Quick hard drive question

[stephen777]

basically i have 2 questions about hard drives. if you plug one into a fried motherboard and power it up would this cause it to break? next is if you plug in the sata cables and power it on and then take the cables out would this do anything?

 

[Nodsu]

It could cause the drive to break yes.
In theory, SATA is hot-pluggable, but there are controllers and drives that are not..

 

[stephen777]

well on my old mobo it was plugged into the ram slots where just fried do you think this could cause a problem with the hard drive?

 

[SNGX1275]

How did you manage to plug a hard drive into a RAM slot?

Test the drive with the diagnostic CD that came with it. If you don't have that cd, download the diagnostic tools from the drive manufacturer's website.

 

[stephen777]

aha lol it was late thats not what i meant the motherboard itself had fried ram slots. if i plugged the hard drive into a new computer would that fry it though?

 

[SNGX1275]

Putting a drive from a fried system into a good system won't damage the hard drive, worst case is when the first system fried it took the drive out with it.

I'd run the diagnostic tools on the drive while its in a known good system.

 

[stephen777]

but see the first system didnt really "fry" it just had damaged memory slots

 

[mailpup]

I believe that technically you are supposed to "Stop" the SATA drive before unplugging it just like a USB device. You might get away with unplugging it "hot" but I would not keep doing it forever and expect nothing to ever happen.

If you are certain the hard drive is undamaged, then there is no danger to the new system but how do you know it isn't? What SNGX1275 was saying is there is a chance that whatever caused the RAM slots to fry could have also damaged the hard drive. He isn't saying that it actually did, just it could happen.

 

[stephen777]

ram slots where physically damaged but i think ill just buy a new one ;]