Added new RAM - hard disks bricked?

[artoodeeto2]

I've had 8GB of PC-1333 Kingston HyperX Blu RAM in my system for years. I bought 2 identical sticks the other day, got them today, and added them in. Prior to putting them in, I flipped the main power switch on my power supply to fully shut off power to the system.

I put the new sticks in, and flipped the main switch back on, then powered up the computer normally. It POSTED, then said Loading Operating System. After that it said there was an issue with the C drive it would try to repair.

It rebooted itself about 35% of the way into that. Every single reboot since then, I've gotten the dreaded Disk Read Error message (this on my C drive, which is a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD).

The drive shows up in my BIOS, but does not show up when I put it in an external enclosure and attach it to another computer. I've already initiated the RMA process with Samsung.

However, my secondary D drive, a normal 1TB drive....it appears that lost all data too. This one DOES show up when in the external enclosure on the secondary drive, but Windows says the data is corrupt and unreadable. It shows up in Disk Management as a healthy 1TB partition. Which is weird because I'd had it divided into TWO partitions...and now it's showing up as just one.

So my question is, any ideas as to the cause here? Could it have been flipping that main power switch? Adding the new RAM? (Incidentally, the new RAM shows up in my BIOS and it shows the full 16GB. Haven't run memtest on it).

If the issue is potentially the new RAM....is there anything I can do short of not using it to prevent this from happening on subsequent hard drives? I'm totally stumped here, I've never seen an issue like this and I can't find anything online pointing to new RAM actually ruining hard drives or causing full data loss on hard drives.

 

[alceryes]

RAM (bad or not) could not have caused this. There was a preexisting condition.
What that condition was, I have no idea - very weird indeed!

If you can get into Windows (either a reinstall or PE), run some drive mfg diagnostics to see what they say regarding your SSD and normal 1TB drives.

 

[artoodeeto2]

Yeah that was my take too - I ran memtest and all 16GB of RAM checked out just fine. The only thing I can think of is whatever Windows tried to do when it started scanning the C drive on that first bootup, is what did this. I've built my own computer systems for 22 years now, and I've never seen anything this weird.

Only other things I didn't mention in the first post is that well after that first bootup attempt when it all went to hell in a handbasket, I moved my older RAM chips from the primary slots to the secondary, and put the ones I just got into the primary. The computer actually wasn't posting consistently when I had my older chips in the primary slots and the new ones in the secondary. When I swapped the chips around, I also blew dust out of the RAM slots. I doubt there was much, but I've used this setup for several years now so I'm sure there was some. Only time I've ever had a short in the RAM, was on a previous motherboard I had liquid coolant leak onto the chips while the computer was on. Fried one of the RAM chips although the m/b was fine.

My next step will be to put my secondary drive into an enclosure and run a partition recovery program (I have EaseUS but am open to other recommendations) and see if I can get the data on that drive back. It's mostly backed up thankfully.