Harddrive dead?

[psychopath]

A few minutes ago I installed a new fan in my computer, connected to the PSU (not the motherboard) with an adapter. Closed the case, booted the the computer, and one of my harddrives appears to be dead. The name string that comes back is kind of screwed (reads "MAxToR" or something like that). The reported size is only 4.2GB, where it should be 80GB.

So, is it totally fried? And could that power adapter have done anything? Also, anyone know if there's any way to get any of the data back (although most of it was backed up)?

Thanks.

[psychopath]

Just tried the drive on the secondary IDE channel, and it works fine. That happened to me once before, but I can't remember why. Is it a motherboard issue?

[robwhit]

Is there a jumper setting on the drive?

[psychopath]

Yes, set to master I believe.

[Salem]

The BIOS has a number of ways (CHS, LBA, etc etc) of configuring access to the HD. It's possible this parameter got reset during your hardware mods.

I know that if this changes, then this can affect what (if anything) you can see of your HD.

On most of my machines, I tend to leave it on 'auto-detect'.

[psychopath]

I'll have a look at that when I get home. Any chance clearing the CMOS could fix something like that?

[matsp]

I'll have a look at that when I get home. Any chance clearing the CMOS could fix something like that?

It may do, but sometimes the "default" value isn't a good one - it probably is nowadays, but I've had boards that default to really stupid values in the past, so it's probably best if you check it - and more importantly, resetting the CMOS is a bit excessive, you should be able to set your IDE drive to "autodetect" without resetting all your other settings - if that doesn't work, then you may want to reset everything to see if that makes any difference, but not as a first thing to try.

--
Mats

[psychopath]

All the harddrive settings are set to "Auto". Tried clearing CMOS - still the same prob .

[brewbuck]

So, is it totally fried? And could that power adapter have done anything? Also, anyone know if there's any way to get any of the data back (although most of it was backed up)?

If you damaged anything, it's more likely you sparked while working inside the case and knocked out a pin on the primary IDE connector. A wonky power supply is going to hose everything, not mysteriously break one port and leave the other one okay...

As for getting your data back, just plug it into some other machine.