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Realized my boot drive was dying because of a smell
Was swapping drives in a client's Dell Optiplex 9020 last Tuesday and caught a faint fishy smell near the SSD. After swapping in a new Samsung EVO, the random blue screens stopped cold - has anyone else caught hardware failures by smell before you could test it?
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pat_moore1mo ago
Three times now dead electronics gave off that exact faint fishy smell before they fully failed.
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mark_ward1mo agoTop Commenter
Respectfully gotta disagree with you @pat_moore. That fishy smell is capacitor leakage, not magic.
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cole_flores441mo ago
Sounds like you're picking up on something real. I read somewhere that the fishy smell is actually ammonia from the electrolyte in capacitors heating up and venting gas before they pop. So yeah, the smell is a sign the part is about to go.
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