Help, dead hard drive?

vexysery

Distinguished
Dec 25, 2010
19
0
18,510
Hi guys, i got a new pc today after my old antec psu died on me, i plugged in my new one and it booted up fine, the pc loaded until the windows loading thing came up (3 blue bars go across screen repeatedly). Then the machine rebooted itself and it did it again. I'm assuming this means that when the PSU died it took my hard drive with it, i was wondering if this meant that it has literally 'DESTROYED' my hard drive, or simply corrupted the data on it. Also, my 2nd hard drive was also plugged in (does not have windows installed on it), when i switched it to be the main drive, the machine failed to boot (light flashed on my fan, then went straight off!) - i'm not sure if this was because i didn't plug it in properly or something, but i didn't bother checking as it didn't have the OS on it anyway.

If i do a fresh windows install on my primary HD, will my second HD still have its data intact, or is it likely to be ruined as well?

and there was me thinking that £90 power supplies would protect the hard drives... motherboard/gpu/ram seems to all be fine :(

Thanks guys! :)
 

vexysery

Distinguished
Dec 25, 2010
19
0
18,510
Hey, i've decided to reformat my primary HD as there was nothing important on it. I did manage to get onto the bios before and the mobo did post, i was told by someone on another forum that the HD has been corrupted and i'd need some software to attempt to fix it. That OR reinstall windows on it, i just hope my 2nd HD is ok :( (I managed to get the pc to boot off the 2nd hd before i formatted the primary one - although with no OS i can't actually see if it's ok or not!)

Thanks for replying, i'll keep you posted with anything that happens, keep your fingers crossed that my 2nd hd is working! :)
 
Your second HD appears to have a short circuit on either the +5V input or +12V input, or both. The usual culprit is a TVS diode. If you are lucky, the diode will have protected the rest of the electronics by sacrificing itself, in which case the simple solution is to remove the shorted diode with flush cutters. The drive will work perfectly well without it, but you will no longer have overvoltage protection on the affected supply rail.

If you upload a detailed photo of the component side of the PCB, someone will be able to help you identify the faulty component.

Alternatively, post the component's markings, or refer to the following URLs:

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diodes.txt
 

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