Question Both drives died at the same time?

[Foobrother]

Hi all,

I went on holiday to see my family and it turns out that while I was there the desktop of my father suddenly stopped working and when starting he is getting the message: "Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh, any other key to continue"

After searching, this is because the BIOS can't find any drive to boot on. And when I'm checking the EFI, I could see that none of the 2 drives (a 2.5" SATA SSD and a 3.5" SATA HDD) on the machine were detected! Also the list of blocks you get with the message doesn't show anything except one line for the CD/DVD reader.

I thought it was maybe a problem of power and none of the 2 drives were getting any power (they are both plugged onto the same cable). But after swapping it with the CD/DVD drive I could see exactly the same state: hard drives not detected and CD/DVD working fine.

Since I wasn't at home I couldn't test these drives on my own desktop. So I gave them to a local friend who said they are not working (not detected) on his desktop.

Now I have a few questions:

• What does it sound like? Both drives are dead?! How?
• If it was some high tension that burned both drives, how do I prevent it to happen again? Anything I can test? How?
• Does it sounds possible to recover some data? Maybe by replacing some connector or something? While I don't care about the SSD which only had Windows and some apps, I'm a bit annoyed to lose some of the data from the HDD which wasn't backed up unfortunately.

Thanks in advance!

 

[SkyNetRising]

• What does it sound like? Both drives are dead?! How?

We can only guess here.
Could be..
PSU died and took storage devices with it perhaps.

• If it was some high tension that burned both drives, how do I prevent it to happen again? Anything I can test? How?

Prepare for such situations.
Make backups for important data.

• Does it sounds possible to recover some data?

Not enough info.
Get drives to professional data recovery services.

 

[Foobrother]

Thanks for your replies.

We can only guess here.
Could be..
PSU died and took storage devices with it perhaps.

Would the computer simply not start if the PSU died?

Prepare for such situations.
Make backups for important data.

Yes indeed! A good lesson for my father

Not enough info.

What kind of additional info would you need?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Would the computer simply not start if the PSU died?

If PSU has multiple 12V rails.
One 12V rail fails and kills connected HDD/SSD.
Other 12V rail, that feeds rest of the system, is fine.

Again - a lot of guessing here.

What kind of additional info would you need?

You didn't even try to diagnose the drives.
We just know, they are not detected on one pc and
your body could not make them work.
Not a lot of info.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Much more info on the system is required here but from the description it's very likely that the power supply is the source of the problem here. Basic rule of thumb is, if you paid less than ~25% of the total cost of the entire system for your power supply then you cheaped out and received a sub par component. Those $25 chinese specials are a "you get what you pay for" item.

 

[Foobrother]

If PSU has multiple 12V rails.
One 12V rail fails and kills connected HDD/SSD.
Other 12V rail, that feeds rest of the system, is fine.

I see what you mean. But then I plugged the CD/DVD drive using that same cable (used with the HDD/SSD) and it works fine. But maybe it was a quick/short problem that caused the drives to die?

You didn't even try to diagnose the drives.
We just know, they are not detected on one pc and
your body could not make them work.
Not a lot of info.

Yes you are right, that's possible. My friend should be able to connect properly the drives (he's got experience). But if we assume he did plug them correctly with the right cables and his setup is completely healthy except that the drives won't start and won't get detected (as if they are not plugged): how should we do more diagnose? Any advise on what to do?

Much more info on the system is required here but from the description it's very likely that the power supply is the source of the problem here. Basic rule of thumb is, if you paid less than ~25% of the total cost of the entire system for your power supply then you cheaped out and received a sub par component. Those $25 chinese specials are a "you get what you pay for" item.

Yes I agree. That's not the case here. It's quite an old computer (~7 years old) but the PSU is a modular Corsair (can't remember the exact power nor model) which is a decent brand as far as I know?
However, on that day it was pretty hot in the room (~30 degrees Celsius) and the tower was quite dusty :-/

 

[fzabkar]

Check the TVS diodes. If one is shorted, that will point to the PSU as the culprit.

TVS Diode FAQ:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=86