Are there any HardDisk Gurus here?

[FredZ]

My daughter's PC refused to start a couple of days ago. Symptons are that the PC does not power-up at all.

Through a process of elimination I tracked the problem to a (Ultra ATA (IDE)) hard disk that seemed to have died. The HD is on IDE 0 and the DVD is on IDE 1.

UNplugging the HD from the power supply would allow the PC to start. The DVD on IDE 1 works fine.

Stupidly I grab another (250G) HD and plug in. Again the PC refuses to start. When I unplug the drive from the powersupply, the PC kicks in.

I take the 250G to a USB > IDE device on another PC to check its working. It's not - in fact, it blows the USB > IDE powersupply!!??

Now, in what can only be described as one of my most stupid moves ever, I grab another HD and plug it into the faulty PC. Same result. No start. And the drive seems to be killed off as well.

Now the penny drops- it's gotta be the PS.

I grab another PS, yet another HD, plug it all in and 'contact'.

It all works.

OK, so here I am almost in tears- the original HD + two others + the USB > IDE device Powersupply wrecked.

But, can anyone enlighten me as to the behaviour of the errant Powersupply. Is it normal that it could wreck hard disks as it did? In other words, the PC works and other IDE devices work OK as long as a HD is not plugged in.

And, is there any point in sending the HD's to the 'repair shop'?

Or maybe someone knows a magic spell that will revive the drives?
THanks

[FredZ]

Originally Posted by FredZ

My daughter's PC refused to start a couple of days ago. Symptons are that the PC does not power-up at all.

Sorry, I posted this in the wrong group.

[kevvie010]

needless to say you have tried the "fried" hdd's with the new PS??

But yes i have done what you have done (just not as many HDD's!!)

And no the round filing cabinet is the only place for them, its just not economic to try and get them fixed, its probably the controller card on them. My theory is that the Power Supply throws out a high voltage level that screws them.

Sorry but i think you may have learnt a very expensive lesson.

[AusFox]

I've had a PSU eat 2 hdd's before, not nice.

[justo316]

Wow.....I've fixed hundereds of computers now and haven't seen a hard drive die because of a faulty PSU. That's good to know.

In saying that though, whenever a computer doesn't power up all of a sudden, I always try a new PSU. Granted though, if I didn't have one spare I would have troubleshooted to the same point you got to....luckily though, I have plenty of spare throwaway hard drives I would have used to test

How old are the drives? Maybe they are under warranty and you might be able to send them back ignorantly under the pretense that they just "stopped working" one day?

Actually I did do something similarly stupid. A client of mine said her usb ports stopped working. I tested them and confirmed they weren't working properly so I added a 4 port PCI card. Then I used her ipod to confirm they worked(the only reason she needed usb) and found it didn't work now. I plugged the ipod into another port and it still didn't work. Then I noticed the smell of burning electronics.

I was semi-smart to stop there....end result, two of her brand new usb ports don't work now!

[FredZ]

Originally Posted by justo316

Wow.....I've fixed hundereds of computers now and haven't seen a hard drive die because of a faulty PSU. That's good to know.

How old are the drives? Maybe they are under warranty and you might be able to send them back ignorantly under the pretense that they just "stopped working" one day?

One of the wrecked drives was brand new. The others were between 6 and 18 months old.

My supplier did the 'right thing' on the new drive. He also said that in his experience my experience is not uncommon, especially with low end PS. He suggested investing in quality powersupplies such as "Antec". Apparently better voltage feedback and other fail safe technology make them less likely to fail "unsafe".

By the way, the fault PS also zapped an AGP 8x GFX card.


regards

[BILBOBoggles]

If you have a voltmeter it would be interesting to measure the 12v and 5v rails at the hard drive plug...

Agree a quality power supply has overvoltage protection etc and I would assume would prevent similar issues.... And be quieter...

[FredZ]

Originally Posted by BILBOBoggles

If you have a voltmeter it would be interesting to measure the 12v and 5v rails at the hard drive plug...

I have a good work bench so I'll check it and will feed back.