Skip to main content
gamedev.net
🔒 Locked

Hardware question

Started by _the_phantom_ Mar 27, 2006 at 9:19 AM 4 replies 1.2k views
Original Post
_the_phantom_
_the_phantom_
So, I'm having a thought... yes, it hurts. A few weeks back I agreed to fix someones computer, after traveling a few 100 miles in a big circle I came to the conclusion that the motherboard on her machine was fried, the SATA controller at least. Now, during all this I recovered her files to a hard drive on my machine, as I didnt know what condition things would be in and I needed to reformat the orignal drive. For those who read my journal, you'll notice my computer exploded on Sunday afternoon and the problem looked to be the hard drive controllers. After some poking and blood sacrifics it kinda works again now (but keeps rebooting so something is damnaged somewhere), but I'm wondering, could a hard drive damnage the motherboard, specifical the IDE/SATA controllers? The reason I'm thinking along these lines is that its a bit of a strange thing to occur, two computers, both with hard drive problems, the only link being a hard drive (which didnt work there and worked perfectly here). Its either that or karma has a sick sense of humor...
cloudscapes
cloudscapes
Is the hard drive you used to transfer the files over one of hers in tyhe original (dead) computer, or one of yours?
If it's a clean HD..... it's kind of strange. They may sound a bit paranoid, but could a virus hidden among the backed up data do that kind of severe hardware damage?
______I have a computer!
_the_phantom_
_the_phantom_
Quote:
Original post by cloudscapes
Is the hard drive you used to transfer the files over one of hers in tyhe original (dead) computer, or one of yours?


OK, there are two hard drives directly involved, although my system has many in it.

I brought her harddrive back.
I copied the files form her drive to mine on my system (SATA => SATA)
About two weeks later I take her drive out and return it to her machine, diagnoses; dead motherboard SATA hard drive controllers (drive worked fine at mine was erroring and showing bad data at hers).

Sunday, using machine, hear a kind pop or snap sound, machine locks. (I've checked to see if any caps have exploded on the mobo, it all looks clean)
On reboot detects IDE drives and one SATA and freezes.
Next reboots it doesnt even pull up the IDE drives, just freezes after the memory check (which is worse than her machine, her's did still boot)
24h later, I fiddle and on reboot the BIOS resets and things kinda work again, but does reboot every now and then, mostly when accessing the hard drives.

Its all very strange indeed, its not going to be a virus as all I've accessed on her drive (aside from copying) have been txt files.

nts
nts
If it is on the same SATA cable then swap the cable. I've had weird issues caused by a bad SATA cable (BIOS detected the drive fine), could be a bad contact somewhere.

Might also want to check your power supply, if it is multi rail then try and put the HD on a different rail (had a problem with this once).

Also go the drive manufacturers website and download tools to scan/check the drive (Seagate has tools to do check drives in Windows through IE). You may also be able to see any SMART warnings in the BIOS.

As for damaging the motherboard, I doubt it but then again I have seen a south bridge burn out (literally smoking) from simply plugging in a USB device.

google
HelplessFool
HelplessFool
Quote:
Original post by phantom
About two weeks later I take her drive out and return it to her machine, diagnoses; dead motherboard SATA hard drive controllers (drive worked fine at mine was erroring and showing bad data at hers).

Sunday, using machine, hear a kind pop or snap sound, machine locks. (I've checked to see if any caps have exploded on the mobo, it all looks clean)
On reboot detects IDE drives and one SATA and freezes.


If it was her hard drive, why didn't the problem's start untill after you removed it? I'd either guess that you are very unlucky, or I'd go with NTS and say your power supply is giving instable voltage.

edit: maybe you even lost a cap in the PSU?
_the_phantom_
_the_phantom_
Well, my theory was that the hard drive had done some damnage and it was a kinda 'waiting to fail' situation which just happened to kick in.

However, a cap going in the PSU would be a possible solution to the problem. the machine did come back to life for a while yesterday, however its since failed completely last night, on bootup it now complains that my BIOS isnt ACPI compliant, which is a total lie as it has been for the last 5 months [wink]

If a cap has gone in the PSU then I'm gonna be annoyed as the PSU is less than a year old and is the 2nd one in that machine to have an issue (the first had a failure of the fan, causing it to produce a high pitched sound).

bah, I hate computers... and i've got 3 assignment todo for after Easter as well [sad]

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.

Sign in to reply to this topic.