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Hey Guys,

I need your help with something. I believe that both of my harddrives have been ruined. I have a system with two hard drives. One is a 4 year old Maxtor ATA-133 40GB (Master) that I use for my OS system, the other is a 1 year old ATA-100 Western Digital 160 GB (Slave) that I use for storage.

I was running my computer when my hard drive LED clicked on. My system froze up and when I tried to restart, the BIOS couldn't get past the "detecting IDE devices" step. I couldn't even get into the BIOS check my settings. I disconnected the 160 GB drive and booted the system again. This time the 40GB drive was detected but the startup froze at "Verifying DMI Pool Data". I tried to boot from the CD-ROM again and I was able to so I am only able to enter the BIOS or boot from anything when the 160 GB drive is disconnected (when I try to connect the 160 GB drive by itself or with the 40GB drive I cannot get it past the "detecting IDE devices")

Anyway, when I connected ONLY the 40GB drive I was able to enter the BIOS and boot from the CD-ROM (only with the 160 GB drive disconnected). I booted up using my windows XP CD and tried to repair the Windows partition but it said it couldn't detect ANY hard drives even though my 40GB drive was still connected and it holds my Windows System files. I tried reinstalling Windows XP to this drive but, again, it didn't detect ANY drives.

I disconnected BOTH my 40GB and 160GB drive and connected an old Maxtor ATA-33 20GB drive. Everything works fine using this drive. I am able to boot, install, Windows XP. In fact, I'm typing from the new installation right now.

what I tried to do next was access the other two drives using the 20GB drive as the master and the 40GB and 160 GB drives as slaves. When I do hook up the 160 GB drive as a slave drive I still cannot get past the "detecting IDE devices" step even though the 20GB drive is the master drive and it has a working boot record to a working Windows XP installation.

I guess my question is...

How did this happen? How did both hard drives get ruined?
Is there anything more I can do to verify that these drives are toast?
Is there anyway to get any data off these drives?

Hey rakan!
Welcome to PC Helpforum!

This doesn't sound good.

Were both drives connected to the same IDE cable?
Are you sure you're power supply unit is fine?

You can always try to use the harddisks in another computer.
Data recovery may also be possible that way. Else, you need to bring your harddrives to a Recovery Center, but that's expensive, so it depends on how important your files are.

Are you harddisks by the way making any strange sound or do you notice anything else that's not usual?

Blue

Hey Blue,

Thanks for your help. My power supply is an Antec 430 watt TruePower power supply. I don't know if this is the problem or not. When the problem first occured I saw the hard drive LED come on and heard that hard drive (not sure which hard drive since I have two) click on. Then the system froze. I didn't hear any other noises or anything unusual other than my hard drive click on as it normally does. How could I test my PSU? Is there anyway to do it?

I'm not sure about that.

How old it the case (PSU), or the whole computer?

Perhaps the best way is to return it to the store and let them have a look at this. They got the equipment to check everything.

I'm thinking about some kind of short-circuit problem.

The PSU is about 5 years old. The system is something I put together in 2001 but I upgraded the Motherboard 2 years ago. The 40GB drive is 5 years old but the 160 GB is 2 years old. I noticed that when I try to hook up the 160 GB drive that it doesn't work at all (no noise no vibration no LED ). I think it is completely fried

Hi rakan,

Regarding power supplies...each year, they drop 5% max capacity. So it could be that your 430watt psu has sent a power spike through your system and damaged the hard drives. Unfortunatly I don't know anyway to test it, but I'd suggest you get a new one fairly soon just to be safe.

But I agree with Bluefish...plug the hard drives into another computer to see if you can get the files off.