I have a external 10 Bay DS-UCTB that stopped working. This happened say 6-9 months ago or so. Customer support was useless, said they can't and wouldn't do anything, not only any claim, but they wouldn't even accept it to be sent in with any paid inspection or repair options. The unit turns on, I felt the fans blowing air when a drive is inserted, the drive will start spinning in all 10 bays tested, but there are no lights next to any of the bays and the drive does not show up on the PC. What could be the issue here and what are the solutions to fix this? Could it potentially just be a cable issue, since it seemingly has power for the fans and to spin the drives, and the light and not showing up on PC would indicate that there's power but no data being recognized? The drive tested works with a different external connection. What should I troubleshoot and what are the options in getting this fixed?
So it turns out it's a very dangerous hazard and likely was the cause of ruining other PC parts of mine. I switched cables to a different longer usb 3 3.whatever) data cable and plugging into a laptop didn't cause a problem.. same no lights in front and hard drive being recognized on the laptop. I then tried to plug the USB into my desktop PC and POP!!! Loud pop 🎉. Spark visible from the PC's USB port when the port has previously worked fine with the same cable attaching other devices. Smoke smell. I look at the Sabrent 10 Bay and the cable is blown apart with the connector still stuck inside the port. Very dangerous and causing damage to other PC components. It knocked out my previous motherboard when this first happened as I mentioned above, but obviously with different components connected, I didn't know the cause. I suspected the PC power supply and bought a new power supply and dropped down to my older motherboard/CPU in the meantime, but it's very clearly now the Sabrent 10 Bay that's exploding, sparking, smoking and causing damage.
This could've been avoided if customer support via email offered to take it in for inspection and offered repair or replacement. Now it's knocked out itself and potentially 2 PC builds and thousands in damages. Itself $600, 1 motherboard certainly that doesn't boot up with 9950X and 96GB RAM, potentially 850W power supply, front top case USB port... and now clearly a cable, and whatever damage will show up in time from this latest incident to other motherboard, 5900X, 4090, 64GB RAM, 1000W PSU, drives, fans, and who knows if I plug something else in to to USBs, is that going to explode too now if it damaged this port.
