Whoops - fried HD ?

[Tedster]

HAd a power spike during a storm even with a surge protector on my old computer. Now the damn hard drives won't read, they're corrupted. I'm not sure if the PCI ATA 133 card went bad or the HDs..... any easy way to test? BIOS recognizes the HDs, but I'm not sure if the PCI ATA card does. How can I be sure?

I'm running a motherboard test right now, so far, so good.

my second HD (drive F) was a backup drive with a Windows backup file. If I could just read that drive and format the C drive with new windows, I could restore my loss. But Windows won't boot on c drive anymore. I tried loading off the windows XP CD and reformatting drive C:, but it won't recognize the drive. I keep getting the BSOD when it tries to access the drive.



I'm worried C: might be toast. :knock:

Thank God the new computer is ok. :stickout:


update: isolated the C drive. Computer won't recognize it.

Isolated F: computer sees it, but there is no OS on it, so I can't use it for backup until I get a c drive. looks like C drive might be hosed. That sucks because it was my newer drive.

Damn. :dead:

 

[patio]

How did you isolate the C: drive ? ?
It could just be the card itself...try putting C: on IDE1 and see if it boots. If not you could leave it hooked up that way and do a repair install of XP.
As far as F: it could be tried as a slave in another machine to see if the data is intact.

Good Luck.

patio.

 

[Tedster]

I isolated C:, the computer can't see it. I swapped it for F:, the computer can see F: but can't boot because they're no OS on F:

I don't want to format F: as my backup is on F: for just this type of emergency.

I think C: might be toast. it's a 40GB hard drive and the newer of the two drives, so I'm kinda pissed, the Surge protector didn't do it's job.

Fortunately the motherboard and memory are ok. I ran a thorough memory check with memtest and it passed with flying colors. (*phew *)

I'm thinking about getting an UPS. (#@%^@$%^$%^&$& lightning! ) :dead:

 

[Tedster]

ok, when I isolated C:, the computer won't boot and I get a message saying ultraBIOS is not installed because there are no hard drives attached.

 

[patio]

Again how are you isolating C: ? ?

patio.

 

[Tedster]

Removed F drive from cable. Tried booting with C. No go.

Then

Swapped C and F. C became slave, F master.

F recognized by computer.
C is not recognized

I am going to try the C drive on anther computer and see if it recognizes, if not then I know it's toast for sure.
It's only a 40GB HD, not a big loss, but painful enough.

 

[vnf4ultra]

Are you sure lightning did it? Hd's do die on their own occasionally. If your surge protector isn't fried(as in non functional), then I doubt it's lightning. Does your surge have a warranty for protected components? My belkin has an unlimited warranty on damamged components if the unit would fail and the system would fry, and free data recovery(IIRC) if it's a hd.

 

[poertner_1274]

The only bad thing about the warranty, is you have to have all the original receipts and goddies that go along with it. This is how they can offer that, because 9/10 people don't hang on to all that stuff.

 

[Tedster]

nah, the surge protector is a few years old.... Funny how the newer HD would fail over the older one.

 

[patio]

Do you have C: as master on IDE1 or do you have C: as master on the PCI card ? ?
I'm not sure the drive is fried just because it won't boot.
Try eliminating the PCI card and hooking up C: as the only HDD as master on IDE1.

patio.

 

[Tedster]

tried that already. Both drives were on a PCI card. The MB can only handle ATA 66. It couldn't see C: either.