I posted this question to SuperUser, but so far have only gotten one response from a guy suggesting that I'm imagining things. Hoping for a better response here at Tom's... Here's the info:
Fires resulting from molex-to-sata and molex-to-dual-sata-splitter power cables are a well known phenomenon. My question is: is there such thing as a "safe" splitter cable, or alternative method of powering two drives off a single molex?
Many of the discussions of the topic seem to blame "cheap generic" cables... But I'm not sure that a high quality cable exists. The best reviewed cables on amazon are from companies like StarTech, Rosewill, etc., they're all $3-4 items, and each has at least a couple of reviews describing fires. I suspect most of the cables are coming from the same suppliers in China, regardless of the brand.
In my case, my choices are limited. The computer in question is a small home server (HP n54L) with "dedicated" hardware - meaning it doesn't follow a standard like mini-itx. The PSU is not modular, and has only molex outputs. I needed to add another HDD, so I split one of the molexes, and ran the system SSD & new HDD off of it. Everything worked fine for 2.5 years, then the splitter cable burned. (Drive connectors were slightly melted, but the drives still work.)
My options, without replacing the PSU or computer seem to be: 1) run the extra drive in an external enclosure, which kind of sucks. 2) try again with a new cable, which seems like asking for trouble. Maybe buy them in bulk, and swap out every six months?
Given how common the molex-to-sata conversion seems to be, and how common the fires are, you'd think someone could come up with a non-exploding cable!
Interestingly, here's an x-ray of a failed cable - apparently, the failure may occur over time due to "electromigration"?
Fires resulting from molex-to-sata and molex-to-dual-sata-splitter power cables are a well known phenomenon. My question is: is there such thing as a "safe" splitter cable, or alternative method of powering two drives off a single molex?
Many of the discussions of the topic seem to blame "cheap generic" cables... But I'm not sure that a high quality cable exists. The best reviewed cables on amazon are from companies like StarTech, Rosewill, etc., they're all $3-4 items, and each has at least a couple of reviews describing fires. I suspect most of the cables are coming from the same suppliers in China, regardless of the brand.
In my case, my choices are limited. The computer in question is a small home server (HP n54L) with "dedicated" hardware - meaning it doesn't follow a standard like mini-itx. The PSU is not modular, and has only molex outputs. I needed to add another HDD, so I split one of the molexes, and ran the system SSD & new HDD off of it. Everything worked fine for 2.5 years, then the splitter cable burned. (Drive connectors were slightly melted, but the drives still work.)
My options, without replacing the PSU or computer seem to be: 1) run the extra drive in an external enclosure, which kind of sucks. 2) try again with a new cable, which seems like asking for trouble. Maybe buy them in bulk, and swap out every six months?
Given how common the molex-to-sata conversion seems to be, and how common the fires are, you'd think someone could come up with a non-exploding cable!
Interestingly, here's an x-ray of a failed cable - apparently, the failure may occur over time due to "electromigration"?
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