I bought this item last year.
I had everything wired to go when I plugged in the AC cord into the adapter. Kaboom and poof. I saw a nice spark from the AC terminals as it first made contact with the adapter. I remembered when I purchased it and did some research into the feed back of the seller and found a few similar comments like this:
"Plugged In..Smoked..Almost Caught Fire..Garbage..BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Buyer: USB 2.0 to IDE SATA S-ATA 2.5 3.5 Hard Drive HD HDD Converter Adapter Cable New (#331250999094) US $8.75"
I think if someone else reported this happening, then this must be happening often. Before I opened the case of the power box, I could hear what sounded like a part rattling inside. I think it what was left of the fuse. Inside there was a component labeled F1 on the pc board except all that was left were the two pico(?) fuse terminals (maybe it was just a thin jumper wire?). I also found that the pc traces had melted near the AC input. It didn't take long to find three of the four bridge diodes were shorted (I removed them from the board to check for other shorts as shown in the photo) as well as the switching power transistor, and a 0.22 resistor in series with it. The photo is here.
I decided to contact the seller and let them know that their device was a fire hazard. I'm fairly certain that the internal fuse is supposed to blow before the pc traces melt. I got a response that offered me a free replacement even though it was more than a year old. I took them up on their offer and have received the replacement which I haven't plugged in yet. (When I do, it's going to be in a series with 60 watt light bulb!) The issue of it being a fire hazard wasn't address by the seller. I looked for some kind of government approved sticker but did not find one. Would it make any sense or would it be just a waste of time to make some kind of consumer report about this device? How large a fuse would have to be in the circuit to allow the traces to burn up?
Thanks for your reply.