Bizarre problem

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Dr. X

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I built a system around a P4 3GHz chip a couple of years ago - good stuff for the time - intel MB, Antec 500W power supply, etc, and it has worked well for the past two years. To be sure, I ride it hard, leaving on overnight downloading large files, playing games, etc. Then the other day I woke up and the system would not turn on.

MB light was on, but no effect from power switch. So i bought a new power supply - an Antec 850W monster. No go. OK, new MB and chip an intel MB with a dual core 8400. Now at least there is some life - the only thing is neither of my hard drives will even spin up. I even tried an alernate power supply from a USB drive enclosure. Both drives are utterly unimpressed - dead silent. One is a 250G Samsung SATA drive, and the other a Seagate Barracuda 500G SATA drive.

What could have killed a whole machine like this? Could a dying power supply have cooked the MB and both drives? I'm really ****ed about losing the content of the drives...
 
I'm going to buy a new drive. But both drives to fail suddenly at the exact same time? They were both fairly new drives (less than 1 yr old). Have you ever heard of such a thing?
 
I'm going to buy a new drive. But both drives to fail suddenly at the exact same time? They were both fairly new drives (less than 1 yr old). Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Yeah, it does seem kind of weird. But hard drives are just mechanical and they wear out eventually. You did say that you ride them hard, putting large files on it and such will wear it out faster.

You checked all the connections on the drive right? The power connections and the connections on the back of the drive and on the motherboard? Perhaps something just came loose.
 
That is pretty quick to fail for sure. I beat the living he** out of my drives had them for three years now I even ripped the ata plug completely out of one drive and super glued it back in and its still working.
Do You have another system to try them in. I find it hard to believe there both dead.
 
Thank you for the replies. I don't have another system to try them on because they are both SATA, but as I said I have a USB universal drive cable system and it did not seem to power up either of the drives.

And I did try connecting/reconnecting several times - even tried different cables to the power supply and motherboard.

Finally, I never shut the system down improperly. And I use a large UPS with surge supression, so I don't think a voltage spike might have caused it. Weird, huh?
 
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