My Maxtor Hard Drive Just Caught Fire!

Dracos writes "Dell batteries you say catch fire? Well don't worry about that Dell battery, look inside your PC case at your HDD, mine just went up in smoke and flames..." Could be worse. It could be ball lightning. I hear there's a lot of that going around inside servers these days.

What?

[eebra82]

This is totally cool. The world's first Hard Drive Burner?

If you think computer parts are bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

...stay away from Bic lighters!

I recently noticed one end has a little wheel. Turning the wheel generates sparks. The sparks themselves seem harmless, but further investigation revealed a shocking result. If you really push down hard, a valve apparently opens, combining with the sparks to emit a small flame! I know it sounds absurd, but I could reproduce it several times. Not only did a flame come out, but the lighter got hot from the flame. Further testing is needed, but I think these Bic guys should prepare a major recall.

My Maxtor Hard Drive just Caught Fire!

[Anonymous Coward]

"503 Service Temporarily Unavailable"

Indeed.

Publicity stunt: My [insert device] caught fire

[suggsjc]

Couldn't get to the article, but I bet since the dell incident was spun to be the "power of bloggers/internet" that you will be seeing a lot more headlines/blogs/whatever that are going to try to ride on its coat-tails.

The power of connection and freedom of communication is a very wonderful thing, but it can also have its drawbacks as well.

Re:Overblown Drama

[xtracto]

Well, it surely caught fire now haha

Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.dragonsteelmods.com Port 80

What about Quantum drives?

[tritonman]

What about when we start using these quantum drives, I can see it now, an error happens with the hard drive, a neutron goes flying off an atom, smashes another atom, setting off a chain reaction... Oops, there goes your whole neighborhood!

Missing the "It's funny. Laugh".

[ettlz]

From TFA:

when I hit the power button flames..LITERALLY shot out of the bottom of the HDD, I was like F**K!!

when I clicked on the link flames..LITERALLY came out of my head and into this text area. I was like, F**K, Dude?!

BUT FLAMES SHOOTING OUT OF IT?!?!?!?! Damn, first dell batteries now Hard Drives... What's next?!?

OMGWTFSATAHDD!!!!11! Tubular!!!!1111one

DIGG IT!!!!

Ughnnn...

Could be an interesting tech support call

[nizo]

Customer: My new drive is smokin!

Tech Support: We are pleased that you are happy with the speed of your new drive.

Customer: No, I mean smoke is pouring outta my harddrive man! (Screams of panic and someone saying "get the fire extinguisher!" in the background)

Re:Many people say maxtor hdd is bad

[Professr3]

My condolences for your untimely death... I'm sure it was a beautiful funeral?

Reminds me of a story...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was supervising over a retail chains tech shop and we had a computer checked in for diagnostics; it kept frying harddrives. You'd turn this beast on, it'd work perfectly fine, it'd post, detect CD-ROM drives across both IDE controllers, and the moment you plugged in a harddrive, BAM, it'd turn toastie and shoot flames out of the bottom. So we're like WTF, I put the new guy on it to test him, he comes back to me with a powersupply wire. APPARENTLY silverstone decided to make their BTX powerupplies such that you could plug power wires into them backwards; fans hooked into the chain would work fine, but the drive won't. So we plugged the wire back in right and told the customer who was none too happy at blowing out $600 worth of drives due to his own stupidity.

Then there was this other time where I had a powersupply that blew out motherboards. You'd plug it into a MSI board and it'd fry; plug it into another powersupply, everything was perfect, thing even booted into windows. Plug it into the bad bestec from an e-machines, and it'd turn into crispy critter and if you plugged it into the good antec test powersupply, it would no longer post. The northbridge had 2 little spots on it from melting, on 3 seperate boards of different brands. I almost wanted to keep that bugger but the customer wanted it back.

Re:Smoke from the webserver

[Chosen Reject]

Actually, he's from the future and he's showing us what happened to his server once the slashdotting begun.

Re:Attack of the soldering iron & needle nose

[LouisZepher]

"MOVE OUT OF YOUR PARENTS BASEMENT!"

Because the rent is cheap, and the attic is too hot.

Re:Attack of the soldering iron & needle nose

[everett]

Pot, I'd like you to meet my friend kettle. I think you two will find you have a lot in common.

Use SMART to avoid such occurances

[cortana]

I'm pretty sure if he paid attention to his drive's SMART data then he would have been able to replace the drive before it burst in to flames.

# smartctl -Asmartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   192   190   063    Pre-fail  Always       -
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   253   253   063    Pre-fail  Always       -
  6 Read_Channel_Margin     0x0001   253   253   100    Pre-fail  Offline      -
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0027   241   225   187    Pre-fail  Always       -
  9 Spontaneous_Combustion  0x002b   232   232   020    Pre-fail  Always       -
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x002b   239   232   157    Pre-fail  Always       -

and so on

Re:Overblown Drama

[ThatsNotFunny]

Well done... you used "Overblown" and "reproductive organs" in the same thread without giggling. :D

Re:Overblown Drama

[bladesjester]

Seeing everyone in the lab where I used to work jump and hit the floor when a cap blew loud enough to sound like a gunshot was just amusing.

Fear Mongering!

[IflyRC]

So its jump on the computer fire bandwagon eh?

Other things to watch out for...

1) Gasoline - I know it smells nice and all, but be careful - add a flame and you have a really terrible explosion or fire.

2) Frying pans - Don't over heat the cooking oil! You'll have a nice fire that water won't put out.

3) Metal in microwaves - Do not get metal anywhere near your running microwave! It will spark and cause a fire! Remember, you heard it first here on slashdot.

Ball lightning

[Kohath]

Ball lightning - the most painful kind of lightning.

Re:Smoke from the webserver

[R_Ramjet]

If you're going to post a comment that looks like Haiku, at least make it a Haiku....

If his hard drive flames
I'll bet the slashdot effect
toasts his web server

Re:Blown Out of Proportion

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing but a insulator between the two negative and positive charges

Well, what else are you going to put between them -- a chaperone?

Re:Overblown Drama

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you stuck your hand inside your computer while you were still wet from taking a shower? This might explain some of your other hardware mishaps.

Read the warning label

[rspress]

You should have read the warning label. It think they still print it in big letters on the box. MAXTOR.

Mine burned too, just the LED though

[Imazalil]

A few years ago I had a Maxtor drive that went up in flames too. First it started making the usual clicking noises, then after opening the case and backing up just about everything the clicking eerily stopped and a few seconds the hard-drive was on fire! After shutting everything down and waiting for the smoke to clear I found it was the LED on the drive's logic board that was on fire.

Funnily the tech support guy that I got when I was RMA'ing the drive kept insisting that I start the computer, visit their website, and download a diagnostic utility to test the drive out. I had to tell him a dozen times that the drive was on fire and that there is not a chance in hell that I am booting my computer with it still inside.

Re:Smoke from the webserver

[Iamthefallen]

To mess with your head this haiku is written on just a single line

Re:Overblown Drama

[Columcille]

did you see all the adverts on that page?

Firefox + adblock...
There were ads on that page?

Looks like the fire has spread

[jerry2a]

Apparently his web servers have caught fire as well. Service Temporarily Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.dragonsteelmods.com Port 80

Re:Blown Out of Proportion

[hobo sapiens]

Heck, it wasn't an HDD failure anyhow. He just had a couple of Smoke Emitting Diodes soldered in for effect.

Now you're screwed.....

[Namlak]

All electronics operate with an internal supply of magic smoke,

If you let the smoke out, it stops working!

Re:Use SMART to avoid such occurances

[200_success]

You don't need SMART. If he had looked in /var/log/messages just before the incident, he would have seen

/dev/hda on fire

Re:Overblown Drama

[spun]

Hehe, I nearly fell off a ladder while pulling Cat5 through a drop ceiling once, due to an exploding Linux CD. Seems a co-worker wanted to give it a try and bought one of those Linux books with the CD in the back (remember when a Linux distro came on one CD?) You know the books I mean, the nice soft cover books that weigh like five pounds and pretty much gaurantee the CD is going to be at least a little stressed. He had one of those older super-fast CD drives that could rev up to dangerous velocities. Poor guy put in the CD, the drive spun up, and the CD just flew apart, shredding his CD drive and shooting an inch wide wedge of CD out the front, six inches from his nuts, and across the room where it buried itself half an inch in the wall. Sounded like a gunshot. I nearly fell, turned it into a controlled leap and ran into his office. Poor guy was white faced as he showed me just how close he'd come to an involuntary vasectomy.