse get disabled during hibernate in Vista and then when coming back from hibernate they do not get power again, thus forcing me to reboot because I can't use my input devices. Thankfully, it works now though and as long as I don't hibernate, I can use the computer.)

[Triple6]

Are the keyboard and mouse USB or PS2?

[SKreme]

Both are USB. Before, it wasn't recognizing them at all once I got past the bios password screen. (Meaning, it worked at the beginning of the boot then they would stop working and I couldn't log into windows or choose to boot into safe mode or anything like that.) I then went into the bios and enabled a couple of USB related options. One was something to the effect of enable legacy USB and then it started working during the whole boot cycle. Still doesn't work when I come back out of hibernate though.

[Triple6]

I'm not sure if turning on the USB Wake-on/Power-On settings would help with keeping them active.