My home built system has worked great for about 7 months now, quad core processor abit IP35 MB, 2 hard drives (both seagate baraccuda ES.2 models a 750gb and a 250gb).

I made the 750 a storage drive D and made my system hard drive c on the 250 drive.

Today wife was waning me to replace a light switch in the den with a dimmer, i flipped the breaker i thought was the den but i turned off my computer room (with my then turned on pc), i found the right breaker turned all power back on and went to get back on my computer yet now it says no disc found insert system cd.

I went into the bios, noticed my 750 drive in the menus but not my 250 drive! My series to boot was sata1 (250) sata3 (750) then cdrom, I went in to confirm boot order but only saw the 750....

Ok figured something might be loose, confirmed sata cable and power were ok, heard drive spin up even, just doesnt show it in bios, pulled the 250 (primary c with xp on it) put it onto a usb to sata unit i sometimes use to move stuff from drives to other computers, so I put that usb device with the 250gb hard drive on my laptop here turned drive on (hoping i could detect it) and the laptop doesnt even see it via usb drive in my computer i see nothing new or found.


What a pain just odd that power on/off did this, (the pc was working fine 5 mins earlier) but i guess ill be rma'ing this with seagate, but my questions are anything else I should do or check to confirm this drive has bit the dust? ANY tips on getting it to spin up one last time to maybe grab some data (i know i should be backing up ughh), ive heard put it in the freezer etc, heck im willin gto try it....

Lastly since this has a system C on the drive is that why it might not be showing via usb on my laptop? When i plug it in via this usb thing i do hear it spin up and do some normal noises, so its not 100% gone just doesn't show as anything connected in my computer, thought maybe since its got windows on it (vs just a storage drive) maybe that is why it isnt working.

In the computer i did try the working sata3's power and sata cord thinking partial feeds on the PS might have been bad, but doing it that way showed NO drives in the bios so that too made me think ok this 250 drive is gone...

Its a seagate barracuda es.2 250gb drive (maybe 7-8 months use only), no heat issues in case (fan on it and its got many other fans in case antec 900, possibly a fluke but just odd my drive went out, guessing it all had to do with that power off thing while trying to change that switch but my computer is hooked upto a good surge protector and power has gone off in past no issues just odd...

ANY help or suggestions GREATLY appreciated,

Bill

after going thru seagates troubleshooting section for primary c drives (17 steps) I am 99.9% sure the drive is dead, i did everything they said including using a usb to sata connector on another compuer the drive isnt showing at all no matter what I do, the strange part is I hear it kick on and spin, feel the slight vibrations, no weird noises just doesn't seem to "show up" no matter what i try.

I filled the RMA stuff out on seagates page but was curious of any tips that might get me to get this drive to even once get working enough to see or grab anything off it?

Should i try the freezer trick? Any others?

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...over-data.html

You might try burning and booting up a Linux Puppy Live CD to RAM instead of hardrive (it is in startup options) and see if you can access the files on the hardrive that way.

Originally Posted by rokytnji

You might try burning and booting up a Linux Puppy Live CD to RAM instead of hardrive (it is in startup options) and see if you can access the files on the hardrive that way.

Thats a bit over my head, (not familiar with any of the stuff you described) but I did put it in a ziplock and into the freezer, hoping a bit later i can get it to at least show up and let me pull a few key things off it.

Bill

Sorry FTLOSM, I usually don't try to suggest linux fixes for Windows problems as I know windows users aren't familiar with how linux works. I just figured I would give you a "thinking out of the box" type suggestion. Good luck with the freezer idea.

Here is a good tutorial to give you a idea about what I suggested only they are using Ubuntu instead of Puppy, The principal is the same though. I only suggested Puppy because the O/S has the capability to run only in ram stick while in live cd mode.

Yet Another Technology Site: How to recover your Windows files

I looked at that page and ya know it doesnt sound too hard and its worth a try! I did try the freeze thing got nothing from the drive, i hear it spin up, no funky noises just not recognized by the usb to sata cable thing im using here, so worth a shot downloading and making that device and booting from cd thru bios setup, ill give it a good shot!

Bill

I made the disc adjusted the bios to boot from cd, put the drive that is not showing up (the 250 primary c drive) back in the pc via sata cable / power cable, booted pc got into the desktop as shown in the above link, did the places computer thing but i only see filesystem and dvdr drive (no other drive showing), so apparently unless I am doing something wrong the drive wont even show up here

Anything else within this option i should do or try just in case?

I did plug in my 100 gb external drive and it showed up but said it couldn't mount for some odd reason (explained as not shut down properly or something like that), but since I never got the other drive to be recognized I guess it doesn't much matter that I cant access the usb external drive (I was just trying it as a just in case to dump content onto off that original damaged drive).

I did some google searches about hard drive failure and power outtages and found lots of info so im guessing thats what I did, hit that breaker pc was on and the HD took the hit, ughh I will send it in for RMA with seagate but i wonder what they do with all those hd's (content wise) since it has quite a bit of my personal info (banking, resume, home inventory etc).

Bill

If Linux can't pull up the drive then it's probably a toaster. When accessing a Usb Hardrive the drive needs to be mounted first. Usually an icon will show up on desktop and you then can right click and select mount, unless something went wrong. Usually when downloading a Linux operating system, before you burn it, it is a good idea to do a md5sum check on the distro that was downloaded. I do md5sum checks on all my downloads, even the Nero Burning Software on my Wifes Vista box. That way you know you got everything, nothing is corrupted, and you know you will have a quality burn. Also when burning I always burn sloww, 4x to 8x, so as to be sure I don't screw that part of process also.

Anywhos , now you have a linux live distro, you can download other distros, do a md5sum check in linux by entering in terminal
cd Desktop
hit enter


Thats to get you to the downloaded file on your desktop, because Firefox downloads in Linux are usually defaulted to desktop if using Ubuntu

Then type in terminal
md5sum "name of downloaded file" (without quote marks)
Hit enter

It will take a few seconds to run the file and give you the number.
Copy and paste to text document
Go to site and copy and paste their md5sum to your text document.
Compare both numbers for a exact match.

Sounds like you are going to have to RMA that hard drive though.

One last suggestion, does your bios have a auto detect drive feature. I am asking as 2 of my Amrel military laptops have this feature. You have to enable it though. It is for Detecting newly installed hardrives and won't recognise them till you enable that feature so it can find them. Just a thought.