No power to optical drive SATA ports

[bwinter88]

a few weeks ago I noticed my optical drive wasn't showing up in disk utility. I double checked the connections and tried both 1 and 2 connectors to no avail. The drive does not respond even to a manual press of the hardware eject button so either the drive is dead or I'm not receiving power to these ports. Does anyone have an working knowledge of the power connections for the Mac so I don't have to go digging around in the chassis for a loose connection? Is it possible my PSU is busted?

 

[Kaspin]

Assuming you have a 4,1 or 5,1, you can see where the sata cables connect to logic board in between the pci fan and front grill without having to remove anything. The power for the optical drives is the 4 pin connector just above the sata ports.

If you have a 1,1, 2,1 or 3,1, then you'll have to remove the front fans

 

[IowaLynn]

Before you go through all that, try a good SMC reset, and I would follow that with reset nvram as well.

Is there proper voltage? but that would be next item on shopping list.
Try the optical drive with an external optical drive case.

 

[bwinter88]

Bingo. Checked those power ports next to the SATA cables and the voltmeter tells me the power is there, so pretty clearly the drive is busted. Thanks all.

Interestingly, when the broken drive was connected, I was unable to mount disks on my FASTA-6GU3 card's USB 3.0 ports. I wonder what technical relationship caused that interference?

Also thanks Kaspin I'm stealing your signature formatting.