hdd broken, what could be the cause?

[ghostclaws]

hi there, to keep the story short im gonna let out some useless info so the story might seem a bit weird.
someone bought a new pc , used it for about half a year, then that person had to leave and said they would get it back later. after 2 years she came back to get the pc, she tried to start it at home but from what she gathered her hard drive is broken.
she angry at me and says that im the cause of it braking, but i don't know enough about how hard drives work to know if i did something or if it was other causes.
in the two years the pc was in a pretty dusty/dirty room but it was never turned on. the room occasionally got hot from the sun or cold in the winter(0-30 degrees)
as for what i "did" right at the end i unplugged all the cables from the back to move the pc downstairs for the person to retrieve. i might have walked into it softly once.
is it possible that what i did killed the hdd and/or is it possible that it broke by itself somehow.
thanks for your time

 

[combinebasic]

hi there, to keep the story short im gonna let out some useless info so the story might seem a bit weird.
someone bought a new pc , used it for about half a year, then that person had to leave and said they would get it back later. after 2 years she came back to get the pc, she tried to start it at home but from what she gathered her hard drive is broken.
she angry at me and says that im the cause of it braking, but i don't know enough about how hard drives work to know if i did something or if it was other causes.
in the two years the pc was in a pretty dusty/dirty room but it was never turned on. the room occasionally got hot from the sun or cold in the winter(0-30 degrees)
as for what i "did" right at the end i unplugged all the cables from the back to move the pc downstairs for the person to retrieve. i might have walked into it softly once.
is it possible that what i did killed the hdd and/or is it possible that it broke by itself somehow.
thanks for your time

There are different factors that LED to damage the HDD, one of that is the moisture cause by environment, might be the ic of the board have a corrosion that cause the damage. But here also what I suspected, might be the power cables and the IDE or SATA cable is losen or disconnected. Try to disconnect this cable and reinsert it again and power-up. Then tell me what happen.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Hard drive could have died if you dropped that computer or bumped with it in a wall or something.

More likely BIOS battery has died and BIOS settings have been reset to defaults.
Actual HDD configuration might be different from default BIOS settings and system can't start because of that.

 

[combinebasic]

Yes because the bios battery will produce voltage to the CMOS IC to preserve the defaults settings using the firmware called BIOS. It will drain if the computer will not use in a longer time. All you need is to replace that battery and setup the bios again like the time module. But what I suspected also is the connections, you need to reset the connections in order to assure the system will fully functional.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, ghostclaws.

What's the exact issue with the HDD? Does it spin-up up when you power-up the computer? Do you get any specific error messages?

Basically if you've walked into the PC softly as you've described it and if the computer was not powered-on, there's not a great chance that this would've damaged the drive. Then again, depends on how softly it was, but I wouldn't say that it's very likely nor that it is impossible.
Try the drive with a different computer, to see if it's properly recognized (check the BIOS, Device Manager and Disk Management). If it is, just go ahead and backup the data. After that you could download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drives for error and see what's the situation with it.

edit: seems you've received a couple of answers already while I was typing.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[ghostclaws]

thanks for the fast answers guys 😀
unfortunately i dont have the pc right now, the person i was talking about took it and tested it at their home. but ill tell her to try replugging the sata connections but fyi any cables inside the case weren't touched in the 2 years, only at the back stuff like a mouse keyboard etc. if that doesnt work it might actually be the bios battery as it had no power for such a long time. and yes boogieman i think its very unlikely that that little bump could be the problem, but since i didnt know for sure i wanted to ask. again thanks for the fast replies ^^ i hope it'll work out