Measure the resistances of these components:

Thanks again for the replies, I finally was able to sleep for about 12 hours after 3 days of no sleep. I will now take the requested measurements and report back.

here are 2 answers for now:

1) the power supply that caused this issue in the first place has been removed and placed in the trash from the first moment i realized my first drive was not spinning up (several days ago)- so these 22 bad drives were only exposed to that bad PSU the one or 2 times that actually caused this issue.

2) The power supply ive been using since the beginning is/are 2, external power supplies that have a molex and sata power head ONLY (the type that plug into the wall and come with the IDE/SATA to USB adaptors you buy) I know both of these HD power supplies are good as they work fine on other working drives i have. (i also used one of these at the electronics firm yesterday when they removed the diode and skipped the resistors)


Ive also finally figured out WHY this all happened. On the TYAN motherboard i was transfering from a large desktop case to my new supermicro 3U 16-hotswap bay chassis, there is a 4 pin "floppy drive power" style connector labled "Aux Power" For years, in the old chassis and on the old power supply i had this connector connected to one of the 4pin connectors coming from my old power supply and there were NO issues (for years). For whatever reason, when i moved this tyan motherboard to my new chassis and thus its new power supply i again attached this connector to the super micro's power supply (at my last step of moving) - that caused this entire issue! (see the attached picture). Had i not made this connection, i would not have 22 dead drives. I dont know why this was not an issue on the old PSU, but was on the new PSU. I assumed this connector was used to provide additional power to the IPMI card or maybe PCI-E cards, but infact it doesnt take in power, it PUT OUT POWER, so it should never be connected to a PSU. I dont know why it was not an issue when connected to my old PSU, but for years it was not.


(SEE ATTACHED IMAGE PLS)
thanks

Donor Drives LLC
Tool: Hard Drive Platter Swap, Removal, Exchange Tool for 3.5" and 2.5"
Item SKU: T3
Website: http://www.donordrives.com/professional ... d-2-5.html
Tel: 1.800.733.0978
Address:261 Alpha Park,Cleveland, OH 44143, United States

Above three channels are both selling fake HD HPE PRO to customers, please watch them!

Received my hard drive back yesterday.

@porthas, Thanks for the explanation regarding the e-mail templates and for personally looking into my case!
I understand that there are cases where just swapping the defective PCB isn't sufficient due to other defective components. I took my chances and I was unlucky (or actually my parents are). The good thing about this all is that they now really understand the importance of backing up their data, so I don't think this will happen to them again.

Frank

Yeah read that topic and last message from the client.

fzabkar, so do leave it up to others. You reposted that topic like 50 times already wherever you could. That topic is from early 2013 and the client is happy in the end of the day. So are thousands of others.

Dead heads or pre-amp, whats the difference? the whole arm assembly would need to be replaced.