I'm so screwed

D

Devnull

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 21, 2000
Messages
8,486
I am writing this from a half-working PC that I just assembled from old, spare parts...

My main system is/was as follows:

Asrock dual 939 SATA 2
X2 3800+
4x512mb kingston hyperx
X1900 GT PCIE
Enermax 550w PSU
WD Raptor 74GB SATA
2xMaxtor 300GB SATA

The other night I was playing a game when my system suddenly hard-locked. I rebooted to an "operating system not found" error. I noticed that my hard drive was not being detected in the bios at all. I shut down and went to bed. When I got up I tried all the basic stuff... Cleared CMOS, changed cables etc. Even figured that perhaps letting the drive cool down overnight might help. I had no luck at all.

I even had the bios stop recognizing one of my maxtor drives. So I gave up on messing with my main boxen. I went to my dad's PC(it is a nearly identical config which I built for him) to use it for backing up my two maxtor storage drives and for troubleshooting. Now it worked fine to hook up my other drives to his PC and copy over some photos etc.

But tonight I loaded up ghost and some other software on his PC and then hooked up my non functioning drive and figured I would try some different cables and jumper settings etc to see if I could read it even one last time to get some stuff off...

Not only was I unsuccessful in getting it to recognize the raptor but after I was done my dad's computer was not booting up. I rebooted and heard an odd sound which I figured had to be one of the fans. It locked up in windows and when I rebooted I instantly recognized that it was not a fan, but the click of death. I have never even had one of my drives make this noise before.

Now his drive has failed/is failing as well. What the??? I don't see how I could have caused that. Is it possible that having a failed drive hooked up could have somehow caused his to become damaged as well??? Should I suspect some kind of electrical problem in the house? It is just too much to be coincidence. Any ideas?
 
Well, I got a new HD for my dad's PC and I am going to attempt to copy his stuff over to a new drive...

I'm not even going to mess with my machine as I am suspecting some kind of underlying problem... PSU, mobo, etc... I'd like to replace it all if I could right now. For instance my video card has recently been artifacting like it is overheating when it should not be overheating. That with 1 HD crash and 1 other drive in that system that may be malfunctioning as well....

Still no idea if this at all ties in with what happened to my dad's hard drive or if it just a crazy coincidence.
 
I think it's a crazy coincidence.....

Based on what you've said, it sounds like you need to check the voltages on your psu and make sure they're ok....
 
digital_exhaust said:
I think it's a crazy coincidence.....

Based on what you've said, it sounds like you need to check the voltages on your psu and make sure they're ok....
Click to expand...


I've checked them under load many times recently(due to the video card fucking up) and it seems that the 12v rail has been only slightly low, 5v seems fine. I still suspect there could be an intermittent problem...

Voltages on my dad's computer seem to be completely fine. I got a new HD in there with a working OS. Going to try and access his malfunctioning drive soon.
 
Was the failing drive in your Dad's system also the same model Raptor that failed in yours?

It's not unusual for the same model parts to fail at almost exactly the same time. You see that a lot in car parts too, some part always fails at 60K miles or whatever.

Even given the common mode failure phenomenon, it is a little much that your Dad's system was running fine until YOU touched it. :)

Are you handling the drives while they are powered up or something?

This type of thing is why you need to have backups. All hard drives fail, it's just a matter of when. Go get an external USB drive for backups and then next time a drive fails will not be so painful.
 
Spartacus said:
Was the failing drive in your Dad's system also the same model Raptor that failed in yours?

It's not unusual for the same model parts to fail at almost exactly the same time. You see that a lot in car parts too, some part always fails at 60K miles or whatever.

Even given the common mode failure phenomenon, it is a little much that your Dad's system was running fine until YOU touched it. :)

Are you handling the drives while they are powered up or something?

This type of thing is why you need to have backups. All hard drives fail, it's just a matter of when. Go get an external USB drive for backups and then next time a drive fails will not be so painful.
Click to expand...

Drives that have problems are both WD and around the same age, but the other one is not a raptor. I haven't handled a drive while it is powered on. They are sitting in the p180's drive cage. I can't think of anything I could have done, I did not even touch his drive. It didn't overheat, I didn't drop the case or do anything to cause physical damage. It is a very weird coincidence but I can't think of anything that could have happened....

I know about the importance of backups, but I have been putting it off- life has been crazy even before my computers trying to commit sepukku. Last time I backed up about a week ago all I grabbed were (most of) my pictures, and not everything that I'd like to have gotten.

The problem with my dad's drive seems to only be intermittent and I'm having some success there. Hopefully it will continue to look positive on that front.
 
Sounds like you are being careful, just a bad run of luck then.
I've had that happen too. :(

Best of luck getting your data.
 
Worklog of what I did today:

Go to fry's and get a new 500GB SATA drive for dad's comp, and an external usb 2.0 500gb drive.

Set up OS on new drive via ghost image from when I initially set up the system for him.

Install updates/drivers etc.

Hooked up my dad's problematic drive- it initially made some clicking/didn't show up under the bios. After a reboot it stopped clicking and showed up in bios. Clicking did not return.

Used ghost to image the drive- but fuck I got BSOD at the very end, not sure if it finished imaging.

Found some of the photos and manually copied them over.

Deleted some of the larger files(videos I had copied onto there), deleted the temp files. Not sure if deleting stuff is a good idea but I figured that if the imaging took less time it would be less likely to fail.

Disabled compression in ghost and made another image- it came out fine and verified. No clicking or other weird sounds. Went much much faster this time as well.

Copied everything salvaged from the damaged drive onto the external USB drive for extra safeguarding.

Problem with the drive at this point is clearly intermittent, it worked fine for long enough to apparently pull everything off.

Ran chkdsk on the problem drive, it corrected some errors... Not sure if its the best idea but I'd like to boot into the drive later.

Tomorrow I will inspect the contents/see how it is working- then look at the backup and make sure I got everything of value. I have a recovery program if needed. If it looks like everything is salvaged I will RMA the drive, pretty sure it has either 3 or 5 year warranty and it's not much more than a year old.



Now the other subject....

As far as my computer goes I am not sure if I want to even put a new drive in it. It seems to have had multiple issues recently. I am thinking I may RMA the PSU since the 12v rail has been a little low and I suspect something funky could be going on there... Not sure if I would try to RMA the mobo because I will probably get a "refurbished" one that is just as likely to have problems. I'll probably just shelf my raptor until and consider professional recovery($$$$$$) when I get some more income, there is nothing that I need to survive on there, but a few things I would like to have.
 
Hey, nice save on Dad's system!
Good job.

Sounds like a good plan on your PC.

If the 12V is going bad on your PSU, that could have been what blew the circuit board on the Raptor drive. I guess the good news is that your data should all still be there and will be easy to recover. That's usually one of the first steps at a recovery service is to take a working drive of the same model and swap out the circuit board. The cost may not be as bad as you are thinking. The better services should be able to give you an up-front estimate.
 
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