Fire in the hole

I set up a drive to wipe on my testbed system and walked out to throw a few things in the recycling bins in the warehouse. I came back and my office was filled with smoke, I shut off the computer and pulled the drive out to the warehouse. Here is what I found:

This is actually the second time I've seen this, in both cases it was a 40GB Seagate drive. It had gotten hot enough to melt through the metal.

Here's a closeup of the hole and the black goop oozing out the side.

I pulled off the metal backing and saw where it had burned the foam padding, which is what made the smoke and terrible smell.

If you ever wondered what a burnt circuit board looked like, here you go.

Melted chunks of circuit board and foam all over the aluminum housing of the drive. Yum.

So that was my excitement for the morning, I decided to post this for anyone who would never get to see this.