Just learned how many failed drives come from bad power supplies

I was reading a report from a data recovery place in Austin and they said over 40% of the drives they see with weird failures trace back to a cheap or failing PSU. I always check the PSU first now, but I used to just swap the drive and move on. Has anyone else seen a number that high in their own work?

4 comments

4 Comments

colescott2mo ago

That's a brutal stat but it tracks. I've seen a lot of drives get blamed when the real culprit was a cheap power supply sending dirty voltage. It's a hard lesson to learn after you've replaced a few good drives for no reason.

paul_ramirez19d ago

Blew out a 2TB Seagate in my own rig back in 2018. Took me three weeks and a multimeter to figure out the PSU was sagging on the 5V rail. Since then I always check the ripple with an oscilloscope before I blame the drive itself. People don't realize a dying power supply can look fine at idle but go to hell under load. Swap the PSU first, it's way cheaper than a new array of drives.

aaron8802mo agoProlific Poster

Yeah the power supply thing is real, but drives do just fail on their own a ton too. The stat is mostly about those natural failures from wear and tear. A bad PSU can kill a drive early for sure, but it's not the main reason behind that high number. It's still good advice to not cheap out on power though.

harperr822mo ago

My buddy lost two drives to a bad power strip.