Molex to Sata Power Adapter.... burned to optical drives...

[nekrosoft13]

Yesterday I was trying to temporariry add optical drive to ITX case. I don't have any USB drives, so I opened it and took a molex plug, added Sata Power Adapter and Sata cable and turned it on.

I was suprised when drive didn't work, I just thought maybe it was a bad drive so I put it a side and tried with a different one....

I was paying more attention the second time, and I heard a "pop" and some smoke came from the back of the drive.

I smelled burned as well... two optical drives died...

Just a heads up... be careful, when one doesn't work, don't try a second one, until you figure out why first didn't work.

 

[leSLIe]

Happened to me once, those cheap adapters tend to have shorted terminals... stay away from cheap stuff...

 

[PGHammer]

Happened to me once, those cheap adapters tend to have shorted terminals... stay away from cheap stuff...

"Cheap" in this instance is a matter of construction - not price.
I have several Molex/SATA power adapters (all from StarTech) from the days before SATA power adapters were commonplace - I save them for computers without native support for SATA power adapters. StarTech's Molex/SATA-power adapters support two (and no more) SATA power adapters per Molex - they can be either hard drives or optical drives. Molexes are typically driven by the +5V rail - therefore, if one is overdriven to the point that a drive connected to it - adapter or not - blows, it's typically because the rail is overtaxed (PSU problem - not necessarily an adapter problem; the typical current draw for any +5V device - regardless of how it gets its power, is known) Still, even I prefer that the PSU have native SATA power support, and at least as many SATA power plugs as the case has bays.
Fortunately, unless we're talking really old LGA775 hardware (and/or certain OEMs), a standard PSU swap can eliminate the need for such adapters.