What happens when your Molex is connected backward

Why would I admit this? To give you an idea what may happen if you too don't make absolute certain the Molex wires are correct and then the plastic interconnects mate.

Yesterday I installed a replacement desktop USB 3 PCIE card and the Molex interconnect was backwards.
I had light: a room light on in the daytime, an extra light on an arm and a headband light on my forehead with a lot of LEDs, as well as bifocal glasses. I thought I connected it right, so connected a WD 1TB external hard drive. It spun up, got clicky and I unplugged it. Plugged in a SanDisk 32GB USB stick heard a crackle. Oh oh. I think it was Habibie who got me to buy a USB tester a while back - when the wiring was backwards there was no number under volts and a higher number for amperage.

Where I was very lucky, the rest of the computer is fine, and I have mostly a backup of the 1TB on another 2TB, but lost anything this winter unless I can find a way to revive the 1TB external hard drive. It lights, disk spins, but has a click and computer doesn't recognize it.

So you live, you learn - $100 down the drain and that one moment in time I should have made extra certain the parts weren't connected backwards playing over and over... but an old dog re-learned an old trick, that's good... waaaah anyway :-(

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-= Cloud 9 =-

Ouch! sorry to hear that Joey.

-bodhi
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JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
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> Oh oh. I think it was Habibie who got me to buy a USB tester a while back - when the wiring was backwards there was no number under volts and a higher number for amperage.
>
Sorry to hear about that, Joey. Yes, I posted such a 7 in 1 USB tester DC Digital voltmeter a while back when it was on sale. Did you make a note how high the display showed there Amp? What happens if you directly reconnect the HDD to your computer, will it still work?

bodhi Wrote:
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> Ouch! sorry to hear that Joey.

Thank you kindly sir. Ouch is right :-(

habibie Wrote:
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> JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > Oh oh. I think it was Habibie who got me to buy
> a USB tester a while back - when the wiring was
> backwards there was no number under volts and a
> higher number for amperage.
> >
> Sorry to hear about that, Joey. Yes, I posted such
> a 7
> in 1 USB tester DC Digital voltmeter a while
> back when it was on sale. Did you make a note how
> high the display showed there Amp? What happens if
> you directly reconnect the HDD to your computer,
> will it still work?

If it helps anyone, the WD My Passport Ultra external hard drives can be pried open with a guitar pick and the first two pics show what that looks like. It isn't a simple adapter over standard SATA jack, rather, more integrated. The discoloration of metals makes me wonder if they acted like a fuse or what.
The third picture is all my camera could pickup when the tester plug was in the improper USB 3 jack. Four other pictures are too blurry. After the mistake was corrected the tester registered 5v under Volts.

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-= Cloud 9 =-

Good news maybe! The PCB boards are available for around $49, and if I can manage to be careful this time I think it's all recoverable.

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-= Cloud 9 =-

JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
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> Good news maybe!
> The
> PCB boards are available for around $49, and
> if I can manage to be careful this time I think
> it's all recoverable.

Let us know what's your plan will be to rescue this disk. Are there important stuff that have not been backed up since the last time?

-bodhi
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bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > Good news maybe!
> >
> The
> > PCB boards are available for around $49,
> and
> > if I can manage to be careful this time I think
> > it's all recoverable.
>
> Let us know what's your plan will be to rescue
> this disk. Are there important stuff that have not
> been backed up since the last time?

Yeah, because I never made a perfect copy of the 1TB to the 2TB there's many possibilities. Otherwise I'd taken extreme care of the two external hard drives, never banged them around or had them in bad heat etc.

I'm 90% sure I found every bit of music my niece recorded, but I'm not 100% sure. Also when she left us last year I'd only asked for her camera, a lower end Canon that for your entertainment two pictures are attached. Both of them taken from the porch here! One is Jupiter last week, it's not clear but far better result than I expected pointing camera south where Stellarium said Jupiter would be. 2nd pic is the moon, that too is decent from the porch and no tripod. Those are two of 20 I have for sure here, the rest all winter are on that hard drive.

So the plan is to get a Torx screwdriver (this month) and swing this next month - you remove the PC board and send it in because like other devices, the WD "BIOS" gets changed with every model, and it's therefore encrypted so you can't just swap PC boards.

Remember the problem I mentioned with Reneases chipsets that deal with USB 3? The reason I went the extra mile was to make sure it was safe for a large copyover and refresh everything. That was nearly a success, but it's good to know there's still hope.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2018 01:37AM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Man, that is something you would try the hardest to keep.

-bodhi
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