a HDD or a MB failure?

[Tipsi]

Hello Tech gurus! my buddy is in a great mess, i am sorry if this kind of problem has been posted befor....but can you please help us out...this is his story:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To cut a long story short...

I have a main computer that i use to take on assignments with me, I simply download all my image onto this comp, as and when i need to. As i have been working for about 6 days now, without being able to back anything up, i have amassed about 9,000 images.

Today, my last day, both my 120GB drives went down, I dont know as yet if it is the MB or the drives as it all went down at the same time.

Drive 1 is my boot drive and includes existing customers instructions and new customers contact details. (All this is moved onto my network when i get home).
Drive 2 contains all the images and txt files with notes of charges etc.

I have put both drives, one at a time, onto a spare comp but neither drive will boot up (both have an OS on them), windows tells me that it has closed down to protect my system and tells me to run CHKDSK. I have done this but no joy. The CMOS does detect the drives though.

And to make things even worse, i have a partition that i use for Bugs type stuff, so now i have lost all my FTP stuff and other bits of useful info.

Does anyone have any clues about what i can do to save my skin, and my wallet!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i hope you know the answer dear Tech buddies, he has win xp installed


regards
Tipsi

 

[U-Toast]

yikes, i havnt heard of this kinda prob in a while, make shur the mb isnt fried, other than that, i have no idea.. try smelling ur case c if any wierd smoky smell. hmm really wierd, Make shur all plugs are plugged in coprrectly. Damn thats lotsa important stuff not to loose..

Hope he can fix it. Good luck

 

[Tipsi]

thank you for your quick reply U-Toast! thank you very much!


regards
Tipsi

 

[U-Toast]

no problem, il think out at dinner, hehe il get back to u with the possible problems,
lata

 

[wongb18c]

Ouch.
Don't you hate it when a comp jus dies out on you and you have to try and figure out whats wrong? Happened to me too. My 40gig HD somehow screwed up big time. Windows wouldn't boot... gave me a blue error screen. I had to jus throw it away and start fresh. But I didn't have all that info. on it... luckily. And this happened out of NO where... like the night before I shut my comp off... the next day I boot it up it gave me this problem... spent like a week trying to fix it and asking around still no go.. finally I took a bat and broke that $#@!.

Anyways.. I can relate and the only reason I typed all that is because I never got the anger out.. I still remember the aggravation it caused me.

 

[Nubius]

Have you tried putting the drives in a computer seperately instead of simply putting them both in there at the same time? Also are your jumpers correct and you have it set as MASTER W/SLAVE and the other set to slave or sometimes setting them CABLE SELECT also. If you put your just one 120gb in there and it doesn't boot with it set to MASTER or CABLE SELECT then there's probably nothing you can do =/ but at least try them seperately to see if possibly atleast one drive survived

 

[Capricorn]

Pretty unusual for two drives to go down at the same time. Virus, perhaps? Wasn't any lightning or other power-related problems in the area, where there? I suppose it's possible that the power supply (regulation circuit) went bad and nailed both drives (and probably everything else along the way). If you hold a drive in your hand (being careful not to touch the eletronics) and plug in the power, can you feel/hear the drive motor spin up? Maybe someone that knows more about hard drives than I do can say if the 12V rail on the powersupply runs the motor and the 5V rail runs the electronics. If the power supply's 12V regulation failed the electronics might be fine (so the CMOS could still read the drive ID), but the drives won't spin if it burnt the motors out. The fact that they don't work in another computer is not a good sign.

 

[U-Toast]

ok, im back and have thought it over a bit. Try them separately in an other pc. Also make shur ur pins are set up correctly, make shur u put ur slave to master or primary when u test it by it self. also when u turn on pc, can u hear the hd make any noise?

Also have u had any power shortage or lightning as he said above? hmm, and i guess make shur ur mobo isnt defective. a virus wont make a hd fail, it will still run. will the pc even turn on? can u get in bios? if so, try to boot with wondows cd, and restor or sumthing. If nothing else works, u might hafgta try to reformat

Sry, hope this helped

edit: make SHUR all the plug are solid in place, the power plug being not in completely will result in hd not working , hehe

 

[Tipsi]

thank you all for your quick replies. im sorry i can not provide you quick answers because im on another forum where he asked help. so far i have copy-pasted your ideas and suggestions there. i am waiting for him to reply. thank you all for your help!

What would i do without you? nothing...thank you all!


best wishes
Tipsi

 

[U-Toast]

no problem, just post back here w/e he sais from our questions